Can an artist simultaneously celebrate and critique pop culture? Those familiar with the incredibly varied work of Richard Prince have seen appropriation, pop culture, and cultural criticism battle it out over the span of his 30-year career. His medium of expression varies greatly, from recreating photography, paintings, reprints of comics, and even collecting clay auto-body molds. The duality of his work is evident in his 1980s photographic recreations of the Marlboro advertising campaign, which celebrates the iconic image of the cowboy and Western landscape, while drawing attention to the hypocrisy that such an image would be used to advertise an addictive, unhealthy vice. His Nurses, inspired by the covers of pulp-fiction hospital romance novel covers, are both alluring and unsettling. Also, regardless of where his aesthetic inspiration takes him, each series of work explores concepts of artistic ownership, as he recreates and sometimes simply reprints photography, imitating iconic corporate symbols, or reprinting text or quotes from writers. Prince forces the viewer to reconsider context, drawing attention to the irony of pop culture, while bringing what is normally left unsaid to the forefront. After Hours Preview Party features food, film screenings of Rendezvous and The Honeymoon Killers, a text-based art activity, and music by Skoal Kodiak for $35 from 9 p.m. to midnight Friday, March 21. — Jessica Armbruster

Though August Sander's photography runs the gamut from nature to architecture to street performance, he is easily best known for his portraits, including his epic series, "People of the 20th Century." The extensive project of documenting German society began in the 1920s, growing to over 600 portraits of individuals who hailed mainly from the Cologne region. Subjects spanned the full spectrum, including wealthy politicians, homeless artists, farmers, housewives, children, and others. Sander sought objectivity in his photography, striving "to see things as they are and not as they should or could be." Perhaps this is why his work was banned by the Nazis in the 1930s; his frank and matter-of-fact photography captured a diverse, cosmopolitan, and culturally rich country, which conflicted with the Aryan ideology. Though Sander passed in 1964, his work carries on today with his grandson Gerhard, and his influence can be seen in the work of many later photographers, including Diane Arbus and Richard Avedon. The Weinstein Gallery will feature 23 large-format images from original negatives from his collection. Opening reception 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Friday, February 22. — Jessica Armbruster

The categorization of great coffee as a fine art has taken on a new meaning. After hitting Boston, New York, Las Vegas, and Washington, D.C., over the past few years, the traveling photographic exhibition "The Birth of Coffee" is visiting Minnesota until May 7. Journalist and photographer Daniel Lorenzetti's most recent project tries to expand the scope of coffee past consumers' mouths and into the larger, overtly political world in which it is grown. The 40 black-and-white silver prints on display are quite fittingly, and literally, toned in coffee, and depict the lives of coffee growers in Brazil, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Indonesia, and Yemen. Lorenzetti and his wife, Linda Rice Lorenzetti, traveled five different continents doing research that resulted in a co-authored coffee-table book, The Birth of Coffee, and this exhibition, which explore the individuals and unique experiences that contributed to the $4 latte so many people mindlessly gulp each day. — Amy Lieberman