“Sight and Insight: A Survey of Art History from the Sweet Briar College Collection,” a new exhibition curated by SBC art galleries Director Rebecca Massie Lane, will be open from Friday, Jan. 20 through Sunday, April 2 in the Colleges’ Anne Gary Pannell Gallery.

“Temple at Asakusa, Views of Edo,” colored woodblock by Japanese artist Hiroshige, dated 1866.Admission to the show is free and open to the public. Teachers and other group organizers also are invited to arrange tours.

Selected from Sweet Briar’s permanent collection, the pieces in “Sight and Insight,” explore the world’s history, cultures and civilizations. North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa are represented through myriad types of art work.

“Because it’s so encyclopedic in its approach, it appeals at many levels of the educational rung, including adult education,” Lane said, noting that the exhibition may also be applicable to Virginia’s Standards of Learning in subjects such as history, social studies and art.

Lane is especially interested in the migration of media, techniques and styles around the globe, and the passing on of artistic traditions from generation to generation.

“Cross-cultural influence is fascinating to me,” she said. “Many works in ‘Sight and Insight’ reflect influences of one culture on another. Artists learn from other artists, and the mentor-student relationship is the most important way in which artistic tradition is handed down.”

Lane cites the exchange of artistic ideas triggered in 1853, when American Commodore Matthew Perry opened Japan to the West. The exhibition’s Japanese color woodblock prints (ukiyo-e) — images of geishas, Kabuki theater presentations and notable landmarks by famous landscape artists Hokusai and Hiroshige — illustrate the point.

“Trade between East and West became ardent. Artists from the West visited Japan, bringing Western ideas with them, and bringing back works of art from the East,” Lane said. “In the case of the Japanese woodblock print by artist Hiroshige, we see a traditional Japanese temple situated on the far side of a lake. But, rather than showing only one façade of the temple, Hiroshige shows us the corner of the temple and the roof gable, thus referring to, but not wholly embracing, the Western idea of mathematical perspective.

“Similarly, works by 19th-century French impressionists in our exhibition reflect the influence of Japanese woodblock prints, with their flattened space, elaborate use of patterning, and diagonal compositions that represent the recession of buildings and objects into space.”

Other Asian works in the show include ceramic and carved wooden objects, manuscripts, scrolls and color woodblock prints on rice paper from China, Burma and Tibet.

From Africa, carved masks and sculptural figures tell the story of festivals, dance and initiation rites of the Yoruba, Dogon and Senufo peoples. These objects also are featured in Sweet Briar’s outreach programs for area Girl Scouts and school groups.

Western art from Europe and North America reflects traditions and values of European civilizations, including the representation of space through perspective drawing, of people through portraiture and of the world through landscape.

Works in the exhibit date from the early Renaissance period (15th century) through present day. Some of the oldest pieces are early printed book illustrations. Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) of Germany, Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) of Italy, English artist John Constable (1776-1837), American Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), Germany’s Kathe Kollwitz (1867-1945) and Spain’s Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) are among the well-known artists represented.

There also are examples of pre-Columbian art from South America, molas by the Cuna Indian women of Central America, and a woodblock print by Mexican printmaker José Posada.

Gallery hours are 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday through Friday with evening hours until 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The gallery is closed on Saturdays. For more information, please contact Rebecca Massie Lane, director of SBC galleries, at rmlane@sbc.edu or (434) 381-6248.