The past few years have seen significant changes in the museum field, with some developments that will mark the field for decades to come. One interesting, and very effective, development has been the noticeable increase in double-barreled exhibitions: “Matisse Picasso” (MOMA, Tate, Pompidou, 2002–3; curated by John Elderfield, Kirk Varnedoe, John Golding, Elizabeth Cowling, Isabelle Monod-Fontaine, and Anne Baldassari); “Van Gogh-Gauguin: the Studio of the South” (Art Institute of Chicago, 2001–2; curated by Douglas Druick); “Manet-Velázquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting” (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Réunion des Musées Nationaux/ Musée d’Orsay, 2003; curated by Gary Tinterow and Geneviève Lacambre); and “Schoenberg, Kandinsky and the Blue Rider” (Jewish Museum, New York, 2003; curated by Esther da Costa Meyer and Fred Wasserman).

Traditionally, museum exhibitions have been monographic, based on a single artist or a single movement. One reason for the popularity of the monographic approach is that it is the simplest, most straightforward, and most direct way of presenting material to a public which is often unfamiliar with the images being seen. On occasion, exhibitions will focus on a single artist within a certain time or place, perhaps joined by fellow artists (e.g., the Art Institute’s current “Manet and the Sea,” the Boston MFA’s “Gauguin in Tahiti,” 2004, or my own “Modigliani and the Artists of Montparnasse” of this past year).

While the two-pronged approach sounded a bit academic at first—like sitting in an art history lecture and looking at slide comparisons—it has proven