From ironclad to Klee's magic

USS Monitor Center
Mariners' Museum
NEWPORT NEWS, Va.
The Mariners' Museum, in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, opened the USS Monitor Center on March 9. That was the 145th anniversary of the epic naval battle between two ironclads -- the Monitor and the Merrimac -- that became one of the most celebrated clashes of the Civil War. Although itself inconclusive, the battle changed the face of naval history. The center is a $30 million, 63,500-square-foot facility that houses a wide range of exhibits and multimedia presentations concerning the famous Union vessel. Among items on display are the Monitor's gun turret, cannon, and steam engine, all of which have been retrieved from the ocean floor off the coast of North Carolina, where the ship went down in a storm in 1863.

100 Museum Drive , 757-596-2222 , monitorcenter.org.

'Paris in Transition: Photographs from the National Gallery of Art'
National Gallery
WASHINGTON Through May 6
Paris may or may not be the most beautiful city in the world. But throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th, it was surely the most beautifully photographed, as shown by these 61 images drawn from the holdings of the National Gallery of Art. Photographers with works in the show include William Henry Fox Talbot , Gustave Le Gray , Charles Marville , Alfred Stieglitz , Andre Kertesz , Brassai , and the greatest of all visual chroniclers of the City of Light, Eugene Atget.

Constitution Avenue NW, between 3d and 9th streets , 202-737-4215 , nga.gov.

Fondazione Antonio Mazzotta MILAN Through April 29 Paul Klee eludes classification. He is the great one-of-a-kind master of modern art, belonging to no school or style. His work has a childlike, magical quality that is at once indescribable and unmistakable, enchantingly poised between representation and abstraction. This exhibition gathers more than 100 paintings, watercolors, and prints by Klee, along with some 50 works by artists who influenced him. Among them are Piranesi , Goya , Daumier , and Ensor . Highlighted themes and motifs include primitivism, the Mediterranean, and night and death.

50 Foro Buonaparte , 011-39-02-878-197 , mazzotta.it/fondazione/fondazione/01.htm.

Royal Academy of Arts LONDON Through June 10 Claude Monet was one of art's supreme colorists, of course. But this groundbreaking exhibition, the first to look at his pastels and drawings, makes an argument for the Impressionist's eminence as a draftsman as well. The show comprises 80 works, many never shown in public before.

Burlington House, Piccadilly , 011-44-20-7300-8000, royalacademy.org.uk.

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art HUMLEBAEK, Denmark Through May 20 The ultimate artistic chameleon, Cindy Sherman is the Post-Modernist par excellence, playing with identity, genre, and expectation with acrobatic ease. She stages, sits for, and photographs the portraits she creates -- there are 250 of them in this massive retrospective of works from 1975 to 2005 -- but they are not self-portraits. Rather, she is rarely recognizable as herself, playing a vast variety of roles, from housewife to temptress, hitchhiker to clown.

Strandvej 13, 011-45-4919-0719, louisiana.dk.

Events sometimes are canceled, rescheduled, or sold out; call or check online to confirm. Mark Feeney can be reached at mfeeney@globe.com.