Museum Of Art

cezanne and beyond Where:: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26th Street When:: Now through May 17. Hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays, 10 a.m.-8:45 p.m. Fridays. What:: Exhibit features more than 40 paintings, 20 watercolors and drawings by the French artist Paul Cezanne. His works are displayed alongside works by more than 15 artists for whom, it has been said, Cezanne was an inspiration, including Max Beckmann, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. How much: : Admission is $14; $12 for seniors; $10 for students; free for children 12 and younger.

If your image of Cleveland is that of an industrial town in the country's Midwest, you need an updated picture. On the banks of Lake Erie, Cleveland boasts a vibrant cultural and arts scene. In the coming weeks, the city will be in the headlines as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducts its newest members April 4. 1 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum : Cleveland is where a disc jockey coined the term "rock 'n roll" in the 1950s and the museum pays tribute to that music. The museum's treasures include handwritten lyrics, costumes, posters and videos.

A bright winter sun streams into a room at the Baltimore Museum of Art, far removed from the public galleries. Her eyes dense with concentration, Angie Elliott picks up what looks like a long toothpick and winds a small clump of cotton around its point, an improvised Q-tip, and dips it into a bottle of ethanol. Bending over a table, Elliott uses the damp tool to gently swab the surface of an ornate 16th-century chamfron, a piece of steel armor with inlays of gold and silver, made to protect a horse's forehead and nose in battle.

"Nothing is as round as the circus," the French artist Fernand Leger observed in 1950. "It is an enormous bowl in which circular forms unroll. Nothing stops, everything is connected." The same could be said of A Circus Family: Picasso to Leger, a whirling, swirling, merry-go-round of an exhibit that opens today at the Baltimore Museum of Art. While the title may suggest a bright, breezy look at the glamour and spectacle of the circus, this show is actually a darker, more nuanced examination of the human condition by many of Europe's leading artists from the 1890s to 1950.

In tough times, arts need support The arts community and the audiences we serve are grateful to The Baltimore Sun for Tim Smith's thoughtful analysis of the financial challenges we face ("Hard times for the arts," Nov. 23) and for the subsequent editorial "A gift of art" (Nov. 26), which noted, "In tough times, music, theater, dance and the visual arts offer a boost - and their patrons and supporters can come from all walks of life." Truer words were never spoken. Last year, 14 million people attended arts events in Maryland, many of them in Baltimore, the art epicenter of the state.

The financial crisis that's affecting every sector of the economy, from home values to manufacturing to consumer spending, has taken its toll on the arts, too. Theaters, symphony orchestras, opera companies and museums have been hit by a triple whammy of falling box-office revenues, plummeting donations and shrinking endowments as the values of their stock portfolios decline. The Baltimore Sun's Tim Smith reported recently that some organizations are considering cutting expenses or trimming staff to weather the storm.

As the Baltimore Opera Company rehearsed last month for the production of Bellini's Norma , it faced a serious problem: Its available cash had dried up. With rumors spreading about the company folding, a board member ensured that the show would open - by making a personal guarantee to cover the cast's salaries. Norma went on as scheduled - the final performance is today - but the remainder of this season, and beyond, depends on the company's making a major fiscal turnaround.

Lucille P. Glassman, a longtime Baltimore Museum of Art docent and teacher of money management classes, died Tuesday of pulmonary fibrosis at Roland Park Place. She was 86. Lucille Pivnick, the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants, was born and raised in Toronto. She was studying nursing at the University of Toronto during the 1940s when she met and married Dr. Lionel Glassman. The couple moved to Chicago, and while her then-husband completed a four-year residency in anesthesiology, she worked as beauty editor for Canadian Glamour Magazine.

Before she passed away Saturday after a long illness, Grace Hartigan was adamant, even imperious about the arrangements for how she would be memorialized. And she will get her way, as Hartigan, a seminal figure in the U.S. art world and a longtime Baltimore resident, usually did. "There will be no memorial service. She said that her memorial should be more about her body of work than about her physical body. She's always felt that way," says Rex Stevens, chairman of the drawing and general fine arts department at the Maryland Institute College of Art. The 86-year-old painter will be cremated, he said.