Art Review: Worcester Art Museum

I went to Boston last week to see the Monet in Boston exhibition, the Museum of Fine Arts 150th anniversary show, and to visit the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. On the way home to ye olde Arlington in Vermont, I made a long, joyous stop at the Worcester Art Museum. The Kimono in Print: 300 Years of Japanese Design is its new show. It looks beautiful, is very educational, and it’s saucy. Who knew I’d find sex ’n’ style, proven winners, in Worcester?

Here’s a plot twist in today’s museum narrative. Worcester is a distinguished museum and pure pleasure unpolluted by introductory videos, a supersized shop, and miles of hallways before we see art. Art’s there, straight away, in a gracious, dignified old courtyard, and it’s The Worcester Hunt — the massive, colorful Justinian-era floor mosaic. Wild animals and hunters gracefully cavort in Byzantine debauch.

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Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

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I went to Boston last week to see the Monet in Boston exhibition, the Museum of Fine Arts 150th anniversary show, and to visit the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. On the way home to ye olde Arlington in Vermont, I made a long, joyous stop at the Worcester Art Museum. The Kimono in Print: 300 Years of Japanese Design is its new show. It looks beautiful, is very educational, and it’s saucy. Who knew I’d find sex ’n’ style, proven winners, in Worcester?

Here’s a plot twist in today’s museum narrative. Worcester is a distinguished museum and pure pleasure unpolluted by introductory videos, a supersized shop, and miles of hallways before we see art. Art’s there, straight away, in a gracious, dignified old courtyard, and it’s The Worcester Hunt — the massive, colorful Justinian-era floor mosaic. Wild animals and hunters gracefully cavort in Byzantine debauch.