British Art

NEW HAVEN - A painter's output over an entire career - especially a career as glittering as Johan Zoffany's - can shed valuable light on a distant epoch. And who wouldn't rather look at pictures like Zoffany's than read another wise and well-judged historical textbook? But was this German-born court painter and English society portraitist a great artist? A chance to decide is on offer until mid-February at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven. If you are obliged to travel to see it, do. The show, which will move to the Royal Academy in London in March,...

NEW HAVEN - University towns are New England's best defense against late-winter cabin fever. Most colleges have attractions and activities open to folks without student IDs, and the campuses themselves are usually ringed with interesting shops, restaurants, and nightlife options. Moreover, they exude such a youthful, hopeful vibe that it's impossible not to believe that spring is around the corner. New Haven certainly fills the bill. Yale University relocated to the city in 1716, and the Old Campus sits cheek-by-jowl to New Haven Green, the historic core laid out by Puritan settlers.

NEW HAVEN - University towns are New England's best defense against late-winter cabin fever. Most colleges have attractions and activities open to folks without student IDs, and the campuses themselves are usually ringed with interesting shops, restaurants, and nightlife options. Moreover, they exude such a youthful, hopeful vibe that it's impossible not to believe that spring is around the corner. New Haven certainly fills the bill. Yale University relocated to the city in 1716, and the Old Campus sits cheek-by-jowl to New Haven Green, the historic core laid out by Puritan settlers.

NEW HAVEN - A painter's output over an entire career - especially a career as glittering as Johan Zoffany's - can shed valuable light on a distant epoch. And who wouldn't rather look at pictures like Zoffany's than read another wise and well-judged historical textbook? But was this German-born court painter and English society portraitist a great artist? A chance to decide is on offer until mid-February at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven. If you are obliged to travel to see it, do. The show, which will move to the Royal Academy in London in March,...

WILLIAMSTOWN -- The Clark Art Institute, long known as a home for French and American paintings, is making room for a $90 million British invasion thanks to a donation from the foundation of Sir Edwin Manton. Works by Renoir, Monet, Homer, and Sargent will now share space with a flood of Turners, Constables, Gainsboroughs, and other pieces from the English Romantic period of the early 1800s that were owned by Manton, a driving force behind AIG Insurance who died in 2005 at 96. The new pieces include about 200 oil paintings, watercolors, and studies valued at...

ART IN SEARCH OF JULIEN HUDSON, FREE ARTIST OF COLOR IN PRE-CIVIL WAR NEW ORLEANS A fascinating historical show about an artist of color whose life remains shrouded in mystery. Through March 11. Worcester Art Museum. 508-799-4406, www.worcesterart.org DANCE/DRAW Work by 40 artists exploring the multilayered connection between drawing and dance in contemporary art. Through Jan. 16. Institute of Contemporary Art. 617-478-3100, www.icaboston.org JOHAN ZOFFANY R.A.: SOCIETY OBSERVED A major 18th-century artist, long overlooked, finally gets his due in this riveting...

NEW HAVEN — Yale University officials announced yesterday that the school intends to be the first in the Ivy League to offer free online access to digital images of millions of objects housed in its museums, archives, and libraries. No license will be required for transmission of the images, and no limitations will be imposed on their use, which will allow scholars, artists and others around the world to use Yale collections for study, publication, teaching, and inspiration, Yale officials said.

WASHINGTON - Exhibits of J.M.W. Turner's work in recent years have shown snapshots of the famous British landscape painter's travels, styles, and illustrations of history. Now the broad range of his six-decade career comes together in the largest Turner retrospective ever presented in the United States. "J.M.W. Turner" opens today at the National Gallery of Art, showing some of his works for the first time in this country. The exhibition chronicles the artist's evolution - from his beginnings with architectural watercolors to his first oil paintings of rough seas and his...

NEW HAVEN - When we finished checking in at The Study at Yale, the desk clerk handed each of us an electronic door key and a bookmark bearing the hotel logo: a pair of eyeglasses. It was the first hint that this lodging has a light-hearted attitude about its location amid the bustle of academic life. In fact, the large lobby could easily pass as an upscale coffee shop. A wall of windows faces the Yale School of Art across the street and a tiny coffee bar (with good pastries) is tucked into one corner.

NEW HAVEN'S identity has been entwined with Yale University's for centuries. The college's neo-Gothic buildings gild the city's oldest avenues, but it's not all heady Ivy League intellectualism in New Haven. The city has also actively cultivated the artistic left side of its brain. Perhaps it got serious more than a quarter-century ago, when New Haven passed an ordinance that set aside 1 percent of municipal construction budgets for public art. In the years since, enough artists have gravitated to the city that every autumn...

ART IN SEARCH OF JULIEN HUDSON, FREE ARTIST OF COLOR IN PRE-CIVIL WAR NEW ORLEANS A fascinating historical show about an artist of color whose life remains shrouded in mystery. Through March 11. Worcester Art Museum. 508-799-4406, www.worcesterart.org DANCE/DRAW Work by 40 artists exploring the multilayered connection between drawing and dance in contemporary art. Through Jan. 16. Institute of Contemporary Art. 617-478-3100, www.icaboston.org JOHAN ZOFFANY R.A.: SOCIETY OBSERVED A major 18th-century artist, long overlooked, finally gets his due in this riveting exhibition.

NEW HAVEN — Yale University officials announced yesterday that the school intends to be the first in the Ivy League to offer free online access to digital images of millions of objects housed in its museums, archives, and libraries. No license will be required for transmission of the images, and no limitations will be imposed on their use, which will allow scholars, artists and others around the world to use Yale collections for study, publication, teaching, and inspiration, Yale officials said.

NEW HAVEN - He was, according to one 19th-century reviewer, “the most eccentric, the most artificial, the most fastidious, the most capricious, of men.’’ By others he was described as arrogant, tetchy, jealous, and snobbish. But Horace Walpole was also, despite the many pejoratives pinged his way, one of the most important and transforming figures in British culture. Walpole (1717-1797) is best known for fathering Gothic fiction. His novel “The Castle of Otranto,’’ which set the genre in motion, has never been out of print.

NEW HAVEN - When we finished checking in at The Study at Yale, the desk clerk handed each of us an electronic door key and a bookmark bearing the hotel logo: a pair of eyeglasses. It was the first hint that this lodging has a light-hearted attitude about its location amid the bustle of academic life. In fact, the large lobby could easily pass as an upscale coffee shop. A wall of windows faces the Yale School of Art across the street and a tiny coffee bar (with good pastries) is tucked into one corner.

Easily the most compelling show of contemporary art in the vicinity of Boston right now is the Peabody Essex Museum's "Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art From the Sigg Collection. " With verve and concision, the show presents an overview of recent developments in Chinese art - developments that have been among the most momentous in art anywhere over the past quarter century. Admittedly, not everyone thinks this stuff is so great. The gold-rush mentality of the recent Chinese art boom has made many recoil in disgust.

MOSCOW - Russian authorities have canceled a major exhibition of French and Russian paintings set to open in London in January, fearing authorities could seize the art to settle private legal claims, a Russian museum official said yesterday. A Russian cultural official, however, said a final decision on lending paintings for the exhibition, called "From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings 1870-1925," would be made today. The head of Russia's federal cultural agency, Mikhail Shvydkoi, said descendants of two prominent 19th and early...

NEW HAVEN - He was, according to one 19th-century reviewer, “the most eccentric, the most artificial, the most fastidious, the most capricious, of men.’’ By others he was described as arrogant, tetchy, jealous, and snobbish. But Horace Walpole was also, despite the many pejoratives pinged his way, one of the most important and transforming figures in British culture. Walpole (1717-1797) is best known for fathering Gothic fiction. His novel “The Castle of Otranto,’’ which set the genre in motion, has never been out of print.

Easily the most compelling show of contemporary art in the vicinity of Boston right now is the Peabody Essex Museum's "Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art From the Sigg Collection. " With verve and concision, the show presents an overview of recent developments in Chinese art - developments that have been among the most momentous in art anywhere over the past quarter century. Admittedly, not everyone thinks this stuff is so great. The gold-rush mentality of the recent Chinese art boom has made many recoil in disgust.

WASHINGTON - Exhibits of J.M.W. Turner's work in recent years have shown snapshots of the famous British landscape painter's travels, styles, and illustrations of history. Now the broad range of his six-decade career comes together in the largest Turner retrospective ever presented in the United States. "J.M.W. Turner" opens today at the National Gallery of Art, showing some of his works for the first time in this country. The exhibition chronicles the artist's evolution - from his beginnings with architectural watercolors to his first oil paintings of rough seas and his iconic pictures...

WILLIAMSTOWN -- The Clark Art Institute, long known as a home for French and American paintings, is making room for a $90 million British invasion thanks to a donation from the foundation of Sir Edwin Manton. Works by Renoir, Monet, Homer, and Sargent will now share space with a flood of Turners, Constables, Gainsboroughs, and other pieces from the English Romantic period of the early 1800s that were owned by Manton, a driving force behind AIG Insurance who died in 2005 at 96. The new pieces include about 200 oil paintings,...