Saint Louis Art Museum
“Symbols of Power: Napoleon and the Art of the Empire Style, 1800–1815” (through Sept. 16)

Napoleon Bonaparte was notorious for his deft use of propaganda, which extended to the decorative and fine arts as well as to the burgeoning press. Crowning himself emperor in 1802, he demanded his designers furnish his royal residences at Versailles, Malmaison and Fontainebleau in an imperial style, hiring architects Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine to implement his vision. For their furnishings, they culled motifs from Egypt, Greece and Rome, associating Napoleon with these powerful ancient civilizations, and they organized these newly designed objects of power into dramatic, imposing settings that reaffirmed the emperor’s imperial supremacy and position. “Symbols of Power” presents more than 140 decorative artworks, including furniture, wallpaper, silver, porcelain, jewelry and clothing. The show is a rare opportunity to see some of the most opulent and forceful art of the 19th century.

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.
“The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings” (through Sept. 16)

Everyone knows the work of Claude Monet—or so they think. “The Unknown Monet,” organized in conjunction with the Royal Academy of Arts in London, presents a new side of the famous Impressionist, who everyone believed painted empirically, setting his canvas up in front of his motif and proceeding to paint exactly what he saw, not what he knew. Now it appears Monet made studies for pictures, and “The Unknown Monet” presents a vast graphic world that even scholars to date have either underplayed or outright ignored, despite Monet’s having shown seven pastels in the first Impressionist Exhibition of 1874. The Clark Institute exhibition includes 20 pastels, in addition to dozens of drawings and sketchbooks. And there could be no better summer setting for this exhibition than the beautiful Berkshires. Also in Williamstown is the Williams College Museum of Art, and cavernous MASS MoCA is just down the road in North Adams.

Tate Modern, London
“Dalí & Film” (through Sept. 9)

In 1929 Salvador Dalí made his grand entrance into the Paris art world with the presentation of his now-famous film, “Un Chien Andalou,” a surrealistic work made with compatriot Luis Buñuel, filled with terrifying and erotic imagery, most of it based on Freudian psychology. And yet, not until this exhibition has there been an intensive study of the relationship of Dalí’s paintings to his films. Sixty Dalí paintings and another 40 photographs, drawings and films— including the famous animated sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound” (1945)— demonstrate the profound impact that cinema had on the development of the artist’s Surrealism, and remind us that Dalí, despite his destructive commercial self-promotion late in life, remains one of the most fertile and influential artists of the 20th century.

Victoria and Albert Museum, London
“Surreal Things: Surrealism and Design” (through July 22)

Surrealism was hardly confined to the fine arts—the movement had an enormous influence on the decorative arts, fashion, theater, film and even advertising. This is the first extensive exploration of Surrealism’s impact on these fields, and will include such disturbing, provocative or erotic objects  as Salvador Dalí’s “Mae West Lips Sofa” and “Lobster Telephone,” Meret Oppenheim’s “Table with Bird’s Legs” and “Fur Bracelet,” Elsa Schiaparelli’s “Tear” and “Skeleton” dresses, Oscar Dominguez’s satin-lined “Wheelbarrow” armchair, and advertisements for Shell Oil and Ford Motors in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Also included are Surrealist film clips, such as Dalí’s mindbending sequence from Hitchcock’s “Spellbound.” This exhibition promises to be one of the year’s most wondrous and fantastical.

The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
“Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt” (through Aug. 26)

The quilts of the remote rural African- American community of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, are hardly new to the art world. Revealed in 2002 in the first version of this show, which comes largely from a collection put together by Atlanta art dealer and collector Bill Arnett, it was shown, among other places, at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art.

This second selection, organized like the first by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Arnett’s Tinwood Alliance and traveling to other museums, focuses on the compositions of Gee’s Bend quilts made from 1925 to the present day, demonstrating the development of such innovative patterns as housetop, bricklayer, medallions and strip quilting.

The triumph of the quilts is their ability to reinvigorate the American quiltmaking tradition with new motifs, patterns and palette.

Gee’s Bend quilts, like most 20th-century African-American quilts, are dazzling abstractions, irregular in pattern and syncopation, their expressionistic power in many respects paralleling improvisational jazz. We can never get enough of these spectacular works, which rank among the finest art of the century. Ideally, this show would travel forever.

Art critic Joseph Jacobs is executive director of The Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation, New York, and an Art & Antiques’ contributing editor.