Ongoing Exhibitions
- Fashioning Kimono: Art Deco and Modernism in Japan
Through July 20, 2008
The Japanese kimono is admired worldwide for its elegant, distinctive silhouette. Though quintessentially Japanese, the kimono form has influenced fashion designers everywhere. Fashioning Kimono: Art Deco and Modernism in Japan features 100 kimono created in the late nineteenth and early-to-mid twentieth centuries – one of the most dynamic periods in the history of Japan’s national costume. The exhibition includes formal, semi-formal, and casual kimono, haori jackets, and under-kimono worn by men, women, and children. While many of these garments reflect historical continuity in designs and techniques, many more illustrate a dramatic break with aspects of kimono tradition, as themes and designs from Western art began to predominate over historical Japanese references. Organizer: Art Services International, Alexandria, Virginia
Curator: Kristina Haugland, Associate Curator of Costume and Textiles
Location: The Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, Joan Spain Gallery Press Release | Press Images - Turned and Thrown: English Pottery 1600-1820 from Local Collections
Through July 27, 2008
Fifty exceptional objects borrowed from local collections are assembled here to celebrate the inventiveness and ingenuity of anonymous potters active in England from the end of the 17th century to the early decades of the 19th century. The works reflect the growth of what began as a craft industry and ultimately became ceramic production on an industrial scale that supplied markets from Europe to the New World. The materials and techniques represented range from tin-glazed Delftware to salt-glazed stoneware and cream-colored earthenware. Produced in many cases under the harshest conditions for strictly utilitarian purposes, these wares are today valued by collectors for their idiosyncratic potting and naïve, sometimes whimsical, decoration. Curator: Donna Corbin, Associate Curator of European Decorative Arts
Location: Gallery 277a Press Images - Transcending the Literal: Photographs by Ansel Adams from the Collection
Through August 17, 2008
More than 20 years after his death, Ansel Adams (1902-1984) remains one of the world’s most beloved and widely-exhibited American photographers. Comprised of more than 40 photographs selected from the Museum’s extensive holdings of the artist’s work, this exhibition focuses on Adams’s less-familiar landscapes to explore the artist’s innate understanding of graphic form and balanced design. Adams frequently compressed space and manipulated scale, stressing form and tone over the purely objective depiction of nature. Transcending the Literal reflects Ansel Adams’s sophisticated engagement with photography’s ongoing interplay between reality and abstraction. Curator: Kathrine Ware, Curator of Photographs and Julia Dolan, Horace W. Goldsmith Fellow
Location: The Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, The Julien Levy Gallery Press Release | Press Images - Curious and Commonplace: European Popular Prints of the 1800s
Through August 24, 2008
Little Red Riding Hood’s ravenous wolf appears side-by-side with a magical machine that transforms imperfect husbands and wives into ideal couples. A natural disaster competes for attention with miraculous apparitions and serial murders in riveting prints based on sensational news reports. These images are among more than 100 works selected from the Museum’s rich collection of popular prints that recover a forgotten world of fantastic and familiar imagery and stand out as the forerunners of the souvenir posters and electronic video games of today. Visitors will be treated to works of art on paper created in the major centers of popular print production in continental Europe during the 1800s and ranging from images of fairy tale heroines and patron saints to popular song sheets and children’s alphabets. Published in a variety of languages, such edifying and entertaining prints were sold on street corners and in shops all across Europe and could be found in every household, city tavern and village schoolroom. Although originally distributed by the thousand, surprisingly few fine examples survive today since most were produced on cheap paper and discarded over time. Their production ran the full gamut from crudely cut woodblock prints to refined chromolithography. They vary dramatically between austere black-and-white specimens and swank, candy-colored delights. The extensive repertory includes such categories as natural history and toy theaters, specifically intended to engage the minds and imagination of children. Curators: Kevin Kriebel, the Dorothy J. del Bueno Curatorial Fellow in the Department of Prints, Drawings and Photographs, and John Ittmann, Curator of Prints
Location: The Berman and Stieglitz Galleries, ground floor Press Release | Press Images - Imagining Cathay: Eighteenth-and early Nineteenth-Century Chinoiserie Textiles and Embroideries from the Collection
Through Fall 2008
For Europeans during the 18th and early 19th centuries, China—or “Cathay” as it was sometimes called—was a magical place, full of intrigue fueled by travelers’ accounts including Marco Polo’s published adventures, and Asian imports such as precious silks and fine porcelains. The growing vogue for things Oriental and the spread of its popularity to all economic classes stimulated European imitations: as early as the middle of the 14th century the silk weavers of Lucca, Italy, the center of European luxury textile production, modeled their patterns after Chinese designs. This style would come to be known as “Chinoiserie,” popularized by the French court and later by English tastemakers. In addition to fine and decorative arts, Chinoiserie inspired ephemeral architecture such as teahouses, landscape design, interior decoration, court entertainments, and operas. It continues to be one of history’s most enduring and fanciful decorative styles. Imagining Cathay is comprised of nine works representative of Chinoiserie, including a copperplate-printed cotton weave modeling Chinese architecture of the period, as well as a silk moiré plain weave with watercolor—painted silk decorated with Chinese women, deer and flowers. Curator: Dilys Blum, Curator of Costume and Textiles
Location: Costume and Textile Gallery 271 Press Images - Precious Possessions: The American Craft Collection
Through September 2008
This exhibition celebrates the breadth of the Museum’s American craft collection, with its luxurious works of art in glass, metal, clay, fiber, and wood. The works demonstrate the Museum’s early commitment to contemporary craft, as seen in the ceramics of Gertrud and Otto Natzler acquired in 1945, and encompass a wide range of highlights: old favorites that have not been displayed for some time and several works that are making their first appearance in the galleries. Many were received as gifts from generous collectors, relatives of artists, and in some cases, the artists themselves. Others were purchased with funds raised by the Women’s Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art through its highly successful and esteemed annual Craft Show. In mid-winter, a selection of fiber art from the Museum’s craft collection will be rotated into this gallery to coincide with the University of the Arts’ international fiber symposium Materiality and Meaning: Examining Fiber and Material Studies in Contemporary Art and Culture in March 2008. Precious Possessions salutes the many generations of donors, and most especially the Women’s Committee, in their commitment to the growth of the Museum’s American craft collection. Curator: Elizabeth Agro, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Decorative Art
Location: North Auditorium Gallery, first floor Press Release | Press Images - Cornucopia: Recent Acquisitions of Japanese Art
Through October 2008
The steady growth of the Museum’s collection of Japaense art is celebrated in this exhibition. Among the most important objects featured is an exemplary 17th century painting of a Deer Mandala (artist unknown) rendered on silk and mounted as a hanging scroll and showing the sacred animal messenger of the Shinto deities. A display of lacquer vessels made for both ritual and secular uses represent another significant area of collection expansion during the past six or seven years. Likewise, a selection of contemporary artworks reflect the Museum’s increasing interest in the extraordinary crafts of basketry, metalwork and ceramics that has guided acquisitions of pieces made by the living artists of Japan. Curator: Felice Fischer, The Luther W. Brady Curator of East Asian Art
Location: East Asian Art galleries 241, 242, 243; second floor Press Images - Clay, Wood, + Paper: Materials for Korean Art
Through Spring 2009
Clay, wood, and paper are essential materials employed for Korean art and craft. They are extremely versatile, allowing for the creation of a wide range of objects, including fine arts, crafts, and wares for everyday use. This exhibition from the Museum’s Korean art collection, which spans over 1,500 years, explores the diverse applications of these materials, both in traditional and contemporary arts. The clay section features early stoneware vessels and fine selections of clay roof tiles from the 7th century. An 18th century sculpture, Boy Attendant, provides an example of wood used as a fine art material, and furniture pieces will show its use in everyday life. Among the works on paper are a ten-panel orchid screen painting from the early 20th century and contemporary woodblock prints on Korean mulberry paper made according to traditional methods. Curator: Hyunsoo Woo, Associate Curator of Korean Art
Location: The Baldeck Gallery (238), second floor - At Mount Pleasant: Lifestyle, Craftsmanship and Biography
Ongoing
Three new installations in Fairmount Park’s remarkable historic mansion, Mount Pleasant, are opening visitors’ eyes to little-known aspects of Philadelphia’s past. The newly furnished rooms focus on Lifestyle, Craftsmanship and Biography, providing useful contexts for the stunning house John Adams once described as “the most elegant seat in Pennsylvania.” Through 18 objects and nearby text panels, visitors to Mount Pleasant will gain a broad understanding of the mansion’s creators and early inhabitants, and of everyday life in Philadelphia during the second half of the 18th century. Curator: Justina Barrett, the Museum Educator for American Art
Location: Mount Pleasant Mansion, Fairmount Park Press Release | Press Images - New York Dada
Ongoing
The New York Dadaists were an international group of artists, writers, and musicians who gathered at the Manhattan apartment of art collectors Walter and Louise Arensberg. The group exhibited together and produced a number of eccentric little magazines between 1915 and 1921. Although they did not officially adopt the Dada name until 1921, they used irony and irreverence to topple artistic conventions they found obsolete, much like their contemporaries in Germany, France, and Switzerland (where the nonsense term “Dada” was coined). Paintings and sculptures created by Dada artists often reflect the group’s shared interest in everyday, readymade objects, as expressed in Marcel Duchamp’s declaration that the United States’ greatest contribution to art was “her plumbing and her bridges.” Many of the paintings explore the erotic possibilities of abstracted and mechanical imagery, while others range from animated figural scenes to machine forms, demonstrating the extraordinary stylistic diversity of the group. The New York Dadaists disbanded shortly after the Arensbergs moved to California in 1921, but their impact reached far beyond their brief existence as an avant-garde group. Curator: Michael R. Taylor,The Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art and Emily Hage, Project Curatorial Assistant
Location: Modern and Contemporary Gallery 168, first floor Press Images - Chinese Snuff Bottles from the Permanent Collection
Ongoing
In the 18th century, Chinese emperors and other elites began collecting snuff bottles, which they valued both as precious objects and as containers for powdered tobacco (snuff). They first used cylindrical medicine bottles to hold this new “medicine” and then experimented with new bottle shapes and added stoppers with ivory spoons attached. The Qianlong Emperor (reigned 1736 to 1795) was particularly fond of these miniature containers, favoring the carved glass bottles made in the Imperial Glassworks that his grandfather, the Kangxi Emperor, had established in 1696. With the encouragement of the Qianlong ruler, production reached new aesthetic and technological heights, and their popularity continued through the late 19th century. The bottle shown here exemplifies the glass overlay wares made at the Imperial Glassworks during the early 18th century. It was probably intended as a gift for an official: the high-relief carving of herons in a lotus pond symbolizes purity and the incorruptible statesmen. The 137 snuff bottles on view in gallery 236 encompass many decorative designs, including floral, figural, and landscape motifs, auspicious symbols, and poetry. Made from glass, porcelain, gourds, seeds, semiprecious stones and hard stones, these bottles represent the versatility and expertise of the artisans who produced them and show the richness of the Museum’s holdings. Curators: Felice Fischer, The Luther W. Brady Curator of Japanese Art and Curator of East Asian Art, Dr. Maris Gillette, Research Associate
Location: Gallery 236, second floor Press Images - Irish Silver
Ongoing
The period from the closing decades of the 17th century until the years shortly after the Act of Union of 1800, which merged Ireland into the single kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, was the great age of Irish domestic silver. At that time, Dublin, the second largest city in the British Empire, was the political, economic, and social center of Ireland. The Protestant gentry who came to prominence under the reign of William III (1689-1702) entertained lavishly, and like their English counterparts they sought to accumulate possessions, including silver that demonstrated their wealth and status. Due to the obvious political and geographical connections in this period, Irish silver relied heavily on English styles; however, Irish silversmiths originated a number of their own forms and types of decoration. Two-handled cups, which by this period were reserved for ceremonial occasions, were a favorite among Irish silversmiths, and the installation includes a number of monumental examples of this form. One gilded example features handles in the shape of harps, a common symbol of the Irish nation. Curator: Donna Corbin, Assistant Curator of European Decorative Arts
Location: Gallery 281, second floor Press Images
In the Video Gallery
- Live Cinema/Carlos Amorales: Four Animations, Five Drawings, and a Plague
July 13, 2008
Through July 13, 2008
Live Cinema/ Carlos Amorales: Four Animations, Five Drawings, and a Plague focuses on the work of Carlos Amorales, one of Mexico’s leading contemporary artists. This exhibition includes a selection of video animations in Gallery 179, along with a group of new drawings, and a cloud of black paper moths that swirl along a staircase and spread across the walls and ceiling of Gallery 178. Born in 1970 in Mexico City, Amorales studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Rijksakademia in Amsterdam. Over the last decade the artist has developed a unique visual vocabulary in mediums ranging from drawing and animation to installation and performance. Four Animations, Five Drawings, and a Plague traces the development of Amorales’s “Liquid Archive,” a database of digital images that he uses in his work, whether alone and in collaborative projects. This selection underscores the role of the artist as critical filter and role in examining forms and their potential meaning. In his work, Amorales dissolves boundaries between his media: humans become animals and animals assume human forms, or a sinister hybrid of the two. Familiar images and objects are rendered mysterious and menacing in surreal visions that are influenced by gothic literature, mythological motifs, and Mexican popular culture. Black Cloud (2007), the installation accompanying the animations and drawings takes the Liquid Archive into a three-dimensional realm. Selected Ghosts (composition) 01-05 (2008) is a series of paper collages that is shown for the first time. In these works the artist uses vector graphics to generate the outline of various images from his archive, capturing their silhouettes. Images of skulls, spiderwebs, birds, trees and the human form are repeated and transformed in the various compositions, as their outlines appear to merge and dissolve. Curator: Adelina Vlas, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art
Location: Video Gallery 179 and Modern and Contemporary gallery 178, first floor Press Release | Press Images
The Philadelphia Museum of Art is among the largest museums in the United States, with a collection of more than 227,000 works of art and more than 200 galleries presenting painting, sculpture, works on paper, photography, decorative arts, textiles, and architectural settings from Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the United States. Its facilities include its landmark Main Building on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the Perelman Building, located nearby on Pennsylvania Avenue, the Rodin Museum on the 2200 block of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and two 18th-century houses in Fairmount Park, Mount Pleasant and Cedar Grove. The Museum offers a wide variety of activities for public audiences, including special exhibitions, programs for children and families, lectures, concerts and films.
For additional information, contact the Marketing and Communications Department of the Philadelphia Museum of Art at (215) 684-7860. The Philadelphia Museum of Art is located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26th Street. For general information, call (215) 763-8100, or visit the Museum's website at www.philamuseum.org.
