A new look at Picasso, courtesy of BofA

If you travel to the Northeast in the coming weeks for holiday shopping, visits to family or just a getaway, a Picasso exhibition sponsored by Bank of America may deserve a place in your schedule. 

"'Picasso Black and White' at the Guggenheim Museum is not only one of the most exquisitely beautiful exhibitions of modern art to appear in New York in recent years but also among the most intellectually engaging," begins the review in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal. 

The Guggenheim says this is the first show to explore a motif that spans Picasso's career: his use of black, white and grey as the basic palette for paintings, drawings and sculptures. This allowed Picasso to explore the power of line, form and subtle tonal shadings in "The Milliner's Workshop," above (Centre Pompidou, Paris) and more than 100 other works. Many of the works in the show have never been exhibited or published until now. 

The show opens with what the Journal calls "another remarkable event": the re-introduction of Picasso's "Woman Ironing," which has just returned from conservation work that included the removal  of discolored varnish. That was also funded by BofA -- in that case, courtesy of the bank's Art Conservation Project, which sponsors art restorations for museums worldwide. 

The show continues through Jan. 23. If you're headed westward ho after the holidays, you'll also have a chance at the show: It moves  to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, where it will run Feb. 24-May 27.