Animals in art are rarely just animals. They are often rich in cultural associations that reveal as much about human society as the natural world. “Animals in Japanese Art,” on view at the Honolulu Museum of Art (HoMA) through July 23, showcases a menagerie of paintings and sculptures from the museum’s permanent collection that date from the Fifteenth Century.

In 2020, as statues of Confederate generals and other contentious historical images were being taken down in many cities, Sanford Biggers, the acclaimed New York-based contemporary artist, and Amy Gilman, the director of the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, were watching with keen interest.

In a new project at the Chazen Museum of Art, relinquishing authority and embracing vulnerability has borne considerable fruit.

Mirror Shadow Shape is comprised of roughly 40 Gina Osterloh artworks created between 2005-2020, showcasing large-scale photographs and video. Camouflage, erasure, assimilation and replication are recurring themes across Osterloh’s work.

The enigmatic designs in the American University Museum show conjure a vastness that contrasts with the smallness of the area in which the artworks were made: the eastern side of Arnhem Land, a craggy peninsula that juts from Australia’s northern coast.

Next November, the University of Notre Dame in Indiana is scheduled to open the first phase of Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, a 70,000-sf cultural facility that will eventually replace the campus’ venerable Snite Museum of Art and double the exhibit space available for Notre Dame’s 31,000-item art collection.

Every month we highlight one great cultural event—and the watch to wear to be impeccably on time.
…Sendak had long been a prolific artist. In the first retrospective since his death in 2012, more than 150 works are at the Columbus Museum in Ohio.

Forget the glass slipper fantasy — this glass-spun dress is the real deal! At the Toledo Museum of Art (TMA), one of only two dresses designed by the Libbey Glass Company is now on view as part of the exhibition State of the Art: Revealing Works from the Conservation Vault.

Visitors can watch images from their dreams stripped of their individual significance and fused together into a single AI hivemind fantasy. “The Shape of Dreams” is a fresh exploration of a topic that has long fascinated artists, especially Dalí and his fellow Surrealists. The paintings on show trace how dreams have inspired painters for some 500 years, from Italian Baroque artists like Lodovico Carracci and Luca Giordano to 20th century figures such as Max Beckmann, Paul Delvaux, and Frida Kahlo.

Native Hawaiian artist Noah Harders takes a whimsical approach to style in Moemoeā, his first institutional exhibition opening next week at the Honolulu Museum of Art.

Matt Wedel, a ceramist based in Albany, Ohio, builds sculptures that often resemble organic forms; some are recognizable, like “Lemon Tree,” whereas others are more abstract, like the brightly colored “Fruit Landscape.” These works will be among the nearly 150 on view. Nov. 5 to April 2; Toledo Museum of Art

The animation showcases the site’s enhanced connection to the Penn State Arboretum and the museum’s expanded double-height gallery spaces that allow for twice the amount of its collection to be exhibited versus the original building.