The Sights of Summer

The world is nervous. War-bruised, jittery about climate change and terror, worn down by the diplomatic acrimonies between Iran and the West, Europeans could be forgiven for taking refuge in pretty, apolitical art. The impulse, in such turbulent times, might be to run to your nearest waterlilies or Delft still life. And summer is traditionally the season for crowd-pleasing museum shows. Luckily, "anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity," as T. S. Eliot observed, so current nerves have produced a clutch of vibrant shows this summer. Across Europe, curators have mounted exhibits that reflect and refract geopolitical realities, from the rise of China to the evolution of the modern metropolis.

If news headlines bolster cultural stereotypes, art breaks them down. That's, in part, the aim of "Persia, 30 Centuries of Art and Culture," at the Hermitage Amsterdam (through Sept. 15), the Dutch satellite of the venerable St. Petersburg museum. Clichés of Iran as a dour, monocultural society erode amid such works as a jolly faience tile of a hunter on a horse, or a Western-influenced painting of 19th-century lovers snuggling. Technically, even figurative images of people and animals are forbidden by Islam, but Persian artists have long sidestepped the injunction. "The Prophet Muhammad ... warned us not to have divine pretensions and breathe life into man and beast in images," says a quote on the wall from the 19th-century Persian Shah Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar. "But our artists could not resist this temptation, for they desired to represent the Creation of Allah ... to His greater glory and honour in the finest forms and images." Even more surprising, given Iran's current sexual politics, is the 15th-century illustration of the classical poet Nizami's "Khamsa," showing King Khusraw and his men spying on Princess Shirin, who's shown bathing bare-breasted in a river, languorously combing her hair.

Similar surprises await those expecting to see the Gaza familiar from the news in a show at the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire in Geneva. "Gaza at the Crossroads of Civilization" (through Oct. 7), which gathers 531 archeological finds drawn from the Palestinian Department of Antiquities and the private collection of Gazan entrepreneur Jawdat Khoudary, aims to illustrate the multicultural nature of the tiny region's daily life over the centuries. Egyptian scarabs, sculptures of Poseidon and Aphrodite, mosaics from Byzantine churches and Muslim gravestones suggest the vast range of gods that Gazans have worshiped over the past 5,500 years. To those astonished that Gaza could support Geneva's organization of a museum show during such tumultuous times in Israel, the Palestinian minister of foreign affairs, Ziad Abu Amer, retorted: "The people of Gaza also have a soul!"

There's more proof of Mediterranean culture-melt on display in Bonn. The blockbuster show "Egypt's Sunken Treasures," which already drew more than a million visitors during stints in Paris and Berlin, now occupies Bonn's Art and Exhibition Hall (through Jan. 27). On display is an astonishing array of statues, coins, friezes and other relics from the lost cities of Heraklian and Kanopus, discovered by French underwater archeologist Franck Goddio during excavations of the waters near Alexandria. Some of the displays, which offer up beautiful proof of the influence of Mesopotamian, Greek and Roman civilizations on ancient Egypt, were submerged in the Mediterranean for two millennia. The Stela of Ptolemy, a marble slab nearly 20 feet high, features inscriptions in both hieroglyphics and Greek. A statue of the Egyptian god Serapus is bearded and curly-haired like the Greek god Zeus.

The stutter-stop love affair between Europe and Russia is on display at the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow's premier museum of Russian art. "Europe-Russia-Europe" (through June 29) draws together works that explore the cultural trends Russia and the rest of Europe have swapped over the centuries. Since the show was built on the notion of national identities, most countries tended to stick to the classic self-images: the Spaniards sent a Picasso, the Italians dispatched a Titian and the Austrians a Klimt.

Other European shows also explore themes of cultural indentity. Parisians can go contemplate them—elves-and mod—rnity-at the Centre Georges Pompidou. Its "Airs de Paris" (through Aug. 15) uses artists as disparate as Marcel Duchamp and Nan Goldin, as well as international architects, to contemplate the changes at work in modern cities. Tate Britain explores Britishness on film in its first major photography show, "How We Are: Photographing Britain" (through Sept. 2). The huge exhibit, a sort of national photo album stretching back to the Victorians, includes shots of Queen Victoria, toffs on the town, militant suffragettes, Tesco supermarkets and Julie Christie.