This installation, drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection, brings together objects employed in the service and consumption of alcoholic beverages.

Members of India’s elite have long been great patrons of both music and the visual arts. This exhibition explores some of the ways court artists have sought to create a bridge between these two rich artistic traditions, by translating the aural qualities of music into a visible form.

Drawn from the collection of Charles K. Williams II, a distinguished archaeologist and Director Emeritus of the Corinth Excavations of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, this exhibition includes approximately 100 paintings, sculptures, watercolors, and drawings from the early decades of the 20th century.

Marcel Duchamp’s enigmatic assemblage Étant donnés: 1. La chute d’eau, 2. Le gaz d’éclairage (Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas) has been described by the artist Jasper Johns as “the strangest work of art in any museum.” Permanently installed at the Museum since 1969, this three-dimensional environmental tableau offers an unforgettable and untranslatable experience to those who peer through the two small holes in the solid wooden door.

Common Ground examines a critical period for the art of photography and for the Philadelphia art scene. In the 1960s, photographers including Emmet Gowin, Will Larson, and Ray K. Metzker, among the first generation of photographers trained in university art departments, all came to Philadelphia to teach in the city’s renowned art schools, bringing with them experimental approaches to the medium.

From classical Noh theater to poetry competitions to the joys of fishing, the pleasures and pastimes depicted in Japanese art are many and varied. This exhibition features masks and gorgeous costumes of the Noh theater as well as libretti and musical instruments that accompany the Noh performances.

Internationally recognized as one of the most innovative and influential artists of the twentieth century, Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973) was at his most ferociously inventive between 1905 and 1945. Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris surveys his work during these crucial decades, when he transformed the history of art through his innate virtuosity and protean creativity.

An exhibition of some fifty works dating from the late nineteenth century to the present, The Platinum Process showcases a selection of outstanding platinum prints drawn from the Museum’s collection. Highlights include photographs by early masters of the platinum process including Frederick H. Evans and Paul Strand, as well as works by skilled contemporary practitioners such as Lois Conner.