Visual arts/museums

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Musee d'Orsay in Paris have collaborated on a show called Degas and the Nude, which includes pieces from all over the world. Lloyd Schwartz says that in portraits of everyday moments, Degas made women mysterious, vulnerable and heartbreakingly human.

Two Titian masterpieces — Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto — are in the United States for the first time. Fresh Air's Lloyd Schwartz says art lovers will want to see them in person — particularly because there's a chance they may be permanently separated.

French artist Henri Matisse is probably best known for his decorative and colorful paintings, especially nudes and still lifes. But a show at the Museum of Modern Art, called "Matisse: Radical Invention," deals with a more experimental period in Matisse's life. Critic Lloyd Schwartz says the show allows viewers to see Matisse's growth as an artist.

The Bauhaus was one of the most important and exciting social and artistic movements of post-World-War-I Germany. Founded by architect Walter Gropius, the movement lasted 14 years until the Nazis finally forced it to shut down. An astonishing exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art gives a thorough view of the precise but imaginative products of Bauhaus.

An exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts is both an art history lesson and a celebration of the most sumptuous works of Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese.

Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz describes the first major American exhibition of Dadaist art at Washington's National Gallery of Art.

Rock Historian Ed Ward on the history of African-American musicians in Nashville. He plays music from Night Train to Nashville a double CD put out by the Country Music Hall of Fame (in conjunction with a Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum Show).

Classical Music Critic Lloyd Schwartz has some thoughts after seeing an exhibit of Dutch painter Piet Mondrains Transatlantic Paintings at Harvard.

Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews two blockbuster exhibits of Egyptian art: The Age of the Pyramids, at the Metropolitan Museum in New York which runs thru Jan 9, and Pharaohs of the Sun at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts thru Feb 6.

Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews two art shows of important 17th century painters: one by the Dutch painter Pieter de Hooch at the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford thru March 14th, and a Caravaggio exhibit at Boston College through May 24th.