In 1940, art director and fashion illustrator René Bouché (1905-1963) left war-torn Paris for New York and became a regular contributor to Vogue magazine. In 1945, Vogue commissioned Bouché, who was an art director and fashion illustrator in Paris before World War II, to cover the first post-war couture shows in Paris. The trip to Europe was traumatic for the artist, who discovered a people struggling to regain normalcy after the war.

Plato considered both art and athletics to be gifts from the gods, and the connection between art and sports in ancient Greece can be viewed as an aspect of its religious beliefs as well as its competitive spirit. Every fourth year for a thousand years, from 776 BC to AD 395, the pageantry of the Olympic festival attracted citizens from all over the Greek world. The Games at Olympia were held in honor of Zeus, and a visit to these competitions was also a pilgrimage.

Musei Capitolini in Rome are lending San Francisco one of their greatest treasures, the remarkable Baroque masterpiece The Medusa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), one of art history’s finest sculptors and a leading figure in Italian Baroque art and architecture. Recent conservation efforts have restored this sculptural triumph to its full glory and revealed previously hidden artistic techniques.