National Gallery

Elizabeth Kostova burst onto the pop literary scene in 2005 with “The Historian,’’ a fat and juicy historical novel that wove vampire lore into contemporary mystery with aplomb. Since then, fans have been drooling in anticipation of her next blockbuster pastiche. Such excitement may persuade the devoted to jump on her new work, “The Swan Thieves,’’ but despite some exquisite writing, the book itself is strangely lifeless and unlikely to win new converts. Kostova employs many of the same devices in this second novel that she used in “The Historian.’’ Once...

Cambridge portrait artist Susan Miller-Havens is back from Washington, D.C., where she and Pedro Martinez met with a group of eager eighth-graders from the pitcher's native Dominican Republic. The artist and the ace talked about Miller-Haven's painting "El Orgullo y la Determinacion (Pride and Determination)," which is housed at the National Portrait Gallery.

It has been tried with opera, it has been tried with theater - in both cases with surprising success. Now a blockbuster art exhibition is coming to a cinema near you, in an unprecedented experiment that may have huge implications for the global art audience. Tomorrow, "Leonardo Live," a film about the National Gallery of London's recent "Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan" exhibition will open in movie theaters around Greater Boston, from Fenway to Patriot Place, and indeed around New England and the world.

Luis Meléndez was an incredible painter. It takes about two seconds to register that. It's only when you spend a bit of time with his mesmerizing still lifes that your admiration for his virtuosity starts to float away and mutate into a very different, dangerously unstable feeling. It's a feeling that's wholly out of tune with most people's preconceptions about 18th-century art - closer, in fact, to the effects the Surrealists began trying to cultivate in the 1920s and '30s.

NEW YORK - Mauricio Lasansky, an Argentina-born master printmaker who was equally well known for a series of drawings depicting the horrors of Nazism, died April 2 at his home in Iowa City. He was 97. The death was confirmed by his son Phillip. At his death, Mr. Lasansky was emeritus professor of art and art history at the University of Iowa, where he established its program in printmaking, long regarded as one of the country's finest, after joining the faculty in 1945. Although Mr. Lasansky was considered a wizard of printmaking technology, "The Nazi Drawings,"...

WORCESTER — An odd little picture, this, to say the least. It was painted by Edward Savage, about three years after the Declaration of Independence was adopted by Congress in 1776. Savage is familiar to us mainly through his widely reproduced portrait of George Washington and his family (National Gallery of Art). That picture, one of the best-known images of the first president, tries to tick all the boxes of formal portraiture: carefully balanced composition; stiff, authoritative poses; clear and uniform perspective; and a few bravura touches, such as the extravagant play...

PHILADELPHIA-- Thomas Eakins' s "The Gross Clinic" will remain in Philadelphia after a fund - raising drive yielded nearly $30 million and the promise of bank loans that will keep the painting from being sold and moved. Yesterday's announcement by officials marked a victory for arts supporters who have been trying to raise $68 million by a Tuesday deadline imposed by Thomas Jefferson University, which announced last month that it was selling the canvas to a partnership of Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Say this for Adolf Hitler, he did love art. That love had dire consequences, though: the plundering of tens of thousands of artistic treasures as the Nazis marched through Europe. Hermann Goering ran Hitler a close second as uber-art thief. The Luftwaffe had to wait while Goering made 20 trips to occupied Paris to decide on acquisitions for his personal collection, which ultimately comprised 1,700 paintings - more than the National Gallery of Art's entire European holdings - as well as statuary, textiles, and furniture.

Edinburgh International Festival EDINBURGH Through Sept. 3 Each year, the performing arts take over Scotland's capital for three weeks in late summer. Highlights of this year's festival include, in opera, Wagner's "Die Meistersinger, " Mozart's "The Magic Flute, " and the world premiere of Stuart MacRae's "The Assassin Tree" ; in theater, Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida " and the American Repertory Theatre's production of Chekhov's "Three Sisters "; and, in music, concerts by the Berlin Philharmonic , tenor Ian Bostridge , and pianist Andras...

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...

NEW YORK - Mauricio Lasansky, an Argentina-born master printmaker who was equally well known for a series of drawings depicting the horrors of Nazism, died April 2 at his home in Iowa City. He was 97. The death was confirmed by his son Phillip. At his death, Mr. Lasansky was emeritus professor of art and art history at the University of Iowa, where he established its program in printmaking, long regarded as one of the country's finest, after joining the faculty in 1945. Although Mr. Lasansky was considered a wizard of printmaking technology, "The Nazi Drawings,"...

It has been tried with opera, it has been tried with theater - in both cases with surprising success. Now a blockbuster art exhibition is coming to a cinema near you, in an unprecedented experiment that may have huge implications for the global art audience. Tomorrow, "Leonardo Live," a film about the National Gallery of London's recent "Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan" exhibition will open in movie theaters around Greater Boston, from Fenway to Patriot Place, and indeed around New England and the world.

Set in Wales, “Framed’’ is about a gruff, burnt-out city guy who finds himself stuck among the quirky poor folk in one of those quaint, picturesque mountain villages. He finds he has a heart, the townspeople shake off their despair, and everyone grows a little happier in the course of 90-or-so lighter-than-light minutes. It’s a little piece of artificially sweetened candy from the “Masterpiece’’ cabinet. If you watch this slight movie, which premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. on Ch. 2, don’t expect to see one of the more nourishing “Masterpiece’’...

WASHINGTON — William Henry Fox Talbot, one of photography’s inventors, called it “the pencil of nature.’’ Such was the novelty of the camera that its early users felt required to liken it to something else. A paintbrush? A toy? A tool? A scientific instrument? Even a quasi-literary implement, like a pen or, yes, Fox Talbot’s pencil? This now-forgotten but once absolutely fundamental process of figuring out what exactly photography could and should become underlies two superb exhibitions here.

WORCESTER — An odd little picture, this, to say the least. It was painted by Edward Savage, about three years after the Declaration of Independence was adopted by Congress in 1776. Savage is familiar to us mainly through his widely reproduced portrait of George Washington and his family (National Gallery of Art). That picture, one of the best-known images of the first president, tries to tick all the boxes of formal portraiture: carefully balanced composition; stiff, authoritative poses; clear and uniform perspective; and a few bravura touches, such as the...

Luis Meléndez was an incredible painter. It takes about two seconds to register that. It’s only when you spend a bit of time with his mesmerizing still lifes that your admiration for his virtuosity starts to float away and mutate into a very different, dangerously unstable feeling. It’s a feeling that’s wholly out of tune with most people’s preconceptions about 18th-century art - closer, in fact, to the effects the Surrealists began trying to cultivate in the 1920s and ’30s.

Set in Wales, “Framed’’ is about a gruff, burnt-out city guy who finds himself stuck among the quirky poor folk in one of those quaint, picturesque mountain villages. He finds he has a heart, the townspeople shake off their despair, and everyone grows a little happier in the course of 90-or-so lighter-than-light minutes. It’s a little piece of artificially sweetened candy from the “Masterpiece’’ cabinet. If you watch this slight movie, which premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. on Ch. 2, don’t expect to see one of the more nourishing “Masterpiece’’ dramas.

'A Christmas Carol' Albery Theatre London Through Dec. 31 Patrick Stewart revives his award-winning adaptation of Charles Dickens's holiday classic. Ebenezer Scrooge is just one of some 30 speaking parts (yes, including Tiny Tim and Jacob Marley) taken on by Stewart, best known for his seven seasons playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and his role as Professor Charles Xavier in the "X-Men" films. St. Martin's Lane, 011-44-870-950-0920 , www.delfont-mackintosh.com/albery/indexxmascarol.htm . ...

Elizabeth Kostova burst onto the pop literary scene in 2005 with “The Historian,’’ a fat and juicy historical novel that wove vampire lore into contemporary mystery with aplomb. Since then, fans have been drooling in anticipation of her next blockbuster pastiche. Such excitement may persuade the devoted to jump on her new work, “The Swan Thieves,’’ but despite some exquisite writing, the book itself is strangely lifeless and unlikely to win new converts. Kostova employs many of the same devices in this second novel that she used in “The Historian.’’ Once...

THROUGH MAY 3 WASHINGTON "Pride of Place: Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age": In few places has painting flourished as it did in the Netherlands during the 17th century. The Golden Age of Dutch painting included such masters as Rembrandt and Vermeer and the coming to the fore of new or previously undervalued genres such as the still life and domestic scenes. It also saw the emergence of the cityscape in art. The National Gallery has assembled a small but choice gathering of paintings from an impressive array of artists of the period: Jacob van...