A “Gem” of a show at the Bowers Museum

Image of "Chariot with Male Figure" with gold Integration attributed to Benvenuto Cellini.

A review of “Gems of the Medici” now on view at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana. The exhibition features carved gems, medallions, and gold amassed by the Medici—Renaissance Italy’s most famous and powerful family. The exhibition features important ancient cameos from the Hellenistic and Roman eras along with spectacular gems made during the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

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Being Alone: Paintings by James Chronister at Lux

Being alone while lost in a forest or feeling tiny in a vast space is a natural cause for melancholic apprehension. Not being in control, not being the master of the situation, being at the mercy of nature―or worse, being at the mercy of God himself―falls into the artistic tradition called the “Romantic Sublime.” The master…

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Athenaeum Presents Confounding Art by Joyce Cutler-Shaw

  Artworks influenced by medical research and inspired by a concern for our water supply can either quench or parch a viewer’s intellectual thirst. In her current exhibition What Comes to Mind: Nature-Human Nature and Visual Translation at La Jolla’s Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, artist Joyce Cutler-Shaw contends with disparate issues such as death,…

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Essay: Globe Summer Festival is Steady as She Goes

Cast of As You Like It

It’s gratifying to see that the Old Globe’s Shakespeare Festival continues under Adrian Noble’s steady leadership.  I  also find it interesting that the common theme in this summer’s Shakespeare Festival at the Old Globe is oppression.  What’s most interesting is that this theme uplifts audiences when treated with a light touch even as it hammers…

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