The Henry Art Gallery’s summer line-up is a medley of old and new. The antique and the modern converge in a fusion that is sometimes stark, but often subtle.

Inside-Out: Portrait Photographs from the Permanent Collection is a thoughtful exhibit meant to inform rather than entertain. It gives the viewer a glimpse into a wide spectrum of human nature by engaging him or her with the subject in an intimate manner, and it includes several polaroids by Andy Warhol that are not to miss. Class, gender and racial prejudice are all illuminated in a sweeping glance at the photographs around the room in which photographers Jim Goldberg and Patrick Faigenbaum portray the wealthy submerged in luxury.

Gender dynamics come to the forefront in artist Imogen Cunningham’s photograph “Edward and Margrethe 2” as she perceptively captures photographer Edward Weston’s persona as girlfriend and fellow photographer Margrethe Mather fades into obscurity, drawing a parallel to the fate of Mather and similar female artists in the 1920s as they became lost in history while their male counterparts rose to prominence. Artists Nan Goldin, Fred E. Miller, Frank A. Rinehart and Marsha Burns explore the boundaries of other cultures in their subjects’ defiance of traditional norms.

The film exhibit currently featured at the Henry, Business As Usual, features the work of two of China’s most acclaimed video artists, Cao Fei and Yang Fudong, in adjacent rooms. Both videos investigate the contradictory nature of the emerging middle class in China as it struggles to reconcile its rich traditional past with the urgent need to modernize. Cao’s triptych, “Whose Utopia,” explores the lives of factory workers in minute detail.

In Cao’s first progression, the hum of machinery breaks the silence in a lightbulb factory. Through the first four minutes of the film, all that is seen are the mechanisms of the factory: the incandescent tubes, the metal filaments, the boxes and the forklifts. Yet Cao has an expert eye, and a gracefulness and fluidity emerges that has a lot to do with the reflection of light. Cao’s sense of aesthetics is amplified as the camera pans over workers’ hands that nimbly work with metal filaments — hands that become one with the machinery as tools for labor. In the second progression, “Factory Fairytale,” Cao explores how hands can be liberated. She portrays them as instruments to express the innermost soul, at one with the body rather than with industry, as factory workers are revealed to be aspiring dancers and musicians in disguise.

In the third progression, workers stop what they’re doing and stare at the camera, almost in defiance, allowing them to assume a full sense of humanity.

Meanwhile, Yang’s short films “City Lights” and “Honey” play in the adjacent gallery. His subjects are intellectuals and the middle class. Although the former enjoyed prominence and fame throughout China’s history, they became marginalized after China’s Cultural Revolution. The film’s restless and agitated mood draws on the ambiguous status they have in today’s society.

Jasper Johns: Light Bulb is also currently on display at the gallery, featuring sculptures, drawings and prints by artist Jasper Johns, Focusing on his first sculpture, “Light Bulb 1,” the exhibit expands on the everyday industrial object. Three-dimensional representations of lightbulbs and drawings of the devices challenge how we view commonplace objects.

Whether glancing at a black-and-white photograph dwarfed by a colorful image in the photography exhibit or observing hints of tradition alongside modernization in Yang’s film presentation, what remains constant is a sense of common humanity guided by the artist’s creative instinct. A stroll through the gallery this summer will not only stimulate your senses, it will inspire your imagination.

Reach reporter Sara Grimes at arts@dailyuw.com.