St. Louis

Near the end of "Monet/Mitchell: Painting the French Landscape," three works by Monet, "Water Lilies" (1917-19) and two titled "The Japanese Bridge" (1918-24), display an unusual side of the great French Impressionist. Together, they show him using highly gestural, squiggly, intertwined brush strokes; intense, unnatural colors; mere hints of features like the bridge; exposed areas of canvas, and allover compositions that give the paintings a decidedly abstract quality. "Water Lilies" has sometimes been hung upside down.

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Landlocked at the center of Central Asia, hidden behind the Iron Curtain as part of the Soviet Union, then ruled by a former Communist Party boss for a quarter-century until 2016, Uzbekistan is largely unknown in the West today. A sweeping new exhibition in Berlin aims to change that. Following outreach by Uzbekistan's current government in late 2018, negotiations that included a state visit to Tashkent by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and years of planning, "Archaeological Treasures of Uzbekistan: From Alexander the Great to the Kushan Empire" will open in two venues on Berlin's Museum Island on May 6.

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For at least 20 years, Nicholas Poussin's Death of Germanicus (1627), a prized painting in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia), has been on the "do not loan" list. But when the Palazzo Barberini in Rome asked to borrow it for an exhibition celebrating the legacy of Pope Urban VIII on the 400th anniversary of his election, the Minneapolis museum relented. It was an important show, and the Poussin had been commissioned by a nephew of Urban VIII, who was born Maffeo Barberini. The painting remained in the family until 1958.

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The Musée Unterlinden in Colmar, near the German border in northeastern France, sits at the end of many an art pilgrimage to a spectacular work: the Isenheim Altarpiece (1512-16) by Matthias Grünewald. This intense, imaginative polyptych—lauded by innumerable textbooks—ranks high among the most affecting artworks in all of art history. Alternately shocking and pleasing the eye, it has influenced generations of artists, including Picasso, Matisse, Otto Dix and Jasper Johns.

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San Antonio

If, as the medieval saying goes, all roads lead to Rome, might the artistic path to landscape painting trace back to the eternal city as well? That is a theme of "Roman Landscapes: Visions of Nature and Myth From Rome and Pompeii" at the San Antonio Museum of Art, which has gathered about 65 wall paintings, relief sculptures, mosaics, and glass and metal vessels created between 100 B.C. and about A.D. 250 as evidence.

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