Termini—A Conversation on Death at Cross MacKenzie Gallery, Washington, DC

They hang on the wall like bad dreams, disturbingly seductive.

This show was curious not only in its subject—death is not a common theme in contemporary art—but also in its process of coming into being. I might have been skeptical, but it works. The show is coherent and even moving. It all began with gallery owner Rebecca Cross’s own drawings of medieval weapons, which were presented in the exhibition as a grid of 16 graphite-on-watercolor-paper works on one wall of the small gallery. She chose