Mailer, musée, and a Spacey `Moon'

September 10, 2006|Destinations, Mark Feeney, Globe Staff

`Norman Mailer Takes on America' Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas AUSTIN through Dec. 31 For almost 60 years, Norman Mailer has loomed large on the literary and cultural landscape -- and in so many ways: as novelist, journalist, pugilist, self-publicist, controversialist (it's a long list of ``ists"). Last year, he sold his papers to the University of Texas, and this exhibition draws on the copious Mailer archive to present the many aspects of a many-sided career.

21st and Guadalupe streets. 512-471-8944. www.hrc.utexas.edu.

Musée des Arts Décoratifs PARIS On Friday, one of the world's leading museums of the decorative arts reopens after a 10-year, $46 million restoration project. The Musée des Arts Décoratifs has some 150,000 items in its collection, including toys, jewelry, furniture, glassware, and ceramics. Those items cover a span from the 15th century to the present. (For those who can't make it to Paris, ``The Eagle and the Butterfly: Power and Ornament under Napoleon I, " an exhibition drawn from the museum's holdings, is scheduled to run at the Museum of Fine Arts next fall.)

107 rue de Rivoli., 011-33-1-44-55-57-50. www.lesartsdecoratifs.fr.

Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts MOSCOW Along with the Tretyakov State Gallery , the Pushkin Museum is one of Moscow's two great art institutions. Its holdings in Western painting are second only to St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum among Russian collections. The Pushkin's new Gallery of Art of the Countries of Europe and America of the 19th-20th Centuries opened last month. It almost doubles the exhibition space available for the museum's many masterpieces by such artists as Monet , Cézanne , Gauguin , Matisse , and Picasso .

12 Volkhonka St. 011-7-495-203-79-98. www.museum.ru/gmii.

` A Moon for the Misbegotten ' Old Vic Theatre LONDON Sept. 15-Dec. 23 It's a theatrical event of note whenever Kevin Spacey performs in a Eugene O'Neill play. Having demonstrated his affinity for the playwright in productions of ``Long Day's Journey Into Night" and ``The Iceman Cometh, " Spacey essays Jim Tyrone in ``A Moon for the Misbegotten." Playing opposite Spacey is Eve Best , as Josie, the playwright's most formidable female part.

The Cut. 011-44-870-060-6628. www.oldvictheatre.com.

` Cézanne to Picasso: AmbroiseVollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde' Metropolitan Museum of Art NEW YORK Sept. 14-Jan. 7, 2007 Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) was the dealer for modern art when Paris was the world capital of the avant-garde in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Among artists he represented were Bonnard, Cézanne, Degas, Derain, Gauguin, van Gogh, Maillol, Matisse, Picasso, Redon, Renoir, Rouault, Rousseau, Vlaminck, and Vuillard . Work by all of them is featured in this show, the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to this legendary figure.

1000 Fifth Ave. at 82d Street. 212-535-7710. www.metmuseum.org.

Contact Mark Feeney at mfeeney@globe.com.