Out of this World: Extraordinary Costumes from Film and Television (from the Experience Music Project, Seattle). Out of This World features more than 30 costumes and related items from your favorite science fiction films and television shows including Batman, Star Trek, Blade Runner, The Terminator, Ghostbusters and others. The exhibition examines how costume design incorporates color, style, scale, materials, historical traditions and cultural cues to help audiences engage with the characters being portrayed. Costume highlights include: the hat worn by Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz (1939), the leather jacket worn by Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator (1984) and much more. Thru December 30.

Fletcher Benton: The Artist’s Studio (from the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art).
This experiential and interactive exhibition explores the unique attitudes and methods that Benton, a world-renowned kinetic and constructivist sculptor, applies to his work. The exhibition recreates Benton’s studio, with the images, textures and inspirations that constitute his working environment. Conceived by Benton himself, this exhibition provides a rare opportunity to see inside the artist’s studio – a typically private space – through the artist’s eyes. The exhibition will also include several outdoor sculptures from this artist who received the International Sculpture Center Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award in 2008. Thru January 2. Exhibition organized by the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art.

Martin Schoeller: Close Up. German-born photographer Martin Schoeller’s remarkable, larger-than-life photographs strip the facades from some of the most recognizable faces of our time. Schoeller’s Close Up invites the viewer to consider the depths of the human face and to discover his subjects’ vulnerabilities. The artist’s hyper-close portraits push this form of intimacy to unprecedented levels, encouraging us to see the familiar in an unfamiliar way. The exhibition features photographs of famous actors, singers, athletes and politicians along with ordinary people living private lives. September 22-December 9.

Sight Unseen: International Photography by Blind Artists. The first major exhibition of work by the world’s most accomplished blind photographers, Sight Unseen explores the idea that sight-impaired photographers can see in ways that sighted people cannot. For the blind artists featured in this show, the act of making a photograph has provided new ways of seeing. The artists employ diverse strategies in their work. Some use the camera to present their own inner visions. Others capture the outside world unfiltered with a non-retinal photography of chance. And a number of the artists, legally blind but retaining a limited, highly attenuated sight, photograph to capture the outside world and bring it into their realm. Sight Unseen examines our definitions of blindness and encourages us to re-evaluate what it means to see. December 22-March 24.

Institution of ARTSblock, the University of California, Riverside, and toured by Curatorial Assistance, Pasadena, California.

Painting Women (from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). More than 80 works from the MFA’s permanent collection explore the role of women in art. These paintings by and about women include works by Mary Cassatt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Lilla Cabot Perry, Helen Torr, Edgar Degas, Gretchen Woodman Rogers and many others. There have always been great women artists, but beginning in the 19th century, increased opportunities for education, domestic independence and artistic training allowed many women to pursue their dreams of becoming painters. No longer simply the subjects for a male artist’s gaze, women took brush and paint into their own hands, using them to depict a broad range of subjects and creating accomplished works in a variety of styles. As one of them confessed, however, “The chief obstacle to a woman’s success is that she can never have a wife.” Thus, some women artists engaged in creative and reciprocal relationships with male artists, among them Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt, Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, and Lilian and Philip Hale. This exhibition explores the myriad contributions of such women to the art. January 12-April 21.

Revelation: Major Paintings by Jules Olitski (from the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art). Jules Olitski (1922-2007) has received international acclaim for his maverick Color Field paintings of the 1960s. However, the larger arc of his career remains to be fully appreciated – an opportunity addressed by Revelation. This exhibition draws together more than 25 monumental canvases from public and private collections, spanning Olitski’s career. The exhibition covers five decades of creative endeavor, highlighting the series that define Olitski’s major advances: Stain paintings, Spray paintings, Baroque paintings, High Baroque paintings and his last great series, With Love and Disregard. February 2-July 7.

Multiplicity (from the Smithsonian Museum of American Art). The concept of multiplicity has been integral to printmaking ever since the earliest prints were pulled from woodblocks and metal plates in the 15th century, with each impression considered an original artwork. Many of the artists in this exhibition have expanded the idea of multiplicity, creating series, sequences and images that comprise numerous parts. The artworks in this exhibition, drawn from the museum’s permanent collection, challenge the viewer by presenting multiple angles, perspectives and meanings. April 6-July 7.

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