The printed image lies at the heart of the work of many contemporary artists, but just as printed materials have become ubiquitous in visual culture, passing nearly unnoticed, so too have print processes become an integral part of art-making without always being acknowledged. The central role of the printed image in contemporary art is the focus of the international festival, PHILAGRAFIKA 2010, to be held throughout the city of Philadelphia January 29-April 11, 2010, with over 300 artists participating in exhibitions and programs at more than 80 cultural institutions. The core exhibition of the festival, The Graphic Unconscious, will be shown across five venues, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Museum will present installations by the Japanese artist Tabaimo (b. 1...

One of the most innovative and influential artists of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973) was at his most inventive between 1905 and 1945. The Philadelphia Museum of Art will present Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris (February 24 - April 25, 2010) surveying Picasso’s remarkable output during these years, from the pioneering role he played in the development of Cubism to his dialogue with Surrealism and other important art movements in the 1920s and 1930s. The exhibition also explores the pivotal role that the city of Paris played in the history of modern art, where artists from around the world made the French capital a center of innovation. It will include nearly 200 paintings, drawings, and sculptures by Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger,...

Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker, one of the artist’s most famous works and a familiar fixture of Philadelphia’s Rodin Museum, will be reinstalled on its pedestal outside the Museum’s entrance on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on Wednesday, January 13th. Since June, the sculpture has been on display in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Great Stair Hall, while the Rodin Museum’s limestone façade, known as the Meudon Monument, underwent restoration.

Modeled after the 18th-century façade of the Château d’Issy, which Rodin had installed at his estate at Meudon, France, the structure was cleaned to remove the layer of vehicular grime and pollution that had accumulated on its surface during the past 80 years. Its façade was also repointed and its stone repaired where necessary. ...