MONTCLAIR— MUCH has been written about sisterhood among the arts. It's claimed, for instance, that rhythm in music can be compared with the rhythm of a sinuous line in an abstract painting. But there's also plenty of proof that the arts are entirely different breeds. Whatever side of the argument one takes, it's obvious that there's real difficulty in trying to capture the essence of one art in another. This is borne out by ''Lyrical Visions: Music and Dance in American Art'' at the Montclair Art Museum.

It's a two-part exhibition. Paintings and works on paper from the museum's collection of American art comprise one half, while American Indian objects related to dancing are the other. The Indian pieces, also from the museum's ample collection, are displayed in vitrines in the foyer of the museum. Visitors encounter them first, and their palpable presence makes the show of mainstream American work seem secondhand and lackluster.

The central problem with the paintings and works on paper is that the subject matter is often merely tangential to music and dance. A moody landscape by Washington Allston from 1935, for instance, bears the title ''Evening Hymn.'' Even a grand composition like William Merritt Chase's ''A Tambourine Player (Mrs. Chase as a Spanish Dancer)'' from 1989 for all its imposing qualities can't elevate the rest of the show to an ambience convincingly filled with music. And much of the 19th-century work is illustrational, and anecdotal in a way that seems kitschy.

The 20th century fares a bit better. Eugene Berman often designed theater and opera sets, so his watercolor ''Giselle Act I'' has obvious depth. Countering the gray drabness of Moses Soyer's ''Five Dancers'' is George McNeil's exuberant ''Deliverance Disco.'' Abraham Walkowitz's three watercolors featuring Isadora Duncan might be regarded as landmark works.

Some of the small works are the most revealing and pertinent. Elsie Driggs was a Precisionist painter at home painting belching factory smokestacks, so it is refreshing to see her in another vein, as in the emphasis on the abstracted figure in her collage titled ''Ballet Dancer.'' The photographer Weegee, whose specialty was the underbelly of city life in the mid-20th century, provides the most buoyant image in this part of the exhibition with the dancer he caught in ''At a Club in Harlem'' in 1946. However, a handful of absorbing works do not a convincing exhibition make. It's doubtful, though, that the theme could really work anywhere: it's much too elusive.

Music and dance in the lives of American Indians is not elusive. It's central and the basis of Indian civilization. That authoritative position is communicated simply through the display of items used in the ritual dances of Indians in the Southwest, the Great Plains, the Northwest coast and the Eastern woodlands. This portion of the show is a declaration that at one time the American continent was filled with drumming, flute playing and dance, but that sweeping picture is supplemented by particular details: the comparison of various rattles is especially instructive.

This part of the show has work on the walls as well: vivid sepia-toned photographs taken by pioneering photographers in the early 19th century, T. Harmon Parkhurst and Carl Moon, reveal the exoticism and the purposefulness of dances in several Southwestern pueblos, notably the deer and buffalo dances at Tesuque Pueblo. Colorful and simply rendered paintings based on close observation of dances share wall space. Oskar Howe, for instance, portrays a Sioux war dance and John Nieto describes an Apache snake dance.

Upstairs in the museum is a related show of photographs, ''Georgia O'Keeffe: The Artist's Landscape.'' The photographer is Todd Webb, who died in April, so the show might be seen as a kind of memorial to him as well as a depiction of some of the timeless landscape O'Keeffe shared with Southwest Indians. When she moved to New Mexico, part time in 1934 and permanently in 1946, O'Keeffe clearly designed a life that embodied the simplicty of her stark but sublime surroundings.

O'Keeffe and Webb had known each other for a long time when he began to photograph her in the mid-1980's. O'Keeffe's prickly personality is legendary, but with Webb she displays the kind of quietness and calm she wanted to embody. She is not in every picture: items like animal skulls, which were artifacts closely associated with her, as well as her brushes and a primed canvas ready to be painted round out her portrayal. This is a reverential show but overshadowing the homage aspect is a lyrical limpidity.



Montclair Art Museum, 3 South Mountain Avenue, Montclair.

Through Jan. 7. Hours: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursdays and Sundays, 1 to 5 p.m.

(973) 746-5555.

Photos: ''At a Club in Harlem,'' above, by Weegee, and ''Five Dancers,'' right, by Moses Soyer, both in the exhibition ''Lyrical Visions: Music and Dance in American Art'' at the Montclair Art Museum.