BOSTON AREA CALENDAR OF EVENTS

The Museum’s newest temporary exhibition reveals the mathematical patterns that surround us every day in the natural world — from the nested spirals of a sunflower’s seeds to the ridges of a majestic mountain range to the layout of the universe.

At the center of it all: a 1,700-square-foot elaborate mirror maze where visitors can lose themselves in a seemingly infinite repeating pattern of mirrors. This arrangement of symmetry and tessellation is the ultimate introduction to patterns and how math is an integral part of our lives. Dead ends are scattered throughout, and a small secret room is hidden within, rewarding you with bonus puzzles and artifacts.

Explore the night sky with your favorite friends from Sesame Street in Big Bird’s Adventure: One World, One Sky. Follow along with Big Bird, Elmo, and their friend from China, Hu Hu Zhu, as they take you on a journey of discovery to learn about the Big Dipper, the North Star, the Sun, and the Moon.

Centered around a newly acquired, large-scale calligraphy by Inoue Yūichi (1916–85), this exhibition showcases a selection of avant-garde works in the monochrome aesthetic shared widely in Japan and beyond during the postwar period. This sensibility is rooted in Zen Buddhism, which values simplicity and austerity, and remains influential today. The works in the exhibition are the results of transnational exchanges between Japanese artists like Inoue and their American Expressionist contemporaries, including Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock, who drew inspiration from Asian calligraphy for their gestural paintings. Among the nine works on view are prints, ceramics and sculpture, primarily drawn from the MFA’s collection.

JFK 100: Milestones & Mementos is the title of a new exhibition commemorating President Kennedy’s centenary. Featuring a compelling selection of items drawn mostly from the Kennedy Library’s collections, the exhibition will chronicle historic milestones in the President’s career and administration, as well as the events of his personal and family life. Highlights of the exhibition include family items from his childhood and adolescence; a flag from PT 109 (the boat commanded by JFK during World War II); items relating to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and notes jotted down by the President in preparation of his landmark address to the nation on civil rights. Several items have never before been displayed, including some of JFK’s personal belongings, such as his sunglasses, several of his neckties, and gifts from his young children. The stories revealed in these materials complement the stories presented in the permanent galleries of the museum. Cumulatively, this special exhibition reflects the arc of President Kennedy’s life—the challenges, burdens, and opportunities of his life and times—as well as the sweep of history over the last century. The exhibition is slated to run through May 2018.

Items featured in the exhibition include the following:

• Rose Kennedy’s card file, recording the medical events in the early lives of JFK and his 8 siblings;
• Scrapbook compiled by JFK as a high school student while attending Choate, 1934-35;
• Logbooks from PT 109 and PT 59, patrol torpedo boats commanded by Lt. John F. Kennedy during World War II;
• 1951 Travel Journal from Congressman John F. Kennedy’s trip to the Middle and Far East;
• Suitcase used by JFK while on the road campaigning in 1960;
• President Kennedy’s Cabinet Room chair;
• President Kennedy’s Speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, 1961;
• Selection of JFK’s neckties;
• President Kennedy’s handwritten notes in preparation for his 1963 address to the nation on civil rights;
• President Kennedy’s undelivered remarks prepared for the Dallas Trade Mart, November 22, 1963.

To mark the centenary of the deaths of Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) and Egon Schiele (1890–1918), the MFA presents an exhibition of rarely seen drawings by the Austrian artists on loan from the Albertina Museum in Vienna. “Klimt and Schiele: Drawn” examines both the divergences and compelling parallels between the two artists—particularly in their provocative depictions of the human body. Nearly 30 years apart in age, Klimt and Schiele shared a mutual respect and admiration for each other’s talent. Yet, their work is decidedly different in appearance and effect: Klimt’s drawings are often delicate, while Schiele’s are frequently bold. Klimt often used these sheets as preparatory designs for paintings, while Schiele considered his drawings to be independent pictures and routinely sold them. Both deployed frank naturalism, unsettling emotional resonances, and disorienting omissions to challenge conventions and expectations in portraits, nudes, and allegories. Organized thematically, this selection of 60 drawings begins with the artists’ academic origins and then investigates how each shifted away from traditional training to more incisive and unconventional explorations of humanity. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated publication.

The history of art is usually presented as a forward march, with individual works studied as points along a path of progress to the present. This installation—matching the Harvard survey course it accompanies—reverses that familiar direction. The sequence proceeds from recent art back to the Renaissance. This retrospective history of art is meant to capture the point of view of artists themselves, who have, for generations, tried—variously—to preserve, transform, surpass, or overturn what came before them. A reverse perspective also accords with how humans are situated in history, looking back inescapably from a position in the present moment, but also powerfully shaped by the past. And it echoes the time sequence of geological sediment through which one has to dig from new layers to older ones.

Looking back on selected artworks from the Western tradition allows us to observe that even the most radical contemporary departures depend heavily on the art of the past and therefore that the Old Masters are relevant still. Visitors are invited to travel the sequence in both directions, from present to past and from past to present, experiencing the different connections, stories, and dislocations that arise.

The installation’s related course is taught by Jeffrey F. Hamburger, the Kuno Francke Professor of German Art and Culture; and Joseph Koerner, the Victor S. Thomas Professor of the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University.

The University Teaching Gallery serves faculty and students affiliated with Harvard’s Department of History of Art and Architecture. Semester-long installations are mounted in conjunction with undergraduate and graduate courses, supporting instruction in the critical analysis of art and making unique selections from the museums’ collections available to all visitors.

This installation is made possible in part by funding from the Gurel Student Exhibition Fund and the José Soriano Fund. Modern and contemporary art programs at the Harvard Art Museums are made possible in part by generous support from the Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art.

Adelson Galleries Boston presents an exhibition of new works by painter Robert Freeman and photographer Max Stern that celebrate an historic New Orleans tradition.

An immersive display of 11 masterpieces by Mark Rothko (1903–70), on loan from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, invites visitors to contemplate the power of art to shape human experience. The installation opens with Rothko’s early painting Thru the Window (1938), on public view in the US for the first time, and Artist in his Studio (about 1628) by Rembrandt—portraits of artists reflecting on the act of painting. Contrary to notions that Rothko’s work represented a dramatic break from past traditions, the side-by-side comparison positions him within the broader history of Western art. The exhibition’s other Rothko paintings showcase the full sweep of his career—from early surrealist work to multiform compositions to classic color field paintings—and trace his exploration of the expressive potential of color. Enveloped by the large-scale paintings in an intimate setting, viewers can experience Rothko’s work as the artist had originally intended.

Whether copying or choosing motifs to reinterpret, jewelers have always looked to the past for inspiration. The practice became popular in the 19th century, as designers like Castellani, Giacinto Melillo and Eugene Fontenay began reviving examples of ancient ornaments, newly unearthed in archaeological excavations. Examine more than 4,000 years of jewelry history through about 70 objects—both ancient and revival—tracing the revival movement from the 19th to the 21st centuries. The exhibition focuses on four types—archaeological, Classical, Egyptian, and Renaissance. Highlights include a 1924 brooch, on loan from Cartier, paired with an Egyptian winged scarab (740–660 BC) with a similar design; an 1850s embellished gold brooch by Castellani; a Renaissance revival neck ornament (1900–04) designed for Tiffany & Co.; a 1980s Bulgari necklace adorned with Macedonian coins; and a 2002 Akelo pendant that emulates an ancient Etruscan granulation technique.

Rome, known as the “common fatherland,” was the goal of pilgrims, travelers, and artists from all over Europe. One of the most celebrated was Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778), a Venetian who spent his entire career in Rome. He produced on average two etchings a month (fourteen are featured in this installation), and his image of Roman grandeur left an indelible stamp on the European imagination. His vedute (city views), meant for Grand Tour visitors, show the most famous monuments of Rome, many now Christianized, as well as the palaces and villas of Roma moderna. Palazzo Barberini and Villa Albani housed notable collections of ancient sculpture and were centers for the study of the antique. An interior view of San Paolo fuori le Mura shows how Constantinian churches, such as St. Peter’s, originally looked, while another of San Giovanni in Laterano shows such a church after its Baroque transformation.

The Stadium of Domitian succumbed to ruin in the Middle Ages but left its trace on the urban landscape as Piazza Navona. Pope Innocent X (1644–55) transformed it with a palace and church built over the ancient seating. Piranesi shows the finished square while an earlier printmaker, Dominique Barrière (1618–1678), shows it in 1650 with Bernini’s Four Rivers fountain almost complete but the church of Sant’Agnese not yet begun.

Rome was the best watered city in the world thanks to its system of aqueducts. Pliny, in his Natural History, favorably compared the achievement to the building of the pyramids in Egypt. Both the Trevi Fountain and the Acqua Paola adopt the triumphal arch motif to celebrate the arrival of the waters.

Then as now visitors could mount to the top of St. Peter’s. A splendid drawing of 1641 by Israël Silvestre (1621–1691) shows the Vatican palace and Bernini’s unfinished bell tower. The square in front of the church shows the obelisk that was moved there in 1586 but not yet Bernini’s colonnade, begun two decades later.

The installation’s related course is taught by Joseph Connors, Professor of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University.

The University Teaching Gallery serves faculty and students affiliated with Harvard’s Department of History of Art and Architecture. Semester-long installations are mounted in conjunction with undergraduate and graduate courses, supporting instruction in the critical analysis of art and making unique selections from the museums’ collections available to all visitors.

This installation is made possible in part by funding from the Gurel Student Exhibition Fund and the José Soriano Fund.