Artists, like explorers, are adventurers in a quest for new frontiers. In the 20th century the search has led them to the last-chance, bleak extremes of Minimalist landscapes, to the cool, indifferent space of the contemporary gallery, and to the merciless expanses of the polar zones. The metaphoric and geographical frontiers of the gallery and of Antarctica converged this summer in Salon for the South Pole, “an excursion into parlor games, polar appreciation, and polite behavior,” mapped out by the young Boston artist Rachel Weiss.

The event was carefully balanced between salon and gallery