Edgar Degas, Six Friends at Dieppe, 1885.

1) "Afterburn --Willie Cole: Selected Works, 1997-2004" at the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA, through January 6, 2006. In this show of two- and three-dimensional works, Cole combines metaphorically charged, everyday objects in ways that recall their Western African influences, in part, to produce powerfully provocative comments on the African American experience.

2) "Saga: The Journey of Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Photographs 1970-2005" at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA, through January 8, 2006. Of all the possible forms in the world, none is more recognizable than the human body. No matter how much Minkkinen crops or contorts them, his leg, arm, or trunk are still recognizable as human parts. As this mid-career retrospective makes apparent, Minkkinen's images traffic in the realm of surrealism, jarring our sensibilities but without resorting to the movement's more common visual puns. Instead, Minkkinen teases our imaginations with his striking images' formal strengths.

3) "John Huddleston: Killing Ground, Photographs of the Civil War and the Changing American Landscape" at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA, through January 8, 2006. Time marches on and it erases memories as it does so. Memorials may be erected and battlegrounds turned into national parks to keep some heroic acts alive; but as John Huddleston demonstrates, new life inevitability demands it share of space. His juxtapositions of vintage Civil War images with his own color pictures of what the same sites look like today poignantly underscore this crass truth.

4) "Plastic Princess: Barbie as Art" at the Montserrat College of Art Gallery, Beverly, MA, through January 14, 2006. Just in time for post-holiday play: an exhibition dedicated to the perennial favorite Barbie, that enduring, embarrassing sexist icon. Children may need such maternal ideals, but the show's thirteen artists argue that a prolonged attachment to Barbie's perfection can have disastrous results. In Todd Haynes's brilliant film, the dolls re-enact the tragic tale of Karen Carpenter, Kathleen Bitetti's life-sized Barbie clothes make it ridiculously clear how un-wearable they are, Cynthia von Buhler's ingenious mirrors turn Barbie into a self-esteem coach and Pia Schachter's photos reveal the ugly lengths that a Barbie must go to maintain her unrealistic image. You probably didn't need this show to be convinced of Barbie's political in-correctness. But that shouldn't mar this trip down memory lane.

5) "Edgar Degas: Six Friends at Dieppe" at the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI, through January 15, 2006. For anyone suffering from Degas withdrawl, given that the Arthur M. Sackler Museum's recent show dedicated to the artist has closed, here's a quick fix. Focusing on Degas' group portrait, "Six Friends at Dieppe," this show includes a selection of works both by the artist and others, providing an excellent context in which to examine Degas' remarkable pastel.

6) "POP!" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, through January 16, 2006. This small gem is a real surprise. As a survey of Pop Art the exhibition is cursory. But as a sampling of works by some of the movement's more illustrious stars, including Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Wayne Thiebald and Jim Dine, it is a real treat. The large black and white Rauschenberg is a knock-out tour-de-force of visual exuberance, counterbalanced by Warhol's deadpan representations, which through their blank neutrality project their own psychological charge. The sheer diversity, experimentation and range contained in the show's few works, matched by the insightful wall texts, vividly revive the era's high-spirited hopes and dreams.

7) "Group Portrait" at Boston University's Photographic Resource Center, Boston, MA through January 22, 2006. The family portrait gets a revamping in this show of lush color photographs. In some cases, as in Julie Blackman and Jessica Todd Harper's portraits of their families, compositional echoes of Dutch paintings abound; in other images, such as those provided by Ben Gest, Amy Montali and Sage Sohier, the work more readily suggests take-outs from a contemporary narrative. What meaningfully ties the pictures together, however, is the photographers' deft descriptions of how -- even in the most intimate groupings -- no one really connects to one another. They remain lost in their own concerns, whether out of boredom, preoccupation or willful disengagement.

8) "Syncopated Rhythms: 20th-Century African American Art from the George & Joyce Wein Collection" at the Boston University Art Gallery, Boston, MA, through January 22, 2006. At the same time that American visual artists were looking for a distinctly American art form, they discovered jazz, the musical equivalent of their aims. Jazz was raw, expressive and open to improvisation -- what would become the hallmarks of mid-century American painting. This show, drawn from the George and Joyce Wein Collection, focuses on portraits of the musicians and clubs. Still, there's no denying the heat, dynamic rhythms, and new found compositional freedoms in this lively show.

9) "Frontiers: Collecting the Art of Our Time" at the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA, through February 12, 2006. In 1998, the Worcester Art Museum made a heroic commitment to collect art that was made within the past decade. This exhibit's forty works by such impressive local and international artists as Polly Apfelbaum, Ingo Manglano-Ovalle, Kiki Smith, Bill Viola, John O'Reilly, Nam June Paik, Rachel Whiteread and Shellburne Thurber are the result and the inspiring pledge has paid off. This season, in the local area, there's not a better and broader range of what's happening in the art world today.

10) "New to View: Recent Acquisitions in Photography" at the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA, through April 16, 2006. Like Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, the Worcester Art Museum was one of the first to recognize photography as an art form. The museum featured a show of such work in 1904. This current show presents some of its more recent treasures, acquired over the last five years. Including works from as early as the 19th century to contemporary pieces, the exhibition is sure to reflect the impeccable taste that has guided the department for decades.

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		Arts Features Films at the Gate Photos See photos of kung-fu movies and former Boston Chinatown movie theater locations. Guerrilla Art See photos of local artist Matthew Hincman's bench-like sculpture. "O" is for Original Local artist "Danny O" portrays whimsical scenes of summer in Boston. Multimedia Singer at 100 An exclusive online special explores the controversial work and life of Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer. Gauguin's Tahiti Paintings Take a multimedia tour of Paul Gauguin's Tahiti paintings, including the famous painting, "Where Are We From." Hawthorne at 200 View a multimedia celebration of Nathaniel Hawthorne's 200th birthday.