Engraving Pyramid Tomb of Caius Cestius {From the Le Vedute di Roma (The Views of Rome), 1748-78} from the exhibit, Piranesi: The Grandeur of Ancient Rome. Sixty works by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, one of the major artists of 18th century Italian etching, are featured in this exhibition. Born in Venice and educated to be an architect, Piranesi spent most of his life in Rome, becoming an authority on Roman archaeology. Architectural remains of ancient Rome were a major source of inspiration to Piranesi, whose goal— was realized in numerous, often large-scale etchings of famous ancient sites. A superb technician, Piranesi combined a mastery of draftsmanship and perspective, a strong knowledge and love of Roman antiquities, a sense of drama and an epic imagination in his etchings. This traveling exhibition, coordinated by Blair-Murrah, includes engravings of Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli, the ancient Roman Forum and the Pyramid Tomb of Caius Cestius, as well as many tombs, ancient amphitheaters, bridges, fountains and temples. Through June 16.

Carlos Garaicoa; Garaicoa has been working since the early 1990s using a multidisciplinary approach that includes architecture and urbanism, narrative, history, and politics. His works are charged with provocative commentary on issues such as architecture’s ability to alter the course of history, the failure of modernism as a catalyst for social change, and the frustration and decay of 20th-century utopias.

For centuries, complex adobe structures, many of them quite massive, have been built in the Sahal region of western Africa—Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso. Made of earth mixed with water, these ephemeral buildings display a remarkable diversity of form, human ingenuity and originality.

British photographer James Morris offers a stunning visual survey of these structures, from monumental mosques to family homes, in Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa, Photographs by James Morris.