Art Exhibit in Washington Explores the Madonna as Woman, Mother, and Idea
Portraits of the Virgin Mary are on show at the National Museum of Women in the Arts until April 2015.

She’s the most recognizable woman in the world. Her image spans a wide range of centuries and styles, from reverential portraits by old masters like Michelangelo to cheap plaster statues to the controversial collage by Chris Ofili of a black Madonna studded with elephant dung that caused an uproar when exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum in 1999.
But who is the Virgin Mary, and what do we see when we gaze at her portrait? On December 5, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., opens “Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea”—an exhibit of 70 artworks, from the 14th through the 19th centuries, lent by the Vatican Museums, the Uffizi Gallery, and the Louvre, among others.   http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/12/141204-madonna-art-religion-catholicism-virgin-mary-women-museum-culture/

Monsignor Timothy Verdon, canon of the Florence Cathedral, is guest curator of the exhibition. “Mary is one of the main themes in Western art for more than 1,000 years,” Verdon explains. “Not only are there more images of her than of anyone else — including her son — her son is often part of the image, but the interest of the image is normally more focused on Mary, who is the adult, than on the Christ child.”   http://www.npr.org/2014/12/24/372731460/mother-empress-virgin-faith-picturing-mary-and-her-many-meanings