"Jane Davis Doggett: Talking Graphics" features images by Doggett, a pioneer in architectural and environmental design. This installation features "geometric designs in colors expressing philosophically profound messages” drawn from such sources as Roman proverbs and the Bible.

Ruth Barnes, the Thomas Jaffe curator of Indo-Pacific Art will present the Ryerson Lecture on Thursday, January 21 at 5:30 pm. An art historian of international stature in the field of South and Southeast Asian textiles, Barnes will present a lecture exploring approaches to collecting in Indonesia.

The Gallery kicks off the year with a series of artist talks and special lectures featuring James Cuno, President and Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, Jane Davis Doggett, a pioneer in the field of environmental graphic design, and celebrated art director, illustrator and maker Mike Perry.

"Continuous Present" features a selection of work by 11 of today’s most compelling contemporary artists working in a broad array of media, including film, video, photography, painting, and sculpture. The artists chosen for the show are Francis Alÿs, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Rodney Graham, Roni Horn, On Kawara, Thomas Nozkowski, Gabriel Orozco, Laura Owens, Dieter Roth, and Franz West. Each presents works that reflect upon the capacity of art to heighten our sensory awareness.

"The Pull of Experiment: Postwar American Printmaking" examines a dynamic and innovative period after World War Two during which American and European émigré artists fundamentally reconsidered the boundaries of printmaking, and explores these artists’ experimentation with style, techniques, tools, and materials.

The Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque Memorial Symposium, The Art of Adornment: The American Jewelry Tradition from the Seventeenth Century to the Present, is organized in four sessions in which historians and contemporary jewelers address the themes of jewelry and fashion, materials and techniques, jewelry as social signfier, and love, loss, and remembrance.

Among the contemporary jewelers presenting are Sharon Church, Robert Ebendorf, Marjorie K. Schick, and Joe Wood. Cindi Strauss, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Decorative Arts and Design, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, presents a free keynote lecture on October 16 at 5:30 pm.

The Yale University Art Gallery has announced its purchase of important preparatory drawings by American artist Edward Hopper for two of his celebrated paintings, Rooms by the Sea (1951) and
Western Motel (1957), both in the Gallery’s collection.

"Time Will Tell: Ethics and Choices in Conservation" offers a rare opportunity to explore the process of fine-arts conservation, uncovering the relationship between curators and conservators and the objects entrusted to their care. Each of the works in the exhibition, which includes Asian ceramics, African ritual objects, ancient statues and mosaics, and American and European paintings and decorative arts from the Gallery’s collection, illustrates a different conservation dilemma. What does cleaning a painting’s surface reveal? Should fragmented objects be displayed as pieces or reassembled into a convincing pastiche? Should damaged objects be repaired for aesthetic reasons? The passage of time impacts not only the physical state of an object but also the techniques used to preserve it. Time Will Tell examines the evolving science of conservation and the questions that arise in preserving works of art while staying faithful to the artists’ intentions. May 22 to September 6, 2009.

Ruth Barnes, currently textile curator at Ashmolean Museum, is to be first Thomas Jaffe Curator of Indo-Pacific Art, overseeing initial collection of more than 1,500 objects

Don't miss programming related to "Tea Culture of Japan: Chanoyu Past and Present," "Picasso and the Allure of Language," plus gallery talks on 18th Century American Furniture and Warhol's Electric Chairs.

John Richardson, acclaimed author of the multi-volume biography "A Life of Picasso," speaks on the artist in conversation with Mary Ann Caws, Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature, English, and French, Graduate Center, City University of New York. Mr. Richardson, widely considered to be the world’s foremost expert on Picasso, will focus on the years 1917–32, roughly coinciding with the Surrealist era, on which Ms. Caws is a leading authority.

"Picasso and the Allure of Language" examines Pablo Picasso's lifelong relationship with writers and the many ways in which language affected his work. The exhibition opens on January 27, 2009 and features some 70 works in all media by Picasso, as well as select examples by fellow artist Georges Braque, and photographs, letters, manuscripts, and book projects by a diverse group of artists and writers.