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Archangel Michael , First half 14th century tempera on wood, gold leaf  overall: 110 x 80 cm (43 5/16 x 31 1/2 in.) Byzantine and Christian Museum, Athens Gold radiates throughout dimly-lit rooms of the National Gallery of Art's exhibition, Heaven and Earth: Byzantine Art from Greek Collections.  Some 170 important works on loan from museums in Greece trace the development of Byzantine visual culture from the fourth to the 15th century. Organized by the Benaki Museum in Athens, it will be on view until March 2 and then at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles beginning April 19.  The National Gallery has a done a great job organizing the show, getting across themes of both spiritual and secular life spanning more than 1000 years.  The exhibition design is masterful and includes a film about four key Greek churches. The photography is exquisite and provides the full context for the Byzantine church art. There are dining tables, coins, ivories, jewelry and other o...

Rania Hassan, Pensive I, II, III , 2009, oil, fiber, canvas, metal wood,  Each piece is 31"h x 12"w x 2-1/2"  It's currently on view at Greater Reston Arts Center. There's a revival of status and attention given to traditional, highly-skilled arts and crafts made of yarn, thread and materials. "Stitch," a new show at Greater Reston Arts Center ( GRACE ), proves that traditional sewing arts are at the forefront of contemporary art, and that fiber is a forceful vehicle for expression.  Meanwhile, the National Museum of Women in the Arts puts the historical spin on traditional women's art in " Workt by Hand ," a collection of stunning quilts from the Brooklyn Museum which were shown in exhibition at their home museum last year. Bars Quilt , ca. 1890, Pennsylvania; Cotton and wool, 83 x 82"; Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. H. Peter Findlay, 77.122.3; Photography by Gavin Ashworth, 2012 / Brooklyn Museum Quilts are normally very lar...

Albrecht Dürer , The Head of Christ , 1506 brush and gray ink, gray wash, heightened with white on blue paper overall: 27.3 x 21 cm (10 3/4 x 8 1/4 in.) overall (framed): 50 63.8 4.1 cm (19 11/16 25 1/8 1 5/8 in.) Albertina, Vienna The National Gallery of Art is hosting the largest show of Albrecht Dürer drawings, prints and watercolors ever seen in North America, combining its own collection with that of the Albertina in Vienna, Austria.  Across the street in the museum's west wing is the another exhibition of works on paper, Color, Line and Light: French Drawings Watercolors and Pastels from Delacroix to Signac .  The French drawings are spectacular, but it's hard to imagine the 19th century masters without the earlier genius out of Germany, Dürer, who approached drawing with scientist's curiosity for understanding nature. Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait at Thirteen , 1484 silverpoint on prepared paper, 27.3 19.5 cm (10 3/4 7 11/16 in.) (framed): 51.7 43.1 4.5 cm (20 3/8 16...

Photo courtesy of Rachael Matthews from the UK Crafts Council "High fiber" usually refers to a type of diet, but High Fiber at the National Museum for Women in the Arts demonstrates how "high art" integrates with the everyday world of a Folk Art.  In the multi-media world of contemporary art, Fiber Art has gained recognition as a serious art form over the last fifty years.  Like the art of glass making , fiber art was invented milleniums ago for utilitarian purposes. Knitting, sewing and weaving developed to meet basic needs of warmth and clothing, but as soon as pattern and design were involved, the process of making art began. Knitted objects are often in Matthews' work When the ancient artists/crafters knitted, knotted, wove or stitched to follow patterns or innate designs in their heads, they tied together movements between the left and right hands, bridging the creative left side of the brain with the analytical right side of the brain. Contemporary fiber ...

One of the first 'pastoral ' paintings(not in the exhibition) was The Pastoral Concert, 1509, by Titian and/or  Giorgione, originator of  the pastoral, where landscape is on par with figures. Shepherds and musicians are frequent in this theme. Good things always end, including summer and a chance to see how the greatest modern artists painted themes of leisure as Arcadian Visions: Gauguin, Cezanne, Matisse , ends Labor Day. The exhibition highlights 3 large paintings:  Gauguin's frieze-like Where do We Come From?...,  1898, Cézanne's  Large Bathers , 1898-1905 and Matisse's  Bathers by a River , 1907-17. Each painting was crucial to the goals of the artists, and crucial to the transitioning from the art and life of the past into the 20th century. These  modernist visions actually are part of a much older theme descended from Greece and written about in Virgil's  Eclogues.  Nineteenth-century masters were very familiar with this tradition from...

Sam Gilliam, The Petition, 1990, mixed media Smithsonian American Art Museum's exhibition, African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Era and Beyond gives a broad overview of 43 artists whose work spanned 8 decades of the 20th century.  Over 40 photographs, as well as paintings, give a provocative picture of urban and rural life during the Depression, the age of segregation and the Civil Rights and later.  Although there is some overlap with other 20th century art movements, the exhibition is mainly art focused on African-Americans and their lives.  Both abstract and figural paintings are included, but also sculpture by Richard Hunt, Sam Gilliam, an important recent figure in the art scene of Washington, DC.   The artists come from the South and North, with a large number from urban areas of Detroit, New York, St. Louis, Baltimore and Washington, DC. Detroit artist Tony Gleaton recorded his travels to Nicaraguain in Family of the Sea, 1988, ...