Menachem Wecker

One learns early on in the National Gallery's major exhibition "Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice" that there is equal danger of over- and under-interpreting the artist's extensive details.

The exhibit "The Woman in White: Joanna Hiffernan and James McNeill Whistler" only partially achieves its aim of a "more humanistic understanding" of Hiffernan, the model and domestic partner of the renowned painter.

As the 50th anniversary of his death approaches, Pablo Picasso and his work loom large. Many know Picasso was atheist, but it will surprise many to know he drew extensively upon Catholic imagery throughout his career.

Ed Ruscha: "I am a confirmed atheist today, but the church helped me get where I am." Curators of his first solo exhibit in the state where he grew up think the Catholicism of Ruscha's youth continues to impact his life and work.

Commentary: Using the Temple-cleansing story to illustrate annexation of a sacred place, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls contemporary attention, perhaps inadvertently, to a narrative with a sinister past.

Perspective: In the Netherlands in the 16th century, public Catholic celebrations were banned and worship was restricted to churches sans identifiable façades. One such place was constructed in three adjoining attics in Amsterdam.

Commentary: The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore is not referencing its own exhibition history in marketing the restored "St. Francis Missal," nor is it letting the viewing public know about the complications in the manuscript that make it suspect.

A new exhibit of the paintings of George Caitlin shows his particular interest in indigenous spiritual practices that often centered on buffalo. Human beings have hunted buffalo for many centuries with an appropriate balance. In hindsight, Caitlin was depicting a conservation-conscious form of hunting.

Separated by 250 miles, the sculptures and the exhibits containing them have a good deal to say to one another and collectively shed light on two lesser-known Renaissance artists, who deserve recognition outside the shadows of their illustrious students and teachers. 

Art: The exhibit "Power Couples" at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts focuses on the diptych or pendant, a centuries-old format that uncovers meaning through juxtaposing two pictures.

"The World between Empires: Art and Identity in the Ancient Middle East" offers a potential historical interpretation of Jews, Christians and polytheists living in "peaceful pluralism" on sites like Dura-Europos in present-day Syria.

Shopping at Walmart a few years ago, David Morgan saw a statuette of Santa Claus praying on one knee before a cross and knew he had to have it.

More than 30 years after that inaugural exhibition at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood, a lot has changed. Scholars use rather different language today than the catalog did to describe indigenous peoples, and in 2006, the institution changed its name to the National Museum of Mexican Art. 

The museum on the campus of St. Louis University is celebrating its anniversary with a special exhibition through Feb. 17. Since its opening, MOCRA has shown more than 55 exhibits of some 230 artists and contributed to a shift in the dialogue about religion's place in contemporary art.

Perspective: When Catholics today are deciding what place, if any, they want and crave in the church, and what the church will look like going forward, I think the church's rich art history can help look beyond the individual offenders and take a wide-angle view of the faith more broadly.

Non-Catholics talk to NCR about the challenges and unique opportunities they experience while teaching at Catholic colleges and universities.

Powerful data-mining tools allow today’s campaigns to connect religious voters with their political viewpoints and to micro-target ads to fit their particular brand of faith.

When one considers Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot's lesser-known body of figures, as the National Gallery of Art's exhibition "Corot: Women" (through Dec. 31) does, one finds the artist flirting with a modern and self-conscious way of acknowledging the male gaze all but inherent in model painting.

Adjunct faculty at the Jesuit university will see an increase in wages by 67 to 90 percent over the next three years, which could make the difference between being able to pay rent and eviction.

Exploring the notion of what it might mean — at least pictorially — for the divine to assume flesh in the context of Oscar Wilde's 1891 novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which flesh becomes immune to aging through a kind of reversed, aesthetic voodoo doll, is a heavy enterprise that is not for the faint of heart.