Austin, Texas

Near the beginning of "Anni Albers: In Thread and On Paper" at the Blanton Museum of Art, a 1968 photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson portrays Albers with her husband, Josef, whose "Homage to the Square" paintings earned him renown. While Josef relaxes on a couch, Anni sits behind it, half-hidden—as it always seemed to be in life. Both had been creating art since the 1920s; her textiles merited a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1949 that toured to 26 museums. But when she died in 1994, the second sentence of her New York Times obituary called her his widow. His, in 1976, mentions her near the end, in the context of their 1925 marriage.

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New York

When the Frick Collection moved temporarily into the Brutalist Breuer building on Madison Avenue in 2021—while its Beaux-Arts Fifth Avenue mansion closed for expansion and renovation—many comments centered on the placement of its most celebrated possession, Giovanni Bellini's masterpiece "St. Francis in the Desert" (c. 1475-80). Hung in a small gallery by itself, lower and closer to viewers, minus the distracting trappings of its opulent permanent home, and with light streaming in through a trapezoidal window from the same direction as that in the painting, the picture seemed to be perfectly displayed in splendid isolation.

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Greenwich, Conn.

For a curator in search of a compelling exhibition, there's little better than a fresh, revealing storyline, a cast of artists both well-known and not, and art to substantiate the narrative. That's exactly what the Bruce Museum has in "Connecticut Modern: Art, Design, and the Avant-Garde, 1930-1960."

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Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

Nearly 50 years have passed since "Women Artists, 1550-1950" opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It was a sweeping attempt to insert female artists into the art-historical canon. But little changed, and recently a new generation has organized a spate of exhibitions devoted to redressing past disregard.

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Boston

What is Cleopatra, born in 69 B.C., doing in an exhibition titled "Strong Women in Renaissance Italy"? And why do the Queen of Sheba (10th century B.C.), Judith (sixth century B.C.), Salome and Mary Magdalene (both A.D. first century) also figure prominently?

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