"Sacred Stories, Timeless Tales" at the Lowe Art Museum through October 23

Sacred Stories, Timeless Tales," a new exhibition at the Lowe Art Museum, explores the roots of mythology and features more than 100 works drawn from the museum's vast collection of some 17,500 objects spanning 5,000 years. The show represents the art of Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa and includes a sprawling array of media ranging from pottery and ceramics to paintings, sculptures, textiles, and works on paper. Not unlike the principles that obsess the human psyche today, concepts of creation and morality, love and mortality, the cosmos and divinity, beauty, regeneration, and heroes and war all combine here in a loosely based narrative that transcends time. The captivating exhibit was curated by Denise M. Gerson, the Lowe's associate director, and is complemented by a handsome catalogue and expansive, informative wall text that bring diverse cultural traditions alive. It's a great summer show and a fantastic reminder of where the seeds of the likes of Hogwarts, X-Men, Thor, the Green Lantern, Frankenstein's monster, and even Kung Fu Panda were hoed. The staggering scope of works on display stretches from a sixth-century-B.C.E. Greek, black-figured hydria (water jug) depicting heroes Achilles and Ajax playing dice in front of the goddess Athena, to an image of Bela Lugosi that Andy Warhol created in 1981.