A: Is for Art where we live

We live in a city where art is at our doorsteps gift #23 is the gift that culture brings.

Gift #23: Museums: First there's the Met: Until February 16th the Italian Renaissance is celebrating love and marriage. Approximately 150 objects, which date from about 1400 to the mid-sixteenth century, range from exquisite examples of maiolica and jewelry given as gifts to couples to marriage portraits and paintings that extol sensual love and fecundity, such as the Metropolitan’s Venus and Cupid by the great Venetian artist Lorenzo Lotto. The exhibition also includes some of the rarest and most significant pieces of Renaissance glassware, cassone panels, birth trays, and drawings and prints of amorous subjects.

At the MoMA Van Gogh's Colors of the Night takes precedence until January 5th. This exhibition presents new insight into Van Gogh's depictions of night landscapes, interior scenes, and the effects of both gaslight and natural light on their surroundings. Representing all periods of the artist's career, the exhibition comprises of over two dozen works of superlative quality—several of which have never been seen together, even though they were very clearly conceived with each other in mind.

The Natural History Museum celebrates Darwin's ideas and their impact for his 200th birthday in 2009. Discover the man and the revolutionary theory that changed our understanding of the world. See incredible, revealing and rare exhibits, some on display for the first time. For this you have until April 19th but if you want handmade crafts or want to ice skate in this beautiful surrounding you have until January 4th and the 19th.

This column could go on but it is the season where there is so much to do and so little time but maybe a stroll through one of these will ease the stress and that is a F.A.C.T.