Art by Prasad Kusaram, taken from Signature: Patterns in Gond Art , Copyright Tara Books 2010 More

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC/Art Resource, NY Thanks to leftist pressure and agitation, the New Deal’s welfare programs were oriented toward egalitarian goals. This painting, Filling the Ice House , was created by Harry Gottlieb under the auspices of the New Deal’s Public Works More

Vertumnus ( 4sightfoto.com ) Art installations like this “Dust City Diner” — a 1950s-style eatery flawlessly recreated amid the dust devils of the Black Rock Desert — add to the festival’s surreal atmosphere. Installations range from a giant vagina through which one can be “reborn More

Creative Commons/Charles Foster Denise Levertov’s faith, art, and politics were all informed with “the kind of passion that kept Jacob up all night wrestling with an angel, demanding a new name for himself,” David Shaddock writes. More

Nurture Maya Freelon Asante | Courtesy of the artist and Morton Fine Art | maya-freelonasante.squarespace.com and www.mortonfineart.com More

Creative Commons/ National Museum of Western Art/Giorgio Vasari The Garden of Gethsemane by Giorgio Vasari. More

Figure 4 Facing page: Art by Peghq (Arno Hovhannisyan and Samson Martirosyan) More

The New York Public Library/Art Resource, NY What defines a prophet? Is it a moral compulsion to uphold justice? Here, the Prophet Isaiah weeps over Jerusalem in a sixteenth-century woodcut by Hans Holbein the Younger. More

Tikkun Judson Memorial Church celebrates the use of provocative art to open churchgoers to fresher and deeper forms of worship. One Christmas, a congregant strung chili pepper Christmas lights from the church’s roof to evoke the Virgin Mary’s cleavage. More

Owen Ross Sidewalk art in the Juarez Valley raises a call for peace in a region riven with violence from the drug war. More