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ever. The mind-expanding works, such as Drawing Hands, Relativity, and Metamorphosis III, have a haunting sensibility that will stay with you long after the exhibition closes. Tinterow's Take: "This exhibition will really show how Escher conceives works of art, how he works out his visual and mental puzzles, and how he fabricates these actual physical works of art." The MFAH's Dena M. Woodall curates. "Dawoud Bey: An American Project" March 6 – May 30 From the moment his godmother gave him a camera at age 15, Dawoud Bey's drive to create profound portraits of strength was ignited. And when he saw New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art's 1969 exhibition "Harlem on My Mind," the visceral images made an indelible impression. His nuanced, poignant images of African-Americans delicately convey a tenderness and vulnerability within his subjects, as seen in this evocative retrospective. "Dawoud Bey: An American Project" was co-organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Houston is its final stop. Curated by Malcolm Daniel, the Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography, the exhibition features 85 significant works, from the 1970s to the present, ranging from early street portraits in Harlem to his recent historical explorations of the Underground Railroad. Tinterow's Take: "I think he's a marvelous humanist, a fantastic practitioner of portraiture. But it's his empathy and sympathy with his subjects that make his photographs so rich and fulfilling." "Shahzia Sikander: Extraordinary Realities" March 20 – June 5 Groundbreaking and inventive, Pakistani-American artist Shahzia Sikander's work is internationally celebrated for weaving manuscript painting traditions into a deeper narrative with contemporary art. As a Core Fellow at the MFAH Glassell School of Art from 1995-1997, her first wall drawing was created in 1996 at Houston's Barbara Davis Gallery. Sixty works explore Sikander's first 15 years as an artist, curated in Houston by the MFAH's Dena M. Woodall. Tinterow's Take: "She brings contemporary questions and issues in society to the forefront by using these delightful and intriguing stylistic traits of Mughal painting in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries." "The Obama Portraits Tour" April 3 – May 30 The MFAH's Anita Bateman organizes the quintessential show of the spring, which presents the iconic portraits unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. — President Obama by Kehinde Wiley and First Lady Michelle Obama painted by Amy Sherald. Wiley and Sherald were the first African-American artists to be selected to create the official portraits of a president or first lady for the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. This portrait propelled Sherald into the spotlight for her stylized likenesses and abstracted palette, while Wiley depicts the heroic strength of his subjects against Baroque, highly patterned backgrounds. Tinterow's Take: "What is distinctive about these portraits is that they are firmly rooted in our time." mfah.org. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST. © 2021 SHAHZIA SILKANDER / COURTESY OF THE ARTIST; SEAN KELLY, NEW YORK; AND PILAR CORRIAS, LONDON. © 2021 SHAHZIA SILKANDER / COURTESY OF THE ARTIST; SEAN KELLY, NEW YORK; AND PILAR CORRIAS, LONDON. RENNIE COLLECTION, VANCOUVER. © DAWOUD BEY. Previous page, clockwise from top: Kehinde Wiley's Barack Obama, 2018. M.C Escher's Bond of Union, April 1956. M.C. Escher's Drawing Hands, January 1948. This page, clockwise from top left: Shahzia Sikander's Mirrat I,, 1989-1990. Shahzia Sikander's Uprooted Order, Series 3, No. 1, 1997. Dawoud Bey's Don Sledge and Moses Austin, from "The Birmingham Project," 2012. (Continued from page 36) 38