Passion for Paintings: Old Masters from the Wadsworth Atheneum

Is there a seasonal approach to art, as there is to eating? If summer puts one in the mood for sprightly, challenging, out-there work from contemporary kids, does that make fall and winter best for cozying up to rich, impressive oils from long-dead Europeans? If so, then this traveling show hits our town at the perfect time. It’s no stingy repast, either, but rather a feast of sixty-one paintings by names that always make it into the color-plates section of any art history textbook: Caravaggio, Tiepolo, Zurbarán, Goya, van Dyck, Frans Hals, van Ruisdael, Lorrain, Boucher, and Gainsborough, among others. Perhaps you thought you’d reaped enough benefits from the new wings at our local museums, but you can thank the Wadsworth Atheneum, currently undergoing its own expansion, for the chance to see these masterpieces. 612-870-3200; www.artsmia.org”