The Philadelphia Museum of Art will present a special installation devoted to the work of the English artists Gilbert & George who have created all their work in collaboration since the late 1960s and are known for their dramatic, large-scale photographic art. Drawn from the Museum collection and supplemented by additional loans, Gilbert & George (May 2-November 2, 2008) includes 13 pictures indicative of the major phases of their art from the 1970s and 1980s. On view in the Alter Gallery (Gallery 176, first floor), the installation is the fifth in the Museum’s Notations series.

Gilbert Proesch (born 1942) and George Passmore (born Italy 1943) met in 1967 while training as sculptors at St. Martin’s School of Art in London and shortly thereafter the two artists dropp...

A magical machine transforms imperfect husbands into ideal spouses. A natural disaster competes with miraculous apparitions and serial murders to astonish the eye. A two-and-a-half-foot-tall souvenir poster produced in the year of the Eiffel Tower’s construction serves as both a game board and a celebration of the world-famous landmark. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has joined these memorable images with dozens of other prints culled from its vast collection for Curious and Commonplace: European Popular Prints of the 1800s (May 31-August 24, 2008). Spanning the 19th century, many of the 88 prints on view include narrative texts or folk ballads in French, Dutch, German and, in one case, fractured English. Among these often-humorous, always-intriguing images are the precursor...

The kimono, the national dress of Japan, is celebrated worldwide for its elegant, distinctive silhouette. Though quintessentially Japanese, the kimono form has influenced fashion designers around the globe. The Philadelphia Museum of Art will present an exhibition featuring approximately 80 kimono created in the early-to-mid-twentieth century – one of the most dynamic periods in the history of this dress form. Fashioning Kimono: Art Deco and Modernism in Japan includes formal, semi-formal, and casual kimono, haori jackets, and under-kimono worn by men, women, and children. It will be on view in the Spain Gallery for Costume and Textiles at the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building. While many of these kimono reflect historical continuity in designs and techniques, man...