The most recent exhibition at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, organized with help from the National Museum of African Art, Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries, is as much a chronicle of history as it is a document for how art records history. Trying to pigeonhole this exhibition into a one category is difficult. It is more than just the fact the exhibition displays more than 260 objects, from several nations, which were created over the span of two centuries. Partly, it is that a gallery typically focused on the art of Asia is featuring a show about Portugal. Partly it is a remark made by Portugal’s Minister of Economy and Innovation positioning Portugal as the leader of the first age of globalization. The explanations layer like an onion. more ›

Two exhibits in Washington right now examine both ends of the history of the Bible. The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is showing In the Beginning: Bibles before the Year 1000 (through January 7, with a nice online feature), which brings together over 70 early examples of the Bible's written tradition. The ancient papyrus and vellum pages are so fragile that the museum has to show most of them under faint and rather diffuse light, and always in sealed cases. Cosponsored by the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library, and probably quite expensive because of insurance costs, this exhibit is a blockbuster, in a low-key way. Treasures have been loaned by the Bodleian, the British Library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai, and others, many of them shown for the first time ever in the United States. more ›