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We generally think of Cleopatra as the cunning sexpot who took the world by storm, spangled herself in gold and bent powerful men to her will. In other words, we think of her as Elizabeth Taylor. "Cleopatra of Egypt: From History to Myth" would have us remember her first as the sober-minded and politically adroit monarch who confronted the growing might of Rome. Following a highly successful run at the British Museum in London, this show brings its ancient treasures and new insights to Chicago's Field Museum. In statuary of the 1st century B.C., Cleopatra is voluptuous but coldly imperial. In pornography produced by her enemies she is a harlot coupling with a crocodile. The Queen arrives in all her guises, including clips from Taylor's 1963 extravaganza, on Oct. 20. More demure female images can be seen in the portraits of Renaissance women in the National Gallery of Art's "Virtue and Beauty," which opens in Washington on Sept. 30.
CRITIC'S PICK
A Lost, Paradisiacal World
Who was the master of the dot in French painting? Georges Seurat, most would answer. But there was at least one other: Seurat's friend and luminous fellow painter, Neo-Impressionist Paul Signac (1863-1935). Signac, an avid yachtsman, helped create the French Riviera as a subject for painting--and Saint-Tropez, where he settled from 1892 on, as a mecca for tourism. His pursuit of pure color sensation, the yellow of beaches and the purple of shade under the umbrella-pines, made his canvases radical in their time. Yet to a modern eye, his paradisiacal view of the world--a world now hopelessly fouled by mass tourism--offers undiluted pleasure. The Signac retrospective that opens at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art on Oct. 9 will be America's first complete view of the work of an underappreciated master.
POP MUSIC
BIGGEST BUZZ
Trying for the Crown Again
"I want you back," Michael Jackson once sang--but do we still want him? Legions of boy bands are desperately trying to moonwalk in Jackson's footsteps, but now the man behind Thriller is returning with Invincible (Oct. 30), his first album of new material in six years. It's too early to tell if he's still the King of Pop, but such current-day musical royalty as Britney Spears, Jill Scott and Ricky Martin are scheduled to pay homage to him at the tribute concerts he's throwing for himself at Madison Square Garden on Sept. 7 and 10.
Rock is staging a comeback too. There's the old school: Bob Dylan reveals a new masterpiece, Love and Theft, on Sept. 11. There's the new school: the Strokes puts out its excellent debut, Is This It, on Sept. 25, and rock-hoppers Incubus deliver Morning View Oct. 23. And there's international rock: Colombian rockera Shakira unveils her first English-language disc Nov. 6, and Femi Kuti, son of Nigerian Afrobeat performer Fela, unleashes his potent Fight to Win Oct. 16.
CRITIC'S PICK
Country Ways