Commemorating the 100-year birth date of Milwaukee’s Santos Zingale, the Museum of Wisconsin Art (MWA) showcases the work of this prolific artist honored posthumously with the Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006. The exhibition “Santos Zingale: A Retrospective” opens March 5 and presents 40 pieces of artwork, primarily oil paintings, from the years 1929-1993. An emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, Zingale inspired future artists even beyond his retirement from teaching in 1978, continually painting until his death at age 91. Zingale’s artwork defies stylistic definition, with the 70-year span of his career capturing a variety of subjects. Beginning in the ’20s and lasting through the Depression, his artistic themes represented social and political issues that included paintings of people overlooked in society, including several murals for the WPA Federal Art Project.

When Marcel Duchamp signed a urinal and submitted it to an exhibit in 1917, it was more than just a brazen gesture. It sounded the knell of art as it was previously known. After bringing it down to the lowest common denominator, what else remained?

The six-week-long River Arts Festival in Sauk Prairie begins Feb. 23, a rural delight just an hour-plus drive from the metro Milwaukee area. This year’s annual offering coordinates with an exclusive exhibit traveling from the Smithsonian Institution, “Between Fences,” which speaks to the barriers and boundaries existing between neighbors, neighborhoods, communities and countries. Each event hosted by the River Arts Festival develops this central theme through a variety of unique artistic experiences.

An exhibition of etchings by William Hogarth at the Haggerty Museum (through April 13) shows an artist proudly exerting the ideals of English liberty by deftly holding his society up to scorn. Despite the didactic tone of much of the work in this exhibit, it’s clear the artist held no human virtue to be entirely incorruptible.

The John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) is beginning a seven-month public project that will use sidewalk art to commemorate the oral history of Sheboygan. Collaborating with Community Partners, a group of 15 nonprofit organizations within the area, JMKAC will present “Sidewalk Stories.” The project will bring both new art and sidewalks to Sheboygan, revitalizing neighborhoods throughout the city.

No wonder paranoids flourish,” says Nicholas Frank in his curatorial statement for “The Flight of Fake Tears,” a new exhibit at Inova/Kenilworth Gallery. He describes the void, the blank page, the unaccountable matter ingrained in our very existence, as the seat of a primal anxiety. Whether its through a tantalizing . . .

In the period between World War I and II, photographic art appeared to “change the world by trying to see it differently,” using new technology and technical expression discovered through the lens of a camera. Recording this change in photography is the Milwaukee Art Museum’s latest exhibit, planned . . .

The Haggerty Museum of Art opens a pair of noteworthy exhibitions over the next few weeks.

When first looking at an oil “portrait” by Milwaukee artist Andre Saint-Louis, viewers may feel cheated.

A trio of art exhibitions brings contemporary and classic images to galleries this week. The Inova/Kenilworth gallery at UW- Milwaukee hosts a special project, “The Trouble With People You Don’t Know,” by Chicago artist Deb Sokolow.