The 29 artists selected by Seattle Art Museum curator Catharina Manchanda for the Bellingham National present media as diverse as photography, video, audio and sculpture as well as more traditional works on paper.

The Seattle gallery’s show “Color and Pattern” is a big departure from other, realism-dominated shows from Allen’s trove of artworks. You’ll see masters of the form, though, like Damien Hirst, Wassily Kandinsky and Frank Stella.

​“Seeing Nature: Landscape Masterworks from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection” is an interesting mix, including the outlier Klimt landscape “Birch Forest” and the Cezanne post-Impressionist masterpiece “Mont Sainte-Victoire.”

A review of “A Closer Look: Portraits from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection” at Pivot Art + Culture in Seattle, which hangs photos and paintings together by such artists and photographers as John Coplans, David Hockney and Guy Tillim.

One of the portraits in Guy Tillim’s series depicting child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The real showstopper among the 70-odd pictures in Pivot Art + Culture Gallery’s just-opened portrait exhibition is a group of John Coplans’ close-up photographs of his own hands. The four enormous prints focus on the interlacing of the artist’s hairy, wrinkled fingers, which here become stand-ins for all manner of fleshly couplings. The images call into question the conventional canons of portraiture: Does the artist identify so closely with his hands? Is he celebrating, or bemoaning, their lumpy physicality? ​Truth to tell, there are not many surprises in the enjoyable, but unexceptional, “A Closer Look,” entirely composed of art on loan from software mogul and arts patron, Paul Allen. The depth of Allen’s holdings is such that another show of his art will come to town while the Pivot exhibit is still hanging, and that exhibit is on another level entirely. The selection of Allen’s landscape paintings coming to SAM in early 2017 is a stellar grouping of signature works by artists ranging from Breughel (the Younger) to Magritte, any of which SAM would love to be given.​

​The show at the Museum of Northwest Art features works by 28 artist couples, including Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight, Sheila Klein and Ries Niemi, and Michael Bray and Anya Kivarkis.

“Vigilante,” 1977 lithograph by Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000), who was married to fellow artist Gwendolyn Knight.

“Mask,” 1964 lithograph by Gwendolyn Knight.

Hammershøi’s works — dazzling in their own right — reflect his focus on solitude, silence and a universe reduced to shades of gray.

In  Hammershøi’s interiors, most people, like “Woman Seen from the Back” (1888), are turned away or preoccupied.

During my recent preview stroll through the Vilhelm Hammershøi painting exhibition at the Frye Museum, the staff seemed a bit concerned about potential attendance — understandably so. Besides the fact that the 19th-century Danish artist Hammershøi is an unfamiliar name to most people, his work does not present the immediate dazzle and charm of his exact contemporaries, the Impressionists, whose crowd-pleasing celebrations of color, urban energy and pleasure are the opposite of Hammershøi’s focus on solitude, silence and a universe reduced to shades of gray. Once one overcomes, however, the initial shock of encountering such a restrained and understated vision, the subtle and sophisticated pleasures of this very eccentric artist’s work start to become apparent.

At Traver Gallery, Gregory Grenon and Mary Josephson draw on ancient techniques — like Coptic mosaics — to create portraits of women who are strong and enigmatic.

Portland artist Mary Josephson’s “Hero of Love” (embroidery on felt) is on display at the Traver Gallery. (REBEKAH-JOHNSON-PHOTOGRAPHY-20111)

Portland artist Gregory Grenon’s “Woman Received” (oil on glass) is a part of an exhibit that concentrates on close-ups of women. (REBEKAH-JOHNSON-PHOTOGRAPHY-2011)