ART AND EXHIBITS
If you need that festival feel in mid-winter, revisit the approximate scene of First Night for the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust's next quarterly Gallery Crawl. A couple dozen galleries and performance spaces will be open, with art shows, music, food and more. Jan. 25. Downtown. 412-456-6666 or www.pgharts.org
Silver Eye Center rolls out Fellowship 13, the latest iteration of its annual international photography competition. This year's honorees are Diane Meyer — whose portfolio Time Spent That Might Otherwise Be Forgotten employs cross-stitched embroidery — and Pittsburgh's own Ross Mantle, whose series California, Pennsylvania visits Pennsylvania, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Jan. 25-March 16. South Side. 412-431-1810 or www.silvereye.org
How better to keep warm than with flame-worked glass? That's the medium chosen by Korean-born artist Eunsuh Choi for her new exhibit at Pittsburgh Glass Center. Consciousness opens during Penn Avenue's Feb. 1 Unblurred event. Friendship. 412-365-2145 or www.pittsburghglasscenter.org
On Feb. 1, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts seeks sensory overload by opening 10 new visual-art shows. Among them: David Bernabo and Emily Walley's This May Not Take Long; Jeremy Boyle and Mark Franchino's Untitled; and work by Bill McAllister, Lenore D. Thomas and Lizzy De Vita. Shadyside. 412-361-0873 or www.pittsburgharts.org
Seeing Earth in its entirety from Apollo 8. Black Power at the Olympics. Nixon defeats Humphrey. The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. The national launch of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. All these landmark events and more happened in 1968, and are contextualized in a new traveling exhibit 1968: The Year That Rocked America at the Heinz History Center. Starts Feb. 2. Strip District. 412-454-6000 or www.heinzhistorycenter.org
The Carnegie Museum of Art's Heinz Architectural Center has spent 20 years explaining why architecture matters, and now it's taking a look back. The anniversary exhibit 20/20: Celebrating Two Decades of the Heinz Architectural Center, includes 20 objects from the collection selected by current or past curatorial staff. Includes Cake-itecture, an opening-night contest for architectural cakes. Starts Feb. 9. Oakland. 412-622-3212 or www.cmoa.org
These days, we too often think of Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan as places of strife, but the region has a rich cultural history. The new exhibit, A Kind of Alchemy: Medieval Persian Ceramics, offers beautifully crafted bowls, bottles and other vessels, in a variety of aesthetic styles that marks ancient Persia's fortuitous location between Asia and Europe. Opens Feb. 23. Frick Art & Historical Center, Point Breeze. 412-371-0600 or www.thefrickpittsburgh.org
Gallerie Chiz warms up March with a new show featuring two veteran local artists. Mary Culbertson Stark shows new paintings, while Marjorie Shipe offers new sculptural work; the show opens with a March 1 reception. Through March 30. Shadyside. 412-441-6005 or www.galleriechiz.com
The sculptural work of multimedia Pittsburgh artist Aaronel deRoy Gruber, who died in 2011, is the focus of Aaronel deRoy Gruber: Art(ist) in Motion, a new exhibit opening at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art. In creating her sculptures, some of which were motorized, Gruber used materials such as welded steel, formed aluminum and Plexiglass. Opens March 9. Greensburg. 724-837-1500 or www.wmuseumaa.org