Bangladesh, Nov. 5 -- The Metropolitan Museums Allegory and Abstraction offers a compelling rotation from the Department of Drawings and Prints, bringing forward how artists across centuries embed narrative, emotion, and idea through both symbolic imagery and experiments in form.

Out of the many extraordinary artists whose works are represented in this exhibition, I would like to focus on one watercolor by Joseph Mallord William Turner – not simply because this year marks the 250th anniversary of the artists birth, but because Turners The Lake of Zug (1843) speaks to us today with an urgency that we can hardly afford to overlook. The philosophy of nature that informs this watercolor allows us to view it not as a relic of Romanticis...