The exhibition Jerusalem 1000-1400: Every People Under Heaven at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (until 8 January 2017) is an engaging reminder that long-distance travel and globalisation are not recent developments. The show tells the story of Jerusalem as a centre of trade and pilgrimage, a crossroads of commerce, religion and violence and a spiritual beacon. Around 200 works from, or inspired by, the Holy Land include 12th-century limestone capitals from the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, illuminated religious texts, glasswork and coins.
Diane Arbus's early photographs are the focus of a show closing Sunday (27 November) at the Met Breuer. Diane Arbus: In the Beginning, is assembled from photographs found only after her death. The pictures, taken mostly in New York in the 1950s, reveal an Arbus who was just in the midst of consolidating her mature style. It includes around 100 photographs, two-thirds of which have never before been exhibited or published. (See our review of the show here.)
In 1969, Mierles Laderman Ukeles gave “work of art” a new meaning when she re-named her everyday chores “Maintenance art.” Since 1978, she has been the official (but unpaid) artist-in-residence at New York’s Department of Sanitation. Her current retrospective at the Queens Museum looks at performances like Touch Sanitation Performance (1979-80), in which she shook hands with 8,500 New York sanitation workers and thanked them "for keeping New York City alive." (See our review of the show here.)