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Editor's Note: In early September 2007, the Philadelphia Museum of Art will open the new Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, which will house expanded galleries and state of the art study centers in an exemplary art deco building acquired by the Museum and renovated and expanded by Gluckman Maynor Architects.

• Live Cinema/Marine Hugonnier: Trilogy
  April 20 – July 22, 2007

  
  Marine Hugonnier's Trilogy engages the "politics of vision," the notion that cultural and political conditions contribute to shape perception and perspective. Each shot frames and affects what is filmed in the projects that comprise the series: Ariana (2003), The Last Tour (2004), and Travelling Amazonia (2006).
  
  In Ariana, the panoramic view of a landscape becomes an object of desire. Hugonnier and her film crew, on-location in Afghanistan, search for a place from which to capture footage of the Panjsher Valley. The discovery that only Afghani government officials have access to the vantage point of choice transforms something as intangible as the view of a landscape into a politically charged subject.
  
  The Last Tour imagines a future deprived of the experience of seeing sweeping images of the landscape. Hugonnier embarks on a fictive journey through the Matterhorn Mountain to mark its closing to the public, suggesting how tourism may determine perception of landscape and reality.
  
  Travelling Amazonia centers around Hugonnier's project of capturing Brazil’s trans-Amazonian highway on film. The road, initially constructed in the 1970s but never fully completed, becomes a metaphor for the failure of the nationalistic project from which it sprung.
  
  A French artist currently living in London, Hugonnier holds degrees in philosophy and cultural anthropology. Her work draws from a rich history of experimental film and video art and recent cultural theory. Like Jean-Luc Godard and Jean Rouch, Hugonnier explores the boundaries between fiction and truth and the conditions that shape perception.
  
  In conjunction with Live Cinema/Marine Hugonnier: Trilogy, Marine Hugonnier will participate in a lively public conversation with Carlos Basualdo, the Museum’s Curator of Contemporary Art, at 6pm on April 20, 2007 (Seminar Room). The public is invited (free with Museum admission).
  
  About Live Cinema
  Live Cinema is a series of programs in the Film and Video Gallery of the Philadelphia Museum of Art that explores the vast production of single-channel video and film work by a diverse group of local, national, and international artists. In the last decade an ever-increasing number of contemporary artists have appropriated these mediums as an artistic outlet, in a dialogue with the early video and Super 8 practices of the sixties and the tradition of experimental filmmaking. Each program of the Live Cinema series focuses on a specific aspect of this work, in order to both map and analyze this important facet of contemporary art production. Certain Live Cinema programs are accompanied by a brochure where guest writers discuss the works exhibited, and also by public lectures given by the participating artists.
  
  Catalogue
  Marine Hugonnier has produced an artist’s book to mark the occasion of the Trilogy's tour. The book presents color stills and narrative captions for each film in addition to an essay by the artist that details the artistic process behind each work and her conception of the films as a series. The publication may be purchased from the Museum store. For more information, call (215) 684-7960.
  
  Schedule
  Ariana
  2003
  16 mm film (color) transferred to DVD
  18 minutes, 36 seconds
  Courtesy of the Artist and Max Wigram Gallery
  April 20 – May 20, 2007
  
  Travelling Amazonia
  2006
  16 mm film (color) transferred to DVD
  23 minutes, 52 seconds
  Courtesy of the Artist and Max Wigram Gallery
  June 26 – July 22, 2007
  
  The Last Tour
  2004
  16 mm film (color) transferred to DVD
  14 minutes, 17 seconds
  Courtesy of the Artist and Max Wigram Gallery
  May 22 – June 24, 2007
  
  Curators: Carlos Basualdo, Curator of Contemporary Art and Erica Fisher, Department of Modern and Contemporary Art
  Location: Film and Video Gallery 179
  
  Itinerary:
  Fodazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy (October 18, 2007 – January 6, 2008)
  Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, Switzerland (October 26, 2007 – December 9, 2007)
  

  
  
  
• Particulars of Place: Photo Portfolios from the Collection
  April 21 – November 4, 2007

  
  This exhibition of portfolios from the Museum's collection showcases a variety of artists who have captured the essence of place by focusing on physical, psychological, or spiritual associations. Juxtaposed portfolios will reveal each artist's approach to understanding "place" as it relates to their subject. Paul Strand, an early and dedicated believer in the power of sequencing pictures, explores a site close to his heart and close to home in The Garden, a tribute to his undisciplined plot of land in Orgeval, France. Paul Caponigro tackles the majestic and spiritual overtones of the ancient menhirs at Stonehenge in a dozen photographs selected from his extensive series on the subject. James Fee concentrates on Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary; his delicate, spooky images of the massive structure suggest traces of lives encarcerated within its walls. Also on view will be Alen MacWeeney's images of Ireland, evoking a sense of place using portraits of people.

  Curator: Katherine Ware, Curator of Photographs
  Location: The Julien Levy Gallery, ground floor
  
  
  
• Ike Taiga and Tokuyama Gyokuran: Japanese Masters of the Brush
  May 1 – July 22, 2007

  
  Philadelphia is the only venue for this exhibition of works by the 18h century Japanese master of ink painting Ike Taiga (1723-1776) and his wife Tokuyama Gyokuran (1727-1784), the first in the United States to focus on Taiga. It will bring together key works from Japanese and Western collections and provide an in-depth look at the major Japanese artist of the 18th century whose inventiveness and endless experimentation laid the groundwork for the multiple paths that Japanese artists would follow in succeeding generations. The exhibition will contain over 200 exceptional and rarely seen screens, handscrolls, and hanging scrolls, as well as album and fan paintings by Taiga and Gyokuran. Among them will be designated Japanese National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties, several of which will be seen outside Japan for the first time.

  Curator: Felice Fischer, The Luther W. Brady Curator of East Asian Art
  Location: Dorrance Galleries, first floor
  
  Press Release
  
  
  
• William H. Johnson’s World on Paper
  May 19 – August 12, 2007

  
  The career of William H. Johnson (1901–1970) was one of the most brilliant yet tragic of any early 20th-century American artist. Best known for his lively paintings of the African American experience in the rural South and urban North, Johnson was also an accomplished printmaker and watercolorist whose style shifted from dramatic expressionism to what he termed a more “primitive” approach using bright and contrasting colors and flattened, two-dimensional forms. The exhibition examines, for the first time, his achievements as a graphic artist. Delicate watercolors and tempra paintings, bold woodcut prints, and colorful screenprints reveal the African American modernist to be one of the most inventive artists of his generation.

  The exhibition is drawn largely from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the largest and most extensive holding of Johnson’s work in all mediums.

  In addition to 38 woodcuts and screenprints, 32 drawings, watercolors, and tempra paintings provide an overview of Johnson’s career, both in Europe in the 1930s and in New York in the 1940s. Among the varied subjects of his work are early landscapes of Denmark, Norway and North Africa; portraits of his neighbors in Denmark; scenes of daily life in Harlem and the rural South; and scenes of black enlisted men and female volunteers of World War II. The exhibition reveals Johnson’s stylistic development from his academic beginnings to a more expressionistic mode and finally to his distinctive form of figurative abstraction based on folk art and African colors and patterns.

  Sponsors: The exhibition tour is supported in part by the C.F. Foundation, Atlanta.
  Organizers: This exhibition is organized and circulated by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
  
  Curator: John Ittmann, Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs
  Location: Berman and Steiglitz Galleries, ground floor
  
  Itinerary:
  Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX (February 3–April 8, 2007)
  Philadelphia Museum of Art (May 19–August 12, 2007)
  Montgomery Museum of Art, Montgomery, AL (September 15–November 18, 2007)
  
  
  
• Forging an American Identity: The Art of William Ranney
  June 26 – August 19, 2007

  
  The American painter William Ranney (1813-1857) was best known for his western canvases, but his range of work included portraits, hunting and sporting pictures, lighthearted genre scenes and historical portrayals. From historical subjects such as Washington Rallying the Americans at the Battle of Princeton to such iconic scenes as Boone’s First View of Kentucky and depictions of western expansion including The Trapper’s Last Shot and Kit Carson, Ranney’s vibrant and powerful images had a defining influence on the way Americans viewed themselves. Forging an American Identity: The Art of William Ranney is the first comprehensive exhibition of Ranney’s career in over 40 years.

  Taken together, Ranney's works present a portrait of early American life and westward expansion while evoking a mythology that vividly reflected the artist’s own time and place. His subjects range from Revolutionary War scenes to families headed to the Frontier, from the festivity of a Virginia wedding to the grief of burying a child who died on the prairie. Painting in the mid-1800s, Ranney frequently imagined the anonymous figures that established new communities, creating images of self-reliant people struggling to settle and cultivate a wild landscape. Containing few references to the Native American populations, his work expressed a distinctively 19th-century Euro-American viewpoint that reinforced enduring concepts relating to the character of the American people. Some 60 works of art have been gathered from public and private collections across the U.S. for this show.

  Catalogue
  Scholars Linda Bantel and Peter Hassrick have catalogued and analyzed the paintings, providing the context for the interpretation in the exhibition. Their documentation of all the known works by Ranney appears in the publication Forging an American Identity: The Art of William Ranney: With a Catalogue of His Works. The book also includes essays by Boehme and by painting conservator Mark Bockrath. Catalogues may be purchased from the Museum store. For more information, call (215) 684-7960.
  
  Sponsors: This exhibition is supported by the Henry Luce Foundation; 1957 Charity Foundation; Mrs. J. Maxwell (Betty) Moran; Mr. Ranney Moran; the National Endowment for the Arts; and the Wyoming Arts Council, through funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wyoming State Legislature.
  Organizers: Organized by the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming
  
  Curator: Kathleen Foster, The Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Curator of American Art
  Location: Dorrance Special Exhibition Galleries, first floor
  
  Itinerary:
  Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas (February 10–May 13, 2007)
  Philadelphia Museum of Art (June 26–August 19, 2007)
  
  
  
  
• Tibetan Ritual Arts
  July 2007 – November 2007

  
  Most traditional Tibetan art is intended for ritual use. This exhibition, built around the Museum’s recently conserved Tibetan-Buddhist altar, explores some of the rituals associated with Tibetan art. Whether increasing one’s lifespan, promoting a better rebirth in the next life, or trapping and destroying evil spirits that bring misfortune and illness in this life, Tibetan rituals provide a full sensory experience. Devotees engage all five senses by viewing paintings and sculptures, hearing recitations and music, tasting and smelling food and incense, and touching luxurious silk offerings.
  
  This pageantry is exquisitely detailed in paintings in which monks invoke deities through the use of fabulous ritual implements such as the Ghanta Bell and the Vajra Scepter, both of which will also be on view. Due to their specialized and obscure nature, these and other ritual objects often baffle non-initiates. The exhibition reveals the coded meanings of selected Tibetan ritual implements, paintings, sculptures, textiles, prints, and how they relate to the Museum’s recently conserved Tibetan Altar.

  Curator: Katherine Anne Paul, Associate Curator of Indian and Himalayan Art
  Location: Gallery 232, second floor
  
  
  
• The Book of War: The Free Library of Philadelphia’s Mughal Razmnama Folios (working title)
  July 14 – December 9, 2007

  
  Among the many treasures of the Lewis Collection in the Free Library of Philadelphia are 25 elaborately illustrated folios from a single Mughal manuscript, the Razmnama (literally, 'Book of War'), dated to 1598-99 and created during the reign of the great Mughal Emperor Akbar (r. 1556- 1605). In both text and illustrations the Razmnama speaks to the diverse cultural, religious, and linguistic character of the Mughal court. The text represents the effort of a Muslim ruler to understand the foundations of Hinduism, so deeply rooted in his kingdom; the images herald the creation of a new artistic language. Although the pages from this Razmnama have been dispersed to collections around the world, they were once bound into a single book whose folios numbered in the hundreds. For the first time since 1923, all 25 of the Free Library’s pages will be displayed together.
  
  Most of the books produced at Akbar's imperial workshop were written in Persian, the official court language. These texts are royal histories, epics, and poetic narratives drawn from the literature of the Persian world. Surprisingly, although the Razmnama is written in Persian, its subject is not Islamic. It is a translation of the Mahabharata, one of the great epics of Hinduism. Akbar himself commissioned scholars to abridge and translate this essential Hindu text so that it would be more widely accessible.
  
  The many exquisite and elaborate illustrations that comprise the Razmnama reflect Akbar's imperial atelier, where artists recruited directly from the Persian court worked side by side with Central Asian and Indian artists, often collaborating on the same manuscripts. In addition, many imported European prints and painting entered the Mughal collection during the late 16th century and artists adapted selected European characteristics, such as the illusion of depth through shading, into their own work.
  
  The Book of War: The Free Library of Philadelphia’s Mughal Razmnama Folios affords a rare opportunity to explore an exciting moment of artistic experimentation and cultural exchange through the lens of a single manuscript, and is the happy result of an ongoing collaboration between two Philadelphia institutions.

  Curators: Darielle Mason, The Stella Kramrisch Curator of Indian and Himalayan Art and Yael Rice, University of Pennsylvania
  Location: The William P. Wood Gallery 227, second floor
  
  
  
• Opening of the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building: New Galleries and Study Centers
  Fall 2007 - Spring 2008

  The new galleries and study centers in the Perelman Building, across the street from the neo-classical main building overlooking the Ben Franklin Parkway, will provide a highly anticipated opportunity to showcase much more of the Museum’s collections in spaces designed by Gluckman-Mayner Architects. In far greater depth visitors will see the collections of Costume and Textiles, Modern and Contemporary Design, Photographs, and the special collections of the Library and Archives including rare books, photographs, documents, drawings and correspondence of unique importance. A large gallery will open with a survey of sculpture through the ages and a small niche gallery will display new acquisitions in prints and drawings. Below are descriptions of the inaugural exhibitions highlighting richness of collections that, until this year, the Museum has never had sufficient space to present to maximum advantage.

  
  
  
  • Designing Modern: 1920 to the Present
    Fall 2007 - Spring 2008

    
    Celebrating the opening of the Collab Gallery, devoted to modern and contemporary design, this opening exhibition in the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building will survey the collection with highlights of furniture, ceramics, glass, metalwork, textiles, and works on paper. Some of these works are housed in the departments of Costumes and Textiles, Prints, Drawings and Photographs, and the Library, crossing departmental boundaries and drawing from all the collections that newly occupy the Perelman Building. The exhibition will be divided chronologically into four sections: 1920s-1930s; 1940s-1950s; 1960s-l970s; 1980s- present, and arranged largely geographically within. Photo-blowups of important buildings created during each time period will provide architectural context, as will videos of period advertisements.

    Curator: Kathryn Hiesinger, Curator of European and Decorative Arts after 1700
    Location: The Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, Collab Gallery
    
    
    
    
    
  • Alfred Stieglitz at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (working title)
    Fall 2007 - Spring 2008

    
    A preeminent figure in 20th-century photography, Alfred Stieglitz changed the face of the medium with his well-crafted prints, his passionate efforts to establish photography as a fine art, and his daring Manhattan art gallery known as 291. After his death in 1946, his wife Georgia O’Keeffe carefully selected a handful of institutions to receive representative gifts of his work. Her 1949 donation to the Philadelphia Museum of Art formed the foundation for the Museum’s collection of photographs, now numbering around 29,000 images.
    
    The inaugural exhibition in the new Julien Levy Gallery pays tribute to this integral and treasured holding by featuring approximately 40 images drawn from the Museum’s collection of 600 photographs by the artist. In addition to O’Keeffe’s gift in 1949, the exhibition will feature work by Stieglitz from the collection of Philadelphia-born photographer Dorothy Norman, a student and close associate of Stieglitz’s who donated her personal collection to the Museum and founded its Alfred Stieglitz Center in his honor. Also included are recent gifts from the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation that have not been exhibited previously. Demonstrating the range of Stieglitz’s career, the exhibition will include large photogravures, portraits of artists, selections from the series Georgia O’Keeffe: A Portrait and Equivalents, a group of portraits of Dorothy Norman, images of poplar trees at his family retreat at Lake George, and views of New York City photographed from the artist’s apartment in the Shelton Hotel.

    Curator: Katherine Ware, Curator of Photographs
    Location: The Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, Levy Gallery
    
    
    
    
    
  • A Passion for Perfection: James Galanos, Gustave Tassell, Ralph Rucci
    Fall 2007 - Spring 2008

    
    The opening exhibition in the new Joan and Bernard Spain Gallery will highlight works from the Museum’s costume collection by three award-winning fashion designers hailing from Philadelphia: James Galanos, Gustave Tassell, and Ralph Rucci. Connected by a web of personal influence in addition to shared Philadelphia roots, each has brought to ready-to-wear the craftsmanship and attention to detail that marks Paris haute couture.
    
    A master couturier, Galanos worked briefly for Robert Piguet in Paris before moving to California where he produced luxurious and elegant clothing “off the peg” from 1951 until 1998 for an exclusive clientele including Nancy Reagan and Rosalind Russell. Galanos encouraged Tassell, who had studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, to move to Los Angeles in 1956, where he opened his own firm. Tassell’s refined designs appealed to clients such as Jacqueline Kennedy and Princess Grace of Monaco. On the death of designer Norman Norell in 1972, Tassell moved to New York to take over the house of Norell until its closure in 1976, when he returned to California to design for private clients. Rucci, who describes Galanos as the “Dean of American Fashion,” is currently celebrating 25 years as a fashion designer. In 2002 he became the first American since Mainbocher to be invited to show with the Paris haute couture. Coming full circle in this generation of designers, Galanos is now a great admirer of Rucci.

    Curator: Dilys Blum, Curator of Costume and Textiles
    Location: The Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, Spain Gallery
    
    
    
    
    
  • A Conversation in Three Dimensions: Sculpture from the Collections
    Fall 2007 - Spring 2008

    
    The sculpture collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art encompass more than 3,000 works of art ranging in date from ancient Chinese tomb figures made by unknown artists in the third millennium B.C. to 20th century sculptures by such eminent figures as Constantin Brancusi and Dan Flavin. Because of limitations in gallery space in the main Museum, many of the masterworks of this collection are not always on view, and some have only rarely been exhibited.
    
    This collaboratively designed exhibition has been selected to reveal the range of techniques, materials, scale, and subject matter of sculptors working in different eras and regions of the world—the single universal theme is the artist’s concern with the three-dimensional form in space. Among the works of art on view will be sculpture from the Museum’s relatively little-known collections of African and pre-Columbian art; sculpture from China, Japan, and the Indian subcontinent; European and American works by sculptors ranging from Auguste Rodin to William Edmondson; modern masterpieces by Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore, and others; and recent work by such contemporary figures as Katarina Fritsch and Martin Puryear.
    
    The public spaces of the Perelman Building will also provide other opportunities to display sculpture from the Museum’s collections. Paul Manship’s intricate gilt bronze reliefs of 1914 symbolizing The Four Elements: Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water (originally designed for the American Telephone &Telegraph building in New York City) will be installed in the spacious reading room of the Museum’s new Library.

    Location: The Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, Pennsylvania Gallery
    
    
    
    
    
  • Generations of Generosity: Gifts to the Library and Archives
    Fall 2007 – Spring 2008

    
    Complementing works of art donated to the Philadelphia Museum of Art over the years, generous patrons have also given thousands of books and manuscripts to the Library and Archives. To celebrate the opening of the galleries and study centers in the Perelman Building, the Library and Archives will showcase these treasures in the first-ever Library exhibition. Generations of Generosity, highlighting three significant periods of the Library’s history, will take place during the Library and Archives’ first year in the Perelman Building.
    
    The inaugural chapter of this exhibition, in fall 2007, will focus on the early years of Museum history (1876-1935) and will showcase seminal donations given by the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert), Mrs. William P. Wilstach, Mrs. Bloomfield Moore, and John G. Johnson. Since many of the books donated to the Library during the Memorial Hall years (1876-1928) were given because of their beautiful illustrations and fine bindings, the Library owns many rare books that will surprise Museum visitors. Subjects range from mnemonics and witchcraft to morality tales for children. Also highlighted in this exhibition will be Centennial-related materials.
    
    The second part, opening in winter 2008, will highlight gifts donated during 1936-1959. It will include thoroughly modern books and manuscripts from the collections of A.E. Gallatin, Carl Zigrosser, Jules Mastbaum, Louise and Walter Arensberg, Christian Brinton, Fiske Kimball, R. Sturgis Ingersoll, and the Rosenbach Brothers. These materials will vividly illustrate landmark collections that came to the Museum on the Parkway, along with the personal interests of important figures in the institution’s history.
    
    The final section, in spring 2008, will celebrate materials given from 1960 to the present, including donations of Carl Otto Kretzschmar von Kienbusch, Stella Kramrisch, Henry P. McIlhenny, Edith Emerson, Mr. And Mrs. Julius Zieget, and Robert Montgomery Scott. Gifts from this period span several centuries and continents and show the rich and diverse holdings that the Library and Archives will make available to researchers in its splendid new home.

    Curators: Susan Anderson, Archivist, and Linda Martin-Schaff, Library Cataloguer, with Danial Elliott, Arcadia Director of the Library and Archives
    Location: The Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, Library Reading Room
    
    
    
• Renoir Landscapes, 1865-1883
  October 4, 2007 – January 6, 2008

  
  The Philadelphia Museum of Art will present the first exhibition to explore the inventiveness and importance of the landscape painting of Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) during the first 30 years of the artist’s career. Renoir was the single most celebrated painter among the French Impressionists to be associated with figure painting, but his landscapes—remarkable in their freshness and immediacy—demonstrate the deep sources of his inspiration in nature and his fascination with the effects of natural light. Drawn from public and private collections in the U.S. and abroad, Renoir Landscapes will examine the painter as one of the most original landscape artists of his age.
  
  The exhibition begins with works from the 1860s, shortly after Renoir met Claude Monet and Alfred Sisley in the studio of Charles Gleyre and with them began absorbing the tradition of plein-air painting. Such early works as The Clearing in the Woods (The Detroit Institute of Arts, about 1865), painted in the forest of Fontainebleau, respond to the tradition of Barbizon painting, as well as to the mid-century luminaries Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and Gustave Courbet. In the 1870s Renoir continued to work with Monet, painting such scenes as Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise (The Art Institute of Chicago, 1875) with its sunny view of boaters plying the Seine at Chatou, and in the nearby Paris suburb of Argenteuil where the two artists together developed a technique of broken brushstrokes to register fleeting impressions of light and transitory natural phenomena. Renoir and Monet encouraged each other to ever more impressive feats of painterly experimentation, the results of which were first seen in the initial so-called Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1874.
  
  Toward the end of the 1870s, Renoir experimented extensively with color and composition, challenging his contemporaries with a move towards an astonishing painterly freedom. In the 1880s, Renoir’s travels in Algeria and Italy exposed him to new landscape motifs and encouraged his use of a more intense color palette. He adapted to these new subjects by developing a landscape technique composed of shimmering screens of color, as reflected in Algerian Landscape, Ravine of the Wild Woman (Musée d’Orsay, Paris, 1881). While his experimentations with crashing waves and other water imagery during this period make daring strides toward abstraction, the artist himself steadfastly maintained that nature remained the ultimate source of his inspiration. In an unpublished treatise, Renoir wrote in 1883-84 that “any individual wishing to make art must be inspired solely by works of nature.… She alone can give us the variety of composition design and color necessary to make art.”
  
  Catalogue
  The National Gallery, London, has published a lavishly illustrated catalogue, including essays by Professor John House, of the Courtauld Institute, London, Colin B. Bailey and Christopher Riopelle, and contributions by John Zarobell and Simon Kelly, Associate Curator of European Painting and Sculpture, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Catalogues may be purchased from the Museum store. For more information, call (215) 684-7960.

  Sponsors: The exhibition is made possible by GlaxoSmithKline. Generous support is also provided by Bank of America. Additional funding is provided by The Annenberg Foundation Fund for Major Exhibitions and The Robert Montgomery Scott Fund for Exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with major foundation support from the Robert Lehman Foundation. The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery, London, The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art
  Organizers: National Gallery, London, The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
  
  Curator: John Zarobell, Associate Curator of European Painting before 1900
  Location: Dorrance Special Exhibition Galleries, first floor
  
  Itinerary:
  The National Gallery, London (Through May 20, 2007)
  The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (June 8–September 9, 2007)
  Philadelphia Museum of Art (October 4, 2007 - January 6, 2008)
  
  
  
  
• Antonio Mancini and the Vance Jordan Collection (working title)
  Fall 2007

  
  One of the most prominent Italian painters of the late 19th century, Antonio Mancini (1852-1930) was at the forefront of Verismo, the Italian response to French realism. This exhibition of some 40 works by Mancini will focus on a group of paintings and pastels that recently entered the Museum’s collection as a gift from the estate of the American art collector and dealer Vance N. Jordan (1943-2003). The exhibition will survey the major themes of Mancini’s career, from the street musicians, dancers and homeless children of Naples he painted in the years following his graduation from the Istituto di Belle Arti, to his flamboyantly decorative society portraits and his prodigious output of reflective, experimental self-portraits.
  
  The first solo exhibition devoted to Mancini in the United States, it will highlight the paintings from the Vance Jordan Collection alongside important works from museums and private collections in the U.S. and Europe.
  
  The 15 paintings and pastels by Mancini in the Vance Jordan Collection survey Mancini’s output over more than 30 years and include genre pictures and the vigorously painted portraits for which he was later known. Mancini experimented with techniques and materials, mixing broken glass and silver foil with his paint and growing increasingly free in his use of color and brushwork. Self-portraits in a variety of mediums are a common theme in his work and two striking self-portraits, one in pastel and the other on panel, will be on view.
  
  Curator: Guest curator Dr. Ulrich W. Hiesinger
  Location: European Art Galleries

  
  
  
• Frida Kahlo
  Mid-February – mid-May, 2008

  
  Few painters have captured the public’s imagination with such force as Frida Kahlo. Organized in celebration of the centenary of her birth, this exhibition will focus on the artist’s extraordinary self-portraits. The first American exhibition solely dedicated to Kahlo’s work in over a decade, it will explore the relationship between her art and her life by examining hauntingly seductive and often brutal self-portraits in addition to works that amplify her sense of her own identity.
  
  Painting, for Kahlo, was a way of exorcising pain, fortifying her will, and confirming her hold on life. The array of self-portraits will examine the direct dialogue she enabled between artist and viewer, emphasizing the deeply personal nature of these works. Several masterpieces included present Kahlo’s responses to specific events in her life. The Broken Column (1944) was painted after the artist underwent an operation on her spine; in Henry Ford Hospital (1932) the artist depicts herself lying on a hospital bed, after having suffered a miscarriage. Other works such as Self-Portrait With Bed (Me and My Doll) (1937) further address the theme of childlessness while complementing works of deeper self-examination like The Two Fridas (1939).
  
  Catalogue
  The exhibition catalogue will present new insights into her work through several essays by both American and Mexican scholars, including one by Hayden Herrera based on more than 20 years of research concerning the life and work of the artist. A special section of the catalogue will include commentaries by contemporary artists invited to articulate how Kahlo’s work has influenced their own artistic practices. The catalogue will also include full color illustrations, an illustrated chronology, and a bibliography. Catalogues may be purchased from the Museum store. For more information, call (215) 684-7960.
  
  Sponsor: The national tour of the Exhibition is made possible by Fundación Televisa. Major support for the national tour is provided by Margaret and Angus Wurtele.
  Organizer: The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
  
  Curator: Michael Taylor, The Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art
  Location: Dorrance Special Exhibition Galleries, first floor
  
  Itinerary:
  Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (Fall 2007)
  Philadelphia Museum of Art (Spring 2008)
  San Fransciso MoMA (Summer 2008)

  
  
  
• Bonnin and Morris (working title)
  Spring 2008

  
  This comprehensive examination of the first commercially produced porcelain made in America will focus on the work of the American China Manufactory. Situated in the Southwark section of Philadelphia, between 1770 and 1772 it produced a wide range of ornamental tablewares based on fashionable English prototypes. Today, the few surviving works documented to the colonial Philadelphia factory are known as “Bonnin and Morris” in honor of the surnames of the manufactory’s proprietors, Gousse Bonnin and George Anthony Morris. The exhibition will for the first time bring together the 19 known surviving examples of their soft-paste porcelain.
  
  The exhibition will highlight the artistic and technological importance of these works, including direct comparison to the specific English blue-and-white porcelain wares that served as precedents. Also on display will be archaeological remains from the American China Manufactory kiln site and sites within Independence National Historical Park, which will help place the work of Bonnin and Morris within the artistic, intellectual, and economic landscape of Philadelphia in the late colonial era. Philadelphia was the perfect setting for the establishment of this commercial venture, and its vibrant community—home to such venerable institutions as the Library Company of Philadelphia and the American Philosophical Society—played a key role in promoting American manufacturing and trade interests as well as representing the interests of Philadelphia’s intellectual community in the pseudoscience of alchemy.
  
  Visitors will have the rare opportunity to examine closely the range of surviving Bonnin and Morris wares: woven fruit baskets, sweetmeat dishes, a pickle dish, pickle stands, and sauce boats. Along with three works from the Museum’s collection, the exhibition will feature objects from major museums such as Winterthur; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Bayou Bend); Independence National Historical Park; the Yale University Art Gallery; the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and two private collections.
  
  Sponsor: The exhibition is supported by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.
  
  Curator: Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley, Assistant Curator of American Art
  Location: European Art Gallery 287, anteroom