Dust off that Stravinsky recording and dance a pagan rite to spring, because contemporary art is blooming at local galleries. Here's a sampling.

It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood movie: A young art student encounters the work of an elder master, and his life and career are altered forever. But that is the actual real-life narrative that began in 1943.

It's difficult to picture Claude Monet as a young starving artist, little-known outside a small coterie of fellow artists, critics and collectors, but indeed, he was once just that. So how did he emerge from deprivation, sacrifice and relative obscurity?

"Tomb Treasures: New Discoveries from China's Han Dynasty" is yet another tour de force from the Asian Art Museum.

How can you have a show about the counterculture that's short on sex, drugs and rock & roll? The answer is: With difficulty. But that's not all that's missing from "Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia."

Reduced-scale versions of five of the six "Burghers" are on view at the Legion of Honor in a special exhibition marking the centenary of Rodin's death, and 50 of the French sculptor's works from the museum's permanent collection are on display.

Droll humor, self-deprecation, a bundle of insecurities and stand-up comedy shtick characterize his work, as do self-loathing, Jewish neuroses and a queer sensibility that's difficult to define.

It's officially winter, and baby, is it ever cold outside. But gallery-wise, the year is heating up what might otherwise be a dreary season. Throw on the parka and grab the umbrella, there are places to go and things to see.

The artwork produced by the Artist-in-Residence program at Recology San Francisco goes well beyond turning sows' ears into silk purses.

"Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana Mendieta," now at BAMPFA, has the effect of making viewers complicit in enigmatic rituals.

People on deadline, crazy writer types and polyamorists all benefit from having structure in their lives, even on vacation.

William Blake at last has a gallery dedicated to him.

Don't merely think big, think off the charts - that's the Frank Stella that comes through in the first comprehensive U.S. overview of the artist's prolific output in almost three decades.

Early on, self-taught photographer-filmmaker Danny Lyon said his goal was "to destroy Life magazine" by presenting powerful alternatives to the bland mainstream pictures and stories that permeated American mass media in the late 1950s.