Impressionism

It's always fun to look ahead at what's coming up in area museums and galleries, and this year there will be any number of shows to entertain and intrigue visitors. The big news this season, of course, will be the grand reopening of the Walters Art Museum's 1974 building, which has been undergoing renovations for the past two years. "Wondrous Journeys: The Walters Collection From Egyptian Tombs to Medieval Castles" opens Oct. 20 as a new installation of the permanent collection that traces the path of artistic achievement in the West through nearly 5,000 years and 2,000 works of art. All signs point to this show being one of the season's highlights, comparable to the reopening of the Baltimore Museum of Art's reinstallation of the Cone Wing earlier this year.

Fine art, it goes without saying, is at home anywhere, but there's real synchronicity when Annapolis plays host to an exhibit titled Where the Water Meets the Land. Dominated as it is by water geographically, historically, industrially and culturally, Maryland's capital city would seem a marvelous venue for works of art with such a theme. And so it is at the Mitchell Gallery on the campus of St. John's College in the exhibit Where the Water Meets the Land: Selected Paintings from the Phelan Collection, 25 nautical images on loan from Washington-area art collector Jay Phelan.

THE CLOSE-UP of portraits by French (and one American) Impressionist artists, organized by the Baltimore Museum of Art, will bring much attention to the BMA, until the exhibition moves on to museums in Houston and Cleveland next year. The show groups paintings from 40 American museums that have much in common but have never been seen together.Five years in the organizing by Sona Johnston, curator of painting and sculpture before 1900 at the BMA, this show has been nicknamed "Fuzzy Faces," but it comes forth with great clarity.

Name: Natalie Mouyal, of Edgewater.School: South River High School.Accomplishments/Interests: Natalie, a senior with a 3.94 grade point average, is a vice president of the Student Council and secretary of the National Honor Society.She is one of two student representatives on the school's Improvement Team, where she acts as a link between students and school department heads and administrators, offering suggestions and ideas on school policies and curriculum.Natalie has participated in tutoring programs at the Edgewater Elementary and Central Middle schools for the past two years.

In the late 1880s, Paul Gauguin and a group of other artists put Pont-Aven on the map of art history. Working in that small Brittany town, they moved art an essential step beyond impressionism and toward the art of the 20th century.That step can be seen through the exhibit, "Gauguin and the School of Pont-Aven," opening today at the Walters Art Gallery and running through Jan. 15.But, up front, two points need to be made:First, this exhibit is not what museum-goers could easily be led to think from its billing.

GATSBY DESIGN GALLERY9917 Reisterstown RoadWorks by Marvin WiesLifelong Baltimorean Marvin Wies is best known for his whimsical, colorful furniture, but this exhibit (extended through April 21) consists mostly of pieces that represent a new avenue of expression for the artist: 3-D painting.The 3-D refers, in part, to the integral role the frames play in the pieces -- an evolution from Mr. Wies' furniture work, according to gallery owner Kathleen Roberts. Jagged-edged painted wood, dotted with intricate symbolic designs, the frames surround large, colorful, sweeping interiors she describes as "modernistic" and "expressionistic."

ANNAPOLIS - Folks at the Mitchell Gallery at St. John's College have taken no extra measures to ensure quiet for the current exhibit. They have posted no "Quiet, please" signs at the entrance nor printed a special notice in the brochures for this show of American landscapes, most made in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Something of the sort might have been in order, given the fact that the work on view until Feb. 23 speaks softly and carries no noisy American metaphors. The colors are mostly muted, the human figure is largely absent, the scenes themselves not especially dramatic, the effect less expansive than introspective.

CLAUDE Monet has done more for gardening than all of the seed companies and green thumb newspaper columns combined. This Impressionist master depicted French flower gardens with so much summery affection that one need never worry about drought, insects or frost in the artist's back yard.Monet has in a sense come to our back yard with the exhibit opening Sunday at the Baltimore Museum of Art. It is no ordinary event, involving as it does a temporary swap between the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Still life goes on ANYONE WHO missed the intimate exhibition of Edouard Manet's still-life paintings at the dawn of French Impressionism, in the Musee d'Orsay in Paris last year, can catch it at the renamed Walters Art Museum (nee Gallery) in Baltimore, till April 22. The show is a boon to Charles Street restaurateurs. After spending an hour amid those vivid figs, plums, asparagus, fish and oysters, the connoisseur comes away hungry. It also will do no harm to the florist trade. Users of the audio tour headsets will be charmed by the voice of the first docent heard, Martin O'Malley, mayor of the city that owns the museum.

Coin convention Check your pockets, raid the piggy bank and dust off the safe-deposit box. Gather those old coins and any rare paper money you've been stashing, and find out if they're more valuable than you thought at the Suburban Washington/Baltimore Coin and Currency Convention tomorrow through Sunday at the Baltimore Convention Center. Browse tables from more than 750 dealers, participate in coin auctions, see the "Billion Dollar Currency Exhibit" by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, attend educational seminars, free appraisal sessions and evaluation clinics, have your coins graded, learn how to look up values, receive a show-issued souvenir card, and for young numismatists -- ages 12 and under -- receive free coins, information and supplies.