Cincinnati Art Museum has an important new exhibition on display through Jan. 2 called Thomas Gainsborough and the Modern Woman. Organized by Benedict Leca, curator of European paintings, sculpture and drawings on the occasion of the cleaning/restoration of the museum’s own Gainsborough portrait of “Ann Ford (Mrs. Thicknesse).”  

Like many angst-ridden teenagers in the 1980s, I was a huge fan of Surrealism. Most idolized Salvador Dali, but I loved Rene Magritte and his paintings of massive boulders hovering over the sea, the locomotive that churned forth from a fireplace and the pipe that wasn't a pipe at all. Museum-goers will get the chance to explore the complexities of this art movement when 'Surrealism and Beyond: In the Israel Museum, Jerusalem' at the Cincinnati Art Museum through May 17.