There must be a special place in the firmament reserved for the small band of brave curators from the National Museum, Kabul. Through stealth and with devotion, they hid away objects which represented 4,000 years of Afghanistan’s cultural achievement from the Taliban thugs (and other warmongers) who sought to eradicate any traces of the country’s rich and storied history. Risking torture and imprisonment, they kept a covenant; they never divulged the secret location of these precious objects, believed to have been looted or destroyed during 25 years of conflict, and thereby saved the cultural heritage of their country. Now a portion of it is here for our appreciation, and what a legacy it is.

If you ever have a month on your hands and want to spend it surveying a wealth of art, evidently Berlin is the place to be. The city has the enviable status of being home to over 100 museums, including the State Museums of Berlin, a network of 15 institutions whose holdings were substantially augmented by the generosity of one man: James Simon. This fact, little-known outside Germany and a coterie of art aficionados, is driven home by a new exhibition at the Legion on Honor, The State Museums of Berlin and the Legacy of James Simon. On view through January 18, 2009, it’s an appreciative tribute to the far-reaching cultural interests of perhaps the most generous art collector and philanthropist in Berlin history. (His descendant, Tim Simon, who lives in Pacific Heights, was instrumental in bringing the exhibition to the Legion.)

A dizzying abundance of major museum exhibitions opened in the city during what may well have been the most crowded summer calendar in recent memory.

As record crowds line up for the Chihuly glass extravaganza at the de Young Museum, one can only hope that the museum’s less hyped exhibitions won’t get lost in the crush. ’Bitter Suite’ & ’Jane Hammond: Paper Work’ are not to be missed.

Impressionism is often thought of as a great male fraternity, but there was a feminine side to the once-notorious movement that shocked the conservative academy, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Paris salons, in late-19th-century France.

Whether they’re an expression of narcissism, or represent an escape from debilitating physical pain and emotional suffering, Frida Kahlo’s transfixing self-portraits - she painted at least 60 - are beguiling. They dominate Frida Kahlo, an exhibition of 42 paintings that charts the Mexican artist’s career from 1926 until her death in 1954, her growing confidence as an artist and her tumultuous relationship with her on-again, off-again husband, Diego Rivera, the famous muralist whose stature and outsized reputation dwarfed Kahlo’s work for many years.

If you were to take a quick look at the subjects the notorious British artist duo Gilbert & George have addressed in their pictures - feces, sperm, blood, race, oral fixation, offensive language (to some) and sticking a finger in the eye of organized religion, which it richly deserves, according to the artists - you’d likely conclude that they were naughty boys intent on inciting their teacher to put them out of class and send them directly to the principal’s office.

Canadian artist Jeff Wall takes exception when his photographs are described as staged; instead, he prefers to call them reconstructions - of events, memories and flashes of imagination.

The artists on staff at RayKo Photo Center devote a good deal of their time to mounting, printing and aiding the work of other photographers, but this weekend, Johanna Case-Hofmeister, Mary Celojko, Letty Garcia, Ann Jastrab, Mia Nakano, Kira Sugarman and Barry Umstead will step forward and have a much-deserved moment in the sun.

Forty years ago, anthropologist and Yiddish folklorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett found an intriguing project close to home. She began a series of conversations with her aging, Polish immigrant father, Mayer Kirshenblatt, a project which evolved into a full-blown oral history about the lost Polish town of his youth, accompanied by a series of paintings and drawings. Now 91 and living in Toronto, Mayer has produced 270 paintings since 1990, 65 of which are on display at the Judah L. Magnes Museum.