Money Changers

It may be filthy lucre, but much of it is intricately beautiful, as Barton Lidicé Beneš’ Prayer Rug I illustrates. The New York sculptor, who died last year, is among the featured artists in the Bellevue Arts Museum’s “Love Me Tender” exhibition, February 22 through May 26. Beneš was known for assembling found objects, perhaps most famously AIDS medications and IV tubes, into reliquaries and shrines, but in his later years, he also fashioned world currencies into mandalas and other sacred patterns. In the BAM exhibition he is joined by James Charles, Máximo González, Mark Wagner, and others who have created tapestries, paintings, photographs, and sculptures that comment on the seductive power of money.