The special opening installation displays paintings and objects given to the Museum by and in appreciation of William P. Wood, to celebrate his life and legacy.

Beginning March 18, 1997, the Philadelphia Museum of Art will present some 20 works by Aalto and his contemporaries in Scandinavian Design 1930-1980, an exhibition in gallery 170 on the Museum's first floor. The installation will be drawn from the Museum's extensive collection of 20th-century design and will include works by Swedish, Danish and Norwegian makers in wood, glass, metal, ceramics and plastic.

Paul Klee (Swiss, 1879-1940), celebrated for his luminous use of color and for the rich fantasy world he created in his art, once described his technique as "taking a line for a walk." His interest in line, tonality, and color resulted in an innovative body of works on paper, which constitute the greatest part of his artistic output. The years Klee spent at the Bauhaus in Germany (1921-31) proved to be his most fertile.

During its long life, The Print Center has worked closely with the Philadelphia Museum of Art to encourage the study and appreciation of prints and photographs. The prints in Prized Impressions have been selected from more than one thousand works on paper given to the Museum by The Print Center and its members over the past seventy years.

This program presents two decades of videos made by artists using the formats of public service announcements and advertising. Many of the works were originally aired on broadcast or cable television.

India: A Celebration of Independence, 1947-1997 is a major travelling exhibition devoted to photographs of India. Organized by Michael E. Hoffman, Adjunct Curator of the Alfred Stieglitz Center of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, India will feature 250 images by 21 photographers, including Sunil Janah, Raghu Rai, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Sebastiao Salgado.

In a career spanning more than six decades, Philadelphia artist Rudolf Staffel (born 1911) has earned an international reputation for his revolutionary work in porcelain. This strong, white ceramic material can be made thin and translucent, and is perfectly suited to the artist's quest for luminous, freely-shaped forms. Rudolf Staffel: Searching for Light; Ceramics , 1936-1996, an exhibition on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from May 3 through August 7, 1997, presents a comprehensive overview of the the master ceramicist's work from 1936 to 1996.

This exhibition displays the two styles of Japanese landscape painting that evolved over the centuries along parallel lines: the Chinese monochrome ink painting tradition, and the native "Yamato-e" tradition.

This exhibition, drawn from the Museum's permanent collection, explores the rich variety of ceramics made during the Ch'ing Dynasty. The 35 works on view include pieces made at royal and provincial kilns for emperors as well as for foreign markets.

This installation celebrates the landscapes of the Pennsylvania Impressionists who worked closely together in New Hope at the beginning of the twentieth century. Also known as the New Hope School, these artists were rooted in the tradition of American Realism and influenced by the popularity of French Impressionism.

Juxtaposing the work of two remarkable artists, this installation invites reflection on matters of figuration and abstraction, miniature and gigantism, calculation and imagination--conventional oppositions that appear not to be so purely opposite after all. The accompanying brochure features a conversation with Close and Cadmus that illuminates their association on both an artistic and a personal level.

Auguste Rodin (French, 1840-1917) saw himself as the heir to a tradition of monumental nude sculpture in western art that stretched from ancient Greece and Rome, through the Renaissance, down to his own day. Within this tradition, Rodin expressed special esteem for the Italian Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564). As soon as Rodin began to achieve fame, around 1880, critics too recognized his debt to Michelangelo. This exhibition brings together drawings and sculptures by the two artists in order to suggest what Rodin learned from Michelangelo, and how he adapted the lessons of Michelangelo to his own, very different, sculptural concerns.

Auguste Rodin (French, 1840-1917) once spoke of his "intense passion for the expression of the human hands." This exhibition explores the range of meanings that the hand held for Rodin. It includes small studies of individual hands and full-scale figures in which the gestures of hands play an essential role in conveying meaning. For Rodin, the hand, and the sensuous interplay of hands within groups of figures, were defining components of his sculptures.

What we now know as the Renaissance came into being in the arts at the end of the 15th century at the same time that European scientists were moving away from relying on ancient texts in favor of conducting their own research. This major loan exhibition, organized by the National Gallery of Canada, presents for the first time four centuries of creative collaboration between science and art through the display of some 120 prints, drawings, and anatomical atlases dating from the late 15th to the early 19th century.

Dr. Harold Edgerton (American, 1903-1990) developed the stroboscope and electronic flash for high-speed, stop-action photography. His far-reaching experiments, begun at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the early 1930s and continuing into the 1980s, fundamentally changed the way we perceive the world by making visible the unseen, dynamic behavior of objects in motion. This exhibition presents a selection from the fifty-nine photographs most generously given to the Museum by The Harold and Esther Edgerton Family Foundation in 1996.

This exhibition features recent works by local artists who use the landmarks, neighborhoods, and inhabitants of Philadelphia as their subjects.

Herbert (1891-1976) and Nannette (1897-1979) Rothschild collected art with deep personal commitment. They were devoted to the major modernist schools of the early twentieth century, often traveling from New York to France in their search. Their collecting activities were inspired and encouraged by their daughter, the abstract painter Judith Rothschild (1921-1993). The collection is fascinating in its rich variety; in addition, important concentrations of works by Juan Gris and Piet Mondrian, with examples from the early careers of both artists, bring great depth to this presentation of early modernism.

London-born and London-trained, John Sartain set up as a printmaker in Philadelphia in 1830. He made his reputation in the United States by reviving the use of mezzotint engraving, a technique long favored in England -- even after the advent of photography -- as the most effective means of reproducing paintings as prints. To mark the centennial of the patriarch's death, the Philadelphia Museum of Art celebrates the accomplishments of the Sartain family with this installation of mezzotints by John Sartain drawn entirely from the Museum's own collection.

The works of art in this gallery -- drawn from the Museum's permanent holdings and lent by institutional and private owners -- are displayed in celebration of the Museum's recent acquisition of Jean-Antoine Houdon's marble bust of Benjamin Franklin, on view in the rotunda nearby (gallery 284). Thanks to the gifts from Mr. and Mrs. Wharton Sinkler and the collection of prints given in 1964 by Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and other donors, the Philadelphia Museum of Art possesses a notable collection of portraits of Benjamin Franklin, now crowned by Houdon's vivid likeness.

Twentieth-century viewers have come to value originality as a crucial component of artistic talent. Our predecessors, however, had different views. For centuries the imitation of earlier artists was a major part of artistic training, with students learning to draw mainly by copying prints and drawings. The ability to work "in the manner of" another artist was widely praised, and some printmakers based their entire careers on this skill. Prints played an especially important role in this process.

Susan Barron's Labyrinth of Time is a unique, eleven-volume artist's book completed in 1987. Exhibited here for only the second time in this country, in an installation conceived by the artist, this book is a compilation of works by Barron made in different mediums over a fifteen-year period.

Much of today's most dynamic video art is made by younger women, and it is their work that is featured in Up Close and Personal. These artists often use a performance-based approach in which the artist herself is cast as the key performer in a staged situation in which she addresses the viewer directly. The Museum's exhibition features works by 13 artists from the United States and Europe, including Cheryl Donegan, Vanessa Beecroft, Alix Lambert, Sadie Benning, Gillian Wearing, and Alex Bag.

The works on display in this exhibition present a survey of objects and furniture designed by the architect Richard Meier (American, born 1934). Meier follows a long and distinguished tradition of architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Josef Hoffmann, Alvar Aalto, and Walter Gropius who stressed, to varying degrees, the importance of the "total environment." In his product design as in his architecture, Meier adheres to a classically modernist vocabulary focusing on proportion, balance, and the manipulation of basic geometry.

This exhibition examines the important patronage, influence, and support of the early artistic and cultural development of the American colonies and the new republic supplied by several generations of the Cadwalader family of Philadelphia.

An exhibition of shawls, on view for the first time, includes about forty objects dating from the 18th and 19th centuries. The exhibition focuses upon the evolution of shawl design and corresponding artistic interchanges between India and Europe. Related articles of women's dress complement the shawls.

Charles Willson Peale, his brother, sons, nieces and nephew were artists and naturalists whose works illustrate intellectual developments in 18th and 19th-century America. In addition to the artists' works, the exhibition explores themes including the family in America, the impact of changing social and political ideas on art, and the uses and functions of art. The Philadelphia Museum of Art is the first venue for this national touring exhibition.