Believe me, I don’t hand out accolades where none are deserved. In covering both the Charles Allis and its companion Villa Terrace, it’s been a love/not love relationship. Over the course of many visits and many years, I decided both venues lacked fresh ideas, or call it “vigor” if you prefer. So much was...

Surrealism and artistic voyeurism provide the impetus for two exhibitions at Milwaukee galleries. Featuring images in print, pen, pencil, ink and watercolor that permeate works on paper, David Barnett Gallery and Portrait Society Gallery offer divergent...

In 1839, photography as an art form was born. Since then, photographs have captured countless memories and unique moments in time. Nearly 170 years later, however, programs such as Photoshop and iPhoto produce retouched pictures instantaneously. Even cell phones can transfer images at the click of a button. This technological revolution has reinvented the art of photography. In the exhibit “Stretching the Truth,” the John Michael Kohler Arts Center showcases this transformation as a complement to its “Constructed Realities” series.

When Marcel Duchamp signed a urinal and submitted it to an exhibit in 1917, it was more than just a brazen gesture. It sounded the knell of art as it was previously known. After bringing it down to the lowest common denominator, what else remained?

The six-week-long River Arts Festival in Sauk Prairie begins Feb. 23, a rural delight just an hour-plus drive from the metro Milwaukee area. This year’s annual offering coordinates with an exclusive exhibit traveling from the Smithsonian Institution, “Between Fences,” which speaks to the barriers and boundaries existing between neighbors, neighborhoods, communities and countries. Each event hosted by the River Arts Festival develops this central theme through a variety of unique artistic experiences.

No wonder paranoids flourish,” says Nicholas Frank in his curatorial statement for “The Flight of Fake Tears,” a new exhibit at Inova/Kenilworth Gallery. He describes the void, the blank page, the unaccountable matter ingrained in our very existence, as the seat of a primal anxiety. Whether its through a tantalizing . . .