"Art Beat" With Stephanie Kaye - Monday, November 9, 2009

By Stephanie Kaye

(November 8-July 4) AFRICA IN MEXICO The African presence in Mexico is explored at the Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum in Southeast D.C. through July 2010. The traveling exhibit comes by way of Chicago, where curators examined the history, culture and art of Afro-Mexicans, beginning with the colonial era and continuing to the present day. Highlights include "casta" paintings delineating racial categories and the hero/slave rebel Yanga.

(November 10) TWELVE CELLISTS Forget about the Three Tenors...the Twelve Cellists come to the Music Center at Strathmore](http://www.strathmore.org) in North Bethesda, Maryland for a performance at 8 p.m. tomorrow night. This renegade ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic shows what a dozen "stringers" can do. The concert commemorates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

(November 10-January 17) SHOWBOAT It's time to get on the Showboat as Signature Theater reinvents yet another classic musical. "Showboat" opens tomorrow and runs through January 17th. The show captures life on the Mississippi River from before the Industrial Revolution to the days of the flapper; and the lives, loves and heartbreaks of three generations of actors and entertainers.