Columbia Museum of Art to salute ‘Immaculate Conception’ before sending it to the Vatican for a few months

Not often does an artwork get a going-away party. But that’s what the Columbia Museum of Art is doing for Jusepe de Ribera’s “The Immaculate Conception” before sending it off to the Vatican next week. The 1637 painting depicting the Virgin Mary carried into the sky by cherubs will be part of the Vatican exhibition “A Woman Dressed in the Sun: Iconography of the Immaculate Conception.” It will join other artworks on the theme from around the world. The exhibition will be on display from Feb. 11 to May 13; the painting will be back in Columbia this summer. While dozens of artworks in the museum’s collection are on loan, this is one of the most significant ever. “Hundreds of thousands of people will see the picture,” said David Steel, curator of European art at the N.C. Museum of Art, when the loan was announced in October. For the send-off, the museum will offer free admission from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday. Bishop Robert Baker of the Catholic Diocese of Charleston will bless the painting at 2:30 p.m., and Sister Pamela Smith will give a talk about Mary in theology and the arts. Several others from religious and arts organizations also will take part.