NCMA staff members show off the many variations of “El Anatsui.”

The rare painting is a large oil study for one of John Singer Sargent’s murals in the Boston Public Library.

Once all the offending overpaint was removed, a stunning, original self-portrait of a 28-year-old Rembrandt emerged.

Our esteemed curator of Northern European art has a confession to make.

Let me be frank. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it happen more than once. Someone moved to tears by a painting? Yeah, right! But it’s true. Lucretia, depicting a bleeding, heartbroken, dying figure, is obviously a tearjerker. We’re seeing it in the galleries quite frequently. One visitor’s sobs prompted a guard to ask if she needed assistance; another’s pacing in front of the painting was sad and intense; a pair of women in conversation on a nearby bench, tearful, emotional. I’m a guy. Honestly, I don’t get it. However, I do get that the ability to pull powerful emotions with strokes of a paintbrush is real genius.

For our first juried college art exhibition, accompanying Rembrandt in America, NCMA educators collaborated with a curatorial class at UNC—Chapel Hill…