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Much of our appreciation of Van Gogh can be traced to Helene Müller, whose acquisitions are the foundation of the Kröller-Müller Museum. This German-born heiress was wise in recognizing Van Gogh's genius and became the first major collector of his work. She and her Dutch husband, Anton Kröller, built a sensational collection and began showing parts of it to the public as early as 1913.  They lost their fortune in the economic downturn after World War I, but formed the Kröller-Müller Foundation to protect the art.  In 1935, they donated a house, land and a collection of 12,000 pieces to the Netherlands on the condition the country will build a place to display it. There were 90 paintings, 185 drawings by Van Gogh. S till Life with Four Sunflowers, 1887, has contrasts of blue and orange, yellow and red, a reason I find this painting in the Kröller-Müller Museum more interesting than Van Gogh's more famous yellow paintings of sunflowers in a vase. In a recent trip to the Netherla...

T he Phillips' Kandinsky exhibition centers around this painting from the Guggenheim, Painting with White Border, 1913. It appears primarily abstract, but has two specifically Russian iconographic references: a troika (three horses) and St. George and the Dragon. The Phillips Collection's current exhibition on Kandinsky not only provides insight into the thought process of this giant of early 20th century abstraction, but it also gives us a chance to compare the artists with whom he worked and influenced. The Kandinsky exhibition is juxtaposed next to an exhibition of contemporary artist Frank Stella, whose sculptures are influenced by music of Domenico Scarlatti, called Stella Sounds . The metal and plastic sculptures point, poke off the walls and into space curving vigorously with color. They become 3-dimensional expressions of abstraction comparable to Kandinsky. Frank Stella's K43 comes out of the wall and into space. His sculptures on view at the Phillips are based on ...

Edvard Munch's The Scream is so powerful that the other works of this great Norwegian artist are overlooked. Other art by Munch articulated his feelings about the sad passages of life--sickness, death and breakups. Currently at The Nation al Gallery of Art in Washington is an exhibition of Munch's graphic art which represents man y of the other themes he dealt with intensely, includin g illness, love, los s, and loneliness. The museum has pulled together prints from its own collection with images from two private collections to present a fuller view of the real artist. In f act, the sounds of silence in Munch's work are as freq uent and powerful as the voices of pain. Waves of Love, a lithograph Munch also can be subtle. He explores the possibilities of images morphing into something else. In Waves of Love , we see a floating woman but don't notice the man right away. Yet, when we discover him, the work becomes even more powerful. Munch, Vampire II, 1895, lithograph wi...