NEW AND UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS

• The Peacock Male: Exuberance and Extremes in Masculine Dress
  January 22 through June 2011

   

  This exhibition contradicts the notion of men’s apparel as staid and restrained, especially when compared to feminine fashions. The Peacock Male: Exuberance and Extremes in Masculine Dress, drawn from the Museum’s collection of Western fashion, examines 300 years of men’s sartorial display and includes examples of rich fabrics and ornamentation, as well as colorful accessories.

  Extravagant costumes such as those worn by the Mummers will be on view, as well as distinctive male garb displaying allegiance to a group: early 19th-century firemen wore decorative parade hats and Masons, emblematic aprons. Men could signal high status through specialized sports attire, elaborate formal military uniforms, or even the ornate clothing of subordinates, as seen in an early 19th-century livery coat for the servant of an Austrian prince.
  The exhibition will also include more recent examples of men’s apparel, with 1960s-era garments such as a psychedelic “paper” shirt emblazoned with the names of the era’s sex symbols. Late 20th- and early 21st-century examples on view include Vivienne Westwood’s bright orange bondage suit and samples from designers like Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto, who continue to redefine the definition of the masculine wardrobe.

  Curator: Kristina Haugland, Associate Curator of Costume and Textiles and Supervising Curator for the Study Room and Academic Relations
  Location: Joan Spain Gallery, Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building

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• Late Gothic and Renaissance Cologne: Paintings from the John G. Johnson Collection
  February through July 2011
  
  

  The city of Cologne, Germany, situated on the Rhine River, was one of the lead­ing centers of the visual arts in northern Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. This focused exhibition of 10 panel paintings, supplemented by works on paper and historic auction and collection catalogues, charts artistic developments in Cologne from the late Gothic period through the Renaissance.

  The city was home to celebrated painters such as the Master of Saint Veronica (active c. 1395–c. 1420), Stefan Lochner (active c. 1440–c. 1451), and Bartel Bruyn the Elder (1493–1555). Centuries later, during the Romantic era, works by these and other Cologne artists played a crucial role in the revival of interest in early German art and in the founding of major German museums. The John G. Johnson Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art boasts the largest and most comprehensive group of pictures from Cologne in the United States. This exhibition illuminates the significance of Cologne-school art from Johnson’s point of view as a collector, and highlights discoveries stemming from recent art historical and technical research on the paintings.

  Curator: Joshua P. Waterman, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow, European Painting before 1900
  Location: Gallery 273
  

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• George Inness in Italy
  February 19 through May 15, 2011
  
  

  A canonical figure in American painting, George Inness (1825–1894) is widely admired as the pioneer of the evocative aesthetic known as Tonalism, which is distinguished by soft focus and diaphanous layers of paint. This is the first exhibition to examine the artist’s two Italian sojourns (1851–52 and 1870–74) and their formative impact on his work. Italy—its art and its landscape—offered Inness a font of inspiration as he developed his own unique artistic vision.

  George Inness in Italy presents 10 oil paintings surveying Inness’s Italian subjects dating from 1850 to 1879. A highlight of the exhibition is Twilight on the Campagna (c. 1851), Inness’s first major work completed in Italy. Recently conserved, the painting has not been on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art since 1952. Its re-emergence and restoration—precipitated by a comprehensive publication, or catalogue raisonné, of Inness’s entire body of work issued in 2007—constitutes a significant rediscovery. Inness enjoyed his most productive years during his second stay in Italy. His paintings sold well, both as mementos of Italy for affluent American travelers and as progressive stylistic experiments for leading collectors of American landscape painting. Although Inness returned to the United States in 1874, he continued to paint Italian compositions, honing the Tonalist aesthetic that began with his first trip to Italy in 1851. With Twilight on the Campagna as its anchor, George Inness in Italy charts this innovative artist’s development as he formed, interpreted, and later remembered his diverse and vivid impressions of Italy.

  This exhibition is organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and its Center for American Art. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue are made possible by grants from The Mr. & Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, the Henry Luce Foundation, and the Terra Foundation for American Art, and by a generous gift from Mr. and Mrs. Frank Martucci. Additional support for the catalogue was provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Fund for Scholarly Publications.

  Curator: Mark Mitchell, Associate Curator and Manager, Center for American Art
  Location: Gallery 119 and Gallery 120
  

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• Paris Through the Window: Marc Chagall and His Circle
  March 1 through July 10, 2011
  
  As a center of cosmopolitan culture and a symbol of modernity, Paris held a magnetic attraction for artists from Eastern Europe during the early decades of the 20th century. Most painters and sculptors settled around Montparnasse, which was sprinkled with cafes, and art galleries. It was here that Alexander Archipenko, Marc Chagall, Moïse Kisling, Jacques Lipchitz, Louis Marcoussis, Amedeo Modigliani, Chana Orloff, Jules Pascin, Margit Pogany, Chaim Soutine, and Ossip Zadkine established studios and discovered each other’s work. This exhibition will include around 40 paintings and sculptures by these émigrés, whose work was both imbued with the spirit of modernism and informed by their own cultural heritage. The exhibition will focus in particular on the paintings Chagall made between 1910 and 1920, including Half Past Three (The Poet), of 1911, one of the treasures of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

  The exhibition will be largely drawn from the Museum’s outstanding collection of modern painting and sculpture, supplemented with a handful of key loans from museums and private collections in the United States and Europe. These include Chagall’s early masterpiece Paris Through the Window (1913), from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the 1915 painting The Poet Reclining from the Tate Modern in London, which belongs to the same series of euphoric poet paintings as Half-Past Three (The Poet).

  Paris Through the Window: Marc Chagall and His Circle, which highlights the museum’s extensive collection of early modern art, is presented in conjunction with the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (PIFA) that is being organized by the city’s Kimmel Center and will run from April 7 to May 1, 2011.

  This exhibition was organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and is presented in conjunction with the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (PIFA), inspired by the Kimmel Center, on the theme of “Paris: 1910-1920." Additional support is proudly provided by Bruce and Robbi Toll and by Ovation and Comcast Xfinity.

  Curator: Michael Taylor, The Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art
  Location: Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, Exhibition Gallery

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• Roberto Capucci: Art into Fashion
  March 16 through June 5, 2011
  
  

  Roberto Capucci, master of color, form, and innovative silhouettes, was one of the founders of modern Italian fashion in the early 1950s. Today, after six decades of creative achievement, he remains one of Italy’s most influential and imaginative artist-couturiers. Capucci (b. 1930) captured the attention of the international press at an early age, drawing praise from designers such as Christian Dior when he was still a teenager. His work has appealed to Italian aristocrats and American actresses including Marilyn Monroe, Esther Williams, and Gloria Swanson. Today, Capucci fascinates and inspires contemporary designers such as Ralph Rucci, who admires Capucci’s dedication to the purity of his art. Covering his couture designs from the 1950s to his recent sculptures, Roberto Capucci: Art into Fashion is the first major survey of his work in the United States. It is organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Fondazione Roberto Capucci in Florence and will be seen only in Philadelphia.

  Roberto Capucci: Art into Fashion is comprised of nearly 90 works spanning the artist’s career, with supplementary film clips and historical photographs that document the parallels between his designs and the Italian fashion world. The exhibition will trace Capucci’s artistic career chronologically, from his discovery in 1951 to his sculptures from 2007. Early works include a cocktail dress with train from 1952-1953 and the Rosebud dress from 1956, as well as the iconic Nine Dresses (1956), inspired by the rings of water produced by tossing a stone. His revolutionary box silhouette—shaped with four seams instead of the usual two—represented a bold departure from the traditional fitted form of the period and garnered him the prestigious Filene’s Fashion Award in 1958. The international press declared him to be Italy’s best designer and the New York Times lauded his “vigor, imagination, and uninhibited originality.”

  This exhibition is organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Fondazione Roberto Capucci, and funded by The Women's Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Pew Charitable Trusts, The Annenberg Foundation Fund for Exhibitions, the Robert Montgomery Scott Fund for Exhibitions, and The Kathleen C. and John J. F. Sherrerd Fund for Exhibitions.. Additional funding is provided by The Wyncote Foundation as recommended by Frederick R. Haas and Daniel K. Meyer, M.D., Barbara B. and Theodore R. Aronson, Mr. and Mrs. Jack M. Friedland, and Martha McGeary Snider, and by members of Le Capuccine, a group of generous supporters including Marla Green DiDio, Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Fox, and Mrs. and Mrs. Bernard Spain. Promotional support is provided by NBC 10 WCAU and Amtrak.

  Curator: Dilys Blum, The Jack M. and Annette Y. Friedland Senior Curator of Costumes and Textiles
  Location: Dorrance Galleries

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• Health for Sale: Posters from the William H. Helfand Collection
  April 2 through July 31, 2011
  
  

  Medical posters promoting hygiene, announcing medical conferences, and advertising miracle cures from the late 19th and early 20th century frequently crossed boundaries between advertising and art. This exhibition presents some 50 examples of posters by known and unknown artists working in Europe, Asia, and the United States, including prominent artists such as Jules Chéret (French, 1836–1932) and Leonetto Cappiello (French, born Italy, 1875–1942). Chéret’s large, colorful lithographs—achieved by printing from multiple stones—elevated the commercial placard to the rank of art. Cappiello’s arresting figures, which he silhouetted against neu­tral backgrounds and linked to the product being advertised, revolutionized 20th-century poster design. Additional examples demonstrate the wide range of compositions produced by artists, and are drawn from the collection of William H. Helfand, a retired Merck & Co. executive and a specialist in art related to medicine and pharmacy. Over four decades, Helfand has donated more than 1000 posters, prints and ephemera to the Philadelphia Museum of Art while serving on the Museum’s Committee for Prints, Drawings, and Photographs. Health for Sale is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication by Innis Howe Shoemaker, The Audrey and William H. Helfand Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs; John Ittmann, The Kathy and Ted Fernberger Curator of Prints; and William H. Helfand. The exhibition coincides with several international medical conventions in Philadelphia scheduled during April and May 2011.

  Curator: Innis Shoemaker, The Audrey and William H. Helfand Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs and John Ittmann, The Kathy and Ted Fernberger Curator of Prints
  Location: Berman and Stieglitz Galleries
  

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• Romancing the West: Alfred Jacob Miller in the Bank of America Collection
  June 4 through September 18, 2011
  
  Baltimore native Alfred Jacob Miller (1810–1874), one of the first American artists to paint the Far West, is best remembered for his vivid chronicles of the Western fur trade and his romanticized depic­tions of mountain men, American Indian subjects, exotic wildlife, and the region’s stunning topography.

  Romancing the West closely studies an intriguing selection of 30 rarely seen watercolors, surveying Miller’s most revered body of work: images of the West based on his 1837 trip accompanying the Scottish adventurer Captain William Drummond Stewart. Bound for the annual rendezvous of trappers, traders, and Native Americans at the base of Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains, Stewart’s troupe traveled west from Saint Louis, following a route later known as the Oregon Trail.

  For nearly three decades following this groundbreaking journey, Miller received commissions for watercolors and oil paintings inspired by his remarkable travels. His poetic figure studies, picturesque landscapes, and engaging scenes of daily life along the trail expressed his own romantic attitudes and helped shape pub­lic perceptions of the West. For many mid-19th-century Americans living along the Eastern seaboard, as well as for European patrons like Stewart, Miller’s paintings offered a glimpse of a thrillingly unknown, frequently mythologized region of the country. The works presented in Romancing the West, lent courtesy of the Bank of America Collection, mix fact with fantasy, reflecting frontier life both as it was and as it was imagined to be.

  Organized by the Nelson Atkins Museum from the Bank of America Collection.

  Curator: Kathleen A. Foster, The Robert L. McNeil, Jr., Senior Curator of American Art, and Director, Center for American Art
  Location: Berman and Stieglitz Galleries
  

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• Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus
  August 3 through October 30, 2011
  
  For Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), the greatest painter, draftsman and printmaker of the Dutch Golden Age, the portrayal of biblical themes was a central preoccupation and one through which the artist introduced challenging innovations. The boldest of these came mid-career, when Rembrandt introduced a radical shift in the traditional image of Jesus. Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus examines this remarkable change through some 23 paintings, 29 drawings, and nine prints assembled from public and private collections in Europe and the United States. Among the works will be a series of panel paintings of a single model representing Jesus, three of which were mentioned in an inventory of Rembrandt’s home and studio conducted in July 1656. Seven of the original eight works created by Rembrandt and his pupils will be reunited for the first time (the eighth is now lost). This exhibition examines the significance of these bust-length portraits, which feature a presumably Jewish model, and how their subject figures in Rembrandt’s other works, while also exploring issues of attribution derived from the artist’s collaboration with students and apprentices in his workshop.

  In addition to the panel paintings representing Jesus—one of which is in Philadelphia’s John G. Johnson Collection, and another in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts—highlights of the exhibition include such important works as Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery, 1644 (London, National Gallery), Supper at Emmaus, 1648 (Musée du Louvre), and Head of a Young Jewish Man, 1661 (Fort Worth, Kimball Art Museum).

  This exhibition is organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Musée du Louvre, and the Detroit Institute of Arts.

  Curator: Lloyd deWitt, Associate Curator, John G. Johnson Collection
  Location: Dorrance Galleries
  

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• Rembrandt’s Workshop and Circle
  August 2011 through spring 20121
  
  

  While John G. Johnson preferred to collect masterpieces by lesser-known Dutch artists of the Golden Age, he did assemble a group of works attributed to Rembrandt, often on the advice of Wilhelm Valentiner, the great connoisseur, curator and friend who published extensively on Rembrandt and also catalogued Johnson’s Dutch and Flemish paintings (1914).  Johnson did not attempt to secure “names, and names only at great expense” as he referred to the practice of trophy hunting by wealthy collectors, but rather assembled typical pieces suitable for a public collection. The choices he made, from the Finding of Moses and the small oil sketches of old men, to Rembrandt-esque works by artists associated with the master and other works by his pupils, tell us a great deal about Johnson’s own taste and the ideas about Rembrandt that prevalent during his lifetime. 

• Zoe Strauss Under I-95
  January through March 2012
  
  

  Zoe Strauss Under I-95 is a mid-career retrospective of the acclaimed photogra­pher’s work and the first critical assessment of her 10-year project to exhibit photographs annually in a space beneath a section of Interstate-95 in South Philadelphia. Strauss’s subjects are broad but her primary focus is on working-class America. Many of her pictures depict down-and-out people and landscapes, offering a poignant, trou­bling portrait of contemporary American life, frequently featuring people and places from the surrounding neighborhoods, similar districts in other American cities, as well as suburban and rural places in between.

  Untrained as a photographer or artist, Strauss founded the Philadelphia Public Art Project in 1995 with the objective of exhibiting art in nontraditional venues. She turned to the camera in 2000 as the most direct instrument to represent her chosen subjects. In 2006, Strauss participated in the Whitney Biennial and in 2008 she published her first book, America.

  Curator: Peter Barberie, The Brodsky Curator of Photographs, Alfred Stieglitz Center
  Location: Berman and Stieglitz Galleries

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• Van Gogh Up Close
  February through April 2012
  
  

  In 1886, while living in Paris, Vincent van Gogh dramatically altered his manner of painting landscapes and still lifes. By experimenting with depth of field and focus and using shifting perspectives, he produced some of the most radical and original works of his career. Dominated in the foreground by close-up views of grasses, wheat sheaves, or tree trunks, van Gogh’s canvases in this period suggest a detailed study of nature and a concern with representing the sensory experience of being outdoors.

  The exhibition explores the reasons and means by which van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890) made these innovative changes to his painting style. In Paris, the artist worked on a series of flower pieces and still lifes that enabled him to study familiar objects—like two crabs or a pair of shoes—closely and to focus on aspects of scale, angle, and color. Contact with Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters including Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Paul Signac, and others further inspired van Gogh to lighten his palette and to try different kinds of brushwork. He was also inspired by Japanese artists, who inspired him with a decorative use of color and flattened compositions, and who worked in close communion with nature, studying “the smallest blade of grass” to better comprehend nature as a whole.
  
  The artist began to truncate objects to suggest the immediacy and closeness of his surroundings. The exhibition culmi­nates in an audacious series of still lifes made outdoors in which the subjects range from extremely close views of a clump of iris or an almond branch or a moth.

  The first exhibition devoted to this unexplored aspect of the artist’s work, Van Gogh Up Close will present some 45 paintings borrowed from collections around the world. It is organized by the National Gallery of Canada in collabora­tion with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with contributions by leading scholars in the field. The guest curator for the exhibition is van Gogh expert Cornelia Homburg, working with Anabelle Kienle at the National Gallery of Canada and Joseph J. Rishel and Jennifer A. Thompson at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

  Organized by The National Gallery of Canada in collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

  Curator: Joseph J. Rishel, The Gisela and Dennis Alter Senior Curator of European Painting before 1900, and Senior Curator of the John G. Johnson Collection and the Rodin Museum, and Jennifer Thompson, The Gloria and Jack Drosdick Associate Curator of European Painting and Sculpture before 1900 and the Rodin Museum
  Location: Dorrance Galleries
  

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Ongoing Exhibitions

• An Eakins Masterpiece Restored: Seeing “The Gross Clinic” Anew
  Through January 9, 2011
  
  

  The Gross Clinic of 1875 is one of the most significant works created by the great Philadelphia painter Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) and a landmark in the history of 19th-century American art.
  An Eakins Masterpiece Restored: Seeing “The Gross Clinic” Anew, presented in the Pennsylvania Gallery of the Perelman Building, will enable visitors to see and understand this painting—its creation, its critical reception, and the physical changes it has experienced over time—in new ways.

  In late 2008, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, joint owners of The Gross Clinic, initiated a plan to evaluate the condition of the painting, to research its conservation history, and assess the potential benefits of an effort to clean and restore it. Based on emerging evidence that yielded a comprehensive understanding of the painting’s original appearance and the changes that had occurred to it, the sensitive treatment carried out by the conservation staff of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts will enable audiences to see this masterpiece as Eakins intended it to be seen.

  The exhibition will explore the history and initial reaction to The Gross Clinic, using source materials from the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, including photographs and didactic panels, as well as the responses of contemporary viewers, which ranged from horror and revulsion to awe-struck praise. This exhibition will include other important works such as The Agnew Clinic of 1889 (owned by the University of Pennsylvania) the artist’s second great clinic painting, as well as his Portrait of Dr. Benjamin H. Rand of 1874 (Crystal Bridges Museum), which was Eakins’s first full-length portrait of a doctor.

  The exhibition is made possible by Joan and John Thalheimer, by the Robert J. Kleberg, Jr. and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation, by The Pew Charitable Trusts, and by Wachovia, a Wells Fargo Company. The conservation of Thomas Eakins’s "The Gross Clinic," and the related documentary, were generously supported by The Richard C. von Hess Foundation.

  Curators: Mark S. Tucker, The Aronson Senior Conservator of Paintings and Vice Chair of Conservation, and Kathleen A. Foster, The Robert L. McNeil, Jr., Senior Curator of American Art, and Director, Center for American Art; documentary film by Suzanne Penn, Conservator of Paintings, Philadelphia Museum of Art
  Location: Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, Exhibition Gallery

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• Michelangelo Pistoletto: From One to Many, 1956-1972
  Through January 17, 2011
  
  

  Widely recognized as a key figure in the development of Italian art in the 1950s and 1960s and a founding member of the Arte Povera movement, Michelangelo Pistoletto (b. 1933) has also gained increasing recognition in this country as an important influence on a younger generation of artists involved with the participatory practices that have become increasingly prevalent in contemporary art during the past two decades. The first major survey of works by Pistoletto in the United States in more than 20 years, this exhibition will place his art in the context of the cultural transformation of Western Europe that occurred after World War II and relate his work to developments in Italian and American art since the 1960s, including Pop Art, Minimalism, Arte Povera and Conceptual Art. Drawn from public and private collections in Europe and the United States, it includes some 100 works, many of which have never been exhibited in this country.

  Michelangelo Pistoletto: From One to Many, 1956-1974 is organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in collaboration with the Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo (MAXXI), Rome. The exhibition will travel to MAXXI March 3 through August 21, 2011. In addition, Michelangelo Pistoletto: Cittadellarte, an interactive installation that explores the work of Pistoletto’s interdisciplinary center for art and culture located in Biella, Italy, will be on view
  in the Museum’s Modern and Contemporary Art Galleries. As both an exhibition space and an educational platform, Cittadellarte will be animated by a stimulating program designed by the Museum’s Department of Education in close collaboration with the artist and the staff of Cittadellarte.

  The exhibition is made possible by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, and by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and The Kathleen C. and John J. F. Sherrerd Fund for Exhibitions. Additional support is provided by Galleria Lia Rumma, Le Méridien Hotels, and GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin; by Christie’s, Luhring Augustine, Galleria Christian Stein, and Simon Lee Gallery; by Barbara B. and Theodore R. Aronson, Lynne and Harold Honickman, Jane and Leonard Korman, Harriet and Larry Weiss, and Sankey and Connie Williams; and by the Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation, Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz, and Jaimie and David Field. The exhibition was organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and MAXXI---Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Roma.
  The catalogue is made possible by illycaffè and The Andrew W. Mellon Fund for Scholarly Publications.

  The exhibition was organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and MAXXI---Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome.

  Curator: Carlos Basualdo, The Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Curator of Contemporary Art
  Location: Dorrance Galleries

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• Michelangelo Pistoletto: Cittadellarte
  Through January 17, 2011
  
  

  Michelangelo Pistoletto: Cittadellarte, a related presentation in the Gisela and Dennis Alter Gallery (176), will provide visitors with the opportunity to participate in a variety of activities connected to Pistoletto’s ongoing project titled Cittadellarte. Pistoletto founded Cittadellarte in Biella, Italy in 1998, and has developed the mission of this multifunctional foundation to place “art at the center of a responsible process of social transformation.” Cittadellarte—whose name implies both a fortified enclave and city of art—is organized around several offices dedicated to diverse fields of study, including Economics, Education, Politics, Ecology, and Communication.

  The exhibition is made possible by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, and by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and The Kathleen C. and John J. F. Sherrerd Fund for Exhibitions. Additional support is provided by Galleria Lia Rumma, Le Méridien Hotels, and GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano / Beijing / Le Moulin; by Christie’s, Luhring Augustine, Galleria Christian Stein, and Simon Lee Gallery; by Barbara B. and Theodore R. Aronson, Lynne and Harold Honickman, Jane and Leonard Korman, Harriet and Larry Weiss, and Sankey and Connie Williams; and by the Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation, Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz, and Jaimie and David Field. The exhibition was organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and MAXXI---Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Roma.
  The catalogue is made possible by illycaffè and The Andrew W. Mellon Fund for Scholarly Publications.

  Curator: Carlos Basualdo, The Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Curator of Contemporary Art
  Location: Alter Gallery 176

• Pleasures and Pastimes in Japanese Art
  Through January 2011
  
  From representations of classical Noh theater masks and costumes to depictions of poetry competitions and of the joys of fishing, Pleasures and Pastimes in Japanese Art examines the myriad ways in which leisure time was interpreted across all social classes in Japanese art. The 70 or so objects on view, spanning the period from the 16th to the 20th century, encompass activities ranging from libretti and musical instruments of the theater, attended by Japanese nobility, to scroll painting and ceramics depicting fishing trips. The importance of gourmet food and drink to Japanese culture is also reflected in ceramic vessels intended for sake and by food containers on view. Other pleasures and pastimes represented include intricately designed incense burners, painted versions of ikebana—or flower arrangements—and a set of playing cards, based on 100 classical poems, still used during New Year’s celebrations in Japan today.

  Curator: Felice Fischer, The Luther W. Brady Curator of Japanese Art and Curator of East Asian Art
  Location: Galleries 241, 242, 243

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• Art in Revolutionary Philadelphia
  Through January 2011
  
  As the political climate in Philadelphia grew increasingly charged throughout the 1770s, art became currency. Some Philadelphians who supported the revolutionary cause gave art in payment of taxes to help fund the war. Loyalists to the British crown clung to their houses and art, including furnishings, until they were ultimately confiscated or, if portable, joined their owners in exile. After the war, art and furnishings were sold at public auctions.

  In this exhibition of revolutionary-era objects from the Museum’s collection, the elegant Powel House Period Room (Gallery 287) will be re-imagined as part of British General William Howe’s encampment in Philadelphia from September 1777 to May 1778, when the British occupied the home of Elizabeth and Samuel Powel (The Powels were relegated to living in the servants’ quarters). Next door, some 20 objects from the Museum’s collection will be on view, including rare works from the Meschianza celebration of May 1778—the raucous final farewell party thrown by the British as they left Philadelphia—including a silver tankard from 1788 and a porcelain vessel showing the Penn family coat of arms. This exhibition of artworks and household items used during the 1770s features objects in the Museum’s collection that, while usually admired for their artistic virtues, depict the role art played in the lives of Philadelphians during the American Revolution.

  This exhibition is made possible by the Center for American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

  Curator: Alexandra Kirtley, The Montgomery-Garvan Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts
  Location: Gallery 286 and 287

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• David Teniers’s Theatrum Pictorium and the John G. Johnson Collection
  Through January 2011
  
  The John G. Johnson collection, assembled by the Philadelphia lawyer who bequeathed it to the city of Philadelphia in 1914, is considered one of the finest samples of paintings collected by an individual in the United States. In his collecting of Old Master works, Johnson was frequently unorthodox. While others sought after the peasant scenes and village fairs by renowned Flemish master David Teniers II, Johnson chose five of Teniers’ sketches for his 1660 Theatrum Pictorium, the world’s first fully illustrated and printed collection catalogue.
  This grand quasi-scientific project was undertaken to publish the Italian paintings collection of his master and patron, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm. Teniers created small oil sketches of 243 of the paintings, noting the dimensions at the bottom. These sketches were then engraved by printmakers in Antwerp. The five sketches show Teniers translating Wilhelm Leopold’s Italian treasures into his own lighthearted, precise style, which became very influential in the following century. The sketches, completed catalogue and other related works will be on view to illustrate Teniers’ position at the nexus of art and science in 17th century Flanders culture.

  Curator: Lloyd deWitt, Associate Curator, John G. Johnson Collection
  Location: Gallery 273

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• Live Cinema/In the Round: Contemporary Art from the East Mediterranean
  Through February 6, 2011
  
  This exhibition features the works of Ziad Antar, Inci Eviner, Hassan Khan, Gülsün Karamustafa, Maha Maamoun, and Christodoulos Panayiotou, artists from the East Mediterranean region who explore how cinema informs representations of reality through video, installation and performance. The title, In the Round, takes its cue from theater-in-the-round, in which the audience surrounds the stage. The installation of Live Cinema echoes this practice with a multi-room presentation starting with the Live Cinema galleries (178 and 179) and continuing in several of the Museum’s period rooms (galleries 223, 259 and 288). Live Cinema/In the Round is organized by Istanbul-based guest curator November Paynter and coordinated at the Museum by Adelina Vlas, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.

  This exhibition is made possible by The Women’s Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, by the Turkish Cultural Foundation, and by the Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture with additional funding from the Turkish Embassy. Public events were supported in part by the University of Delaware Interdisciplinary Humanities Research Center and by the Slought Foundation.

  Curator: Adelina Vlas, Assistant Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art
  Location: Video gallery 179 and Modern and Contemporary Gallery 178

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• Virtues and Vices: Moralizing Prints in the Low Countries, 1550-1600
  Through February 27, 2011
  
  This exhibition brings together a group of lively moralizing prints created between 1550 and 1600 in Antwerp and Haarlem, the two major print publishing centers in the Low Countries. Both sobering and satirical, prints of this type were popular best sellers, offering moral instruction and entertainment to a newly -expanded audience of educated Dutch and Flemish consumers. Familiar stories from the Bible, tales from Greek and Roman mythology, and scenes of everyday life all found favor with collectors. From the rowdy peasants and fantastic monsters of Pieter Bruegel the Elder to the muscular heroes and sensuous nudes of Hendrick Goltzius, some 70 engravings selected from the Museum’s collection demonstrate the variety of moralizing imagery created by leading artists of the Low Countries during a period of significant political and religious change.

  Curator: Charles Hausberg, Margaret R. Mainwaring Curatorial Fellow, with John Ittmann, The Kathy and Ted Fernberger Curator of Prints
  Location: The Muriel and Philip Berman Gallery

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• Mark Cohen: Strange Evidence
  Through March 13, 2011
  
  Working primarily in and around the small Pennsylvania cities of Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, American street photographer Mark Cohen (b. 1943) photographs people and places encountered at random. In the 1970s he distinguished himself from older peers such as Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander by pushing aspects of street photography to extremes, producing pictures with little evident meaning and jarring compositions, such as faces or bodies only partly included in the picture frame. This exhibition of nearly 70 black-and-white and color photographs made during the past 40 years reveals elemental aspects of human behavior and urban life.The exhibition will primarily focus on Cohen’s images from the 1970s, through which he first garnered international attention. He employed a wide-angle lens with a long depth of field that permitted him to range very close to his subjects. He also frequently used a flash, such as in his 1975 print Flashed Man on Square, which accents a lone figure sitting on a park bench, or Flashed Man, Scranton, Pennsylvania, from 1988, which captures a man’s startled expression in an aggressively utilized flash. Mark Cohen: Strange Evidence is the most extensive survey of Cohen’s work since a 1981 exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

  Curator: Peter Barberie, The Brodsky Curator of Photographs, Alfred Stieglitz Center
  Location: Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, The Julien Levy Gallery

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• Threaded Adornment: Four Centuries of English Embroidery
  Through spring 2011
  
  This exhibition presents English embroideries from the Museum’s collection dating from the 16th to the 19th century. Embroidery has been used to embellish costumes and textiles for more than 3,000 years, with some of the finest embroideries produced in England from 900 to 1500. The nine objects on view depict a technique accomplished by stitching through an existing fabric foundation, which may be used to create a diversity of patterns and designs, surfaces and textures. Among the items on display are a woman’s coif and waistcoat, a casket, furnishing and ecclesiastical textiles, samplers, and other needlework items that illustrate England’s long history of creating superb embroideries. English embroideries reflect contemporary social and aesthetic developments, and function as subtle displays of wealth and status. The effects of 16th-century religious reformation, 18th-century exploration, and 19th-century industrialization are apparent in some of the embroidered designs.

  Curator: Laura Camerlengo, Curatorial Fellow, Costume and Textiles Department
  Location: Costume and Textile Gallery 271

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• Flora and Fauna in Korean Art
  Through spring 2011
  
  Artists of East Asia have been greatly inspired by depictions of flora and fauna based on Chinese works of art as well as those indigenous to various regions. The fine arts and crafts in this exhibition of 45 works from the 5th to early 20th century feature diverse representations of animals and plants that often served as living symbols of philosophical, historical, and metaphorical associations in Korea. These works, drawn from the collection, depict mythical animals like the dragon and phoenix, believed to protect against evil spirits, as well as plum trees, orchids, chrysanthemum, and bamboo, considered the “four symbols” of literati gentlemen. Often, the metaphor of animals and plants was based on word play, giving additional meaning to certain combinations of selected animals or plants. The Korean pronunciation of the characters for “reed” and “old man” are the same (no), as are the words for “geese” and “comfort” (an). Thus, traditional Korean paintings of reeds and geese represent a wish for a peaceful life in later years.

  The highlight of the paintings, ceramics and lacquer objects on view is a pair of court paintings of phoenixes and peacocks with a paulownia and peach tree. These rare and exquisite paintings of the 19th-century Joseon dynasty have been newly conserved and remounted in Korea, and make their debut in this exhibition. They would have functioned both as wall decoration and as an emblem of good fortune in the setting of a Joseon palace. Owing to the fragility of works on paper and silk, the paintings will be rotated periodically.

  Curator: Hyunsoo Woo, The Maxine and Howard Lewis Associate Curator of Korean Art
  Location: Gallery 237 and Baldeck Gallery 238

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• Informed By Fire: Highlights of American Ceramics
  Through spring 2011
  
  Varied form, surface decoration and use of color combined with science and skill reveal vibrant, original and intelligent expressions in clay. This exhibition will present more than 40 examples of ceramics from the Museum’s collection that demonstrate the rich ceramic tradition of the United States, from Anthony W. Baecher’s Watch Holder (1850), to Jane Irish’s Poverty (2008). Firing, the final act in creation, is a celebratory moment fringed by anxiety and excitement. It is the kiln that gives these works of art their final form; they are “informed by fire.”

  Curator: Elisabeth Agro, The Nancy M. McNeil Associate Curator of American Modern and
  Contemporary Crafts and Decorative Arts
  Location: North Auditorium Gallery

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• A Royal Passion: Meissen and Asian Porcelain from Augustus the Strong’s Japanese Palace
  Through April 3, 2011
  
  In 1717, Augustus II, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, known as “Augustus the Strong,” acquired a small palace on the bank of the Elbe River in Dresden. He enlarged the building and created a “porcelain palace” to house his extensive collection of some 20,000 pieces of Asian ceramics, along with products from the porcelain factory founded by his official decree in Meissen, Germany, in 1710.

  A Royal Passion celebrates the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Meissen factory with 19 pieces of porcelain from the Japanese Palace collection. Within a decade of its founding, the Meissen factory became the first commercially viable European factory to produce a type of high-fired porcelain that closely resembled coveted Chinese and Japanese wares. This exhibition highlights Augustus’ collection of life-size and near-life-size birds and animals made in porcelain with a pair of goats from the Museum’s permanent collection, originally intended for the Meissen menagerie. Orders and delivery began in 1730 for the projected 292 figures depicting 32 different birds and 296 figures representing 37 other animals of domestic, exotic, and fantastic origin intended for the Meissen installation. Creation of the figures continued until 1736, some three years after Augustus’s death. While never completed, the project remains one of the outstanding artistic achieve­ments of the 18th century.

  Curator: Donna Corbin, Associate Curator of European Decorative Arts
  Location: Gallery 270

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• Alessi: Ethical and Radical
  Through April 10, 2011
  
  Alessi, the world-renowned manufacturer of design household objects is especially admired for its long history of collaboration with leading architects and designers, marrying utilitarian form with artistic innovation and bringing creativity into the lives of countless people around the world. This exhibition surveys a series of milestone Alessi collaborations from 1955 to the present. Focusing on Alessi’s projects with Ron Arad, the Campana Brothers, Achille Castiglioni, Michael Graves, Greg Lynn, Alessandro Mendini, Ettore Sottsass, Philippe Starck, Robert Venturi and others, the exhibition will include some 150 objects, drawings, historic factory photographs, and videos that document the achievements of the family-owned company’s projects.

  This exhibition is made possible by Lisa S. Roberts and David W. Seltzer, with additional support provided by Collab—a group that supports the Museum’s modern and contemporary design collection and programs---in collaboration with the Museo Alessi.

  Curator: Kathryn Hiesinger, Curator of European Decorative Arts after 1700
  Location: Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, Collab Gallery

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• Monumental “Miniatures”: Large-scale Paintings from India
  Through March 2011
  
  The so-called “miniature” paintings of India, like their Persian counterparts, were done in groups to illustrate stories. Typically they were made to be held in the hands of a single person, sometimes passed around a group, but always looked at from a close distance for intimate appreciation. In some cases, however, Indian “miniatures” were produced on a grand scale, making them especially well-suited for story-telling, certain devotional rituals, and other group activities.

  Drawing from the Museum’s collection, Monumental “Miniatures,” features a select group of paintings dating from the 15th through 20th centuries. With highlights including an elaborate story-telling “scroll” from the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and an exquisite oversized depiction of Krishna and his beloved, Radha, from Kishangarh in the north, this exhibition explores the breadth of subjects and great regional diversity of India’s large-scale painting tradition.

  A painting’s monumental format could serve to emphasize the grandeur of its subject, whether it was the much-loved cowherd god, Krishna, or an earthly king. Finding materials for these oversized paintings could pose a challenge, as paper, which had been the preferred medium for illustrated manuscripts in India from at least the 13th century, was difficult to make in very large sheets. Artists therefore used other materials, such as cloth, wood, and even the surfaces of walls and ceilings to create the expansive fields they needed.

  Curator: Yael Rice, Assistant Curator of Indian and Himalayan Art
  Location: William P. Wood Gallery of Indian Art 227

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• A Glimpse of Paradise: Gold in Islamic Art
  Through March 2011
  
  According to the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam, and Hadith, the collected sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions, the inhabitants of paradise live in palaces built from gold and silver bricks and are adorned with beautiful gold bracelets and gilt-woven garments. While gold ornaments and implements are abundant in the afterlife, the wearing and hoarding of gold during one’s lifetime is generally discouraged because it may inspire an impious attachment to worldly extravagances. Royalty of the past nevertheless donned luxurious gold-woven textiles and gilded jewelry, perhaps to remind themselves of the rewards waiting in paradise.

  A Glimpse of Paradise explores the unique status of gold in Islam through a small group of objects drawn from the Museum’s collection. The diverse selection includes a 14th-century Qur’an folio with gold decoration and a unique Qajar-period eagle pendant decorated with semi-precious stones and enamel. As these works show, gold was put to multiple uses in the arts of Islam, serving both as a sign of the divine and as an ornament for earthly pleasure.

  Curator: Yael Rice, Assistant Curator of Indian and Himalayan Art
  Location: Gallery 228

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• Isamu Noguchi at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
  Through August 2010
  
  The Anne d’Harnoncourt Sculpture Garden occupies a one-acre site built into the slope near the Museum’s West Entrance facing Kelly Drive and bordered by the Azalea Garden. The garden is open to the public during regular Museum hours. The initial installation in the garden consists of five works of varying scale by Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988). These sculptures, cut from such stone as granite, basalt, and Monazuru, are at once modern and evocative of the natural landscape. All of the works are on loan from the Noguchi Foundation in New York for two years. The installation is supplemented by additional loans of works by Sol LeWitt, Claes Oldenburg, Scott Burton, Thomas Schütte and Gordon Gund.

  Curators: Carlos Basualdo, The Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Curator of Contemporary Art and Adelina Vlas, Assistant Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art
  Location: The Anne d'Harnoncourt Sculpture Garden T

• Tailoring Philadelphia: Tradition and Innovation in Menswear
  Through Fall 2010
  
  Drawn from the Museum’s rich collection of menswear, this exhibition focuses on one of Philadelphia’s most important industries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: tailoring. More than 15 garments created by Philadelphia tailor Francis Toscani (1915–1973) are on view, supplemented by a selection of works by other local tailors. These pieces—including a frock coat, morning ensemble, and dinner jacket—illustrate the traditional forms of men’s suits in the early- to mid-20th century.

  As a child, Toscani learned the art of tailoring from his father, and by the 1960s he was chief designer for H. Daroff and Sons, one of the nation’s largest manufac­turers of men’s apparel, producing more than 1 million men’s suits each year under labels such as Botany 500 and Worsted-Tex. Toscani’s designs often challenged the conventions of traditional tailoring by incorporating unusual sleeves, pockets, and collars; interesting seaming and closures; and unexpected colors. Among the designer’s inventions is an ivory silk safari jacket (c. 1967) that converts via waist zipper to a formal mess-style coat. Toscani’s keen understanding of the nuances of men’s clothing styles is most apparent in his designs created especially for fashion shows, such as his “Half and Half” Suit (c. 1962–65), a pale-gray suit that features the cut and details of early 1960s fashions, executed in dark brown.

  Curator: Kristina Haugland, Associate Curator of Costume and Textiles and Supervising Curator for the Study Room and Academic Relations
  Location: Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, Costume and Textiles Study Gallery

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• Porcelain for the Emperor: Chinese Ceramics of the Kangxi Reign (1662-1722)
  Ongoing from August 7, 2010
  
  Drawing from the Museum’s holdings of more than 400 Chinese porcelains, this exhibition of some 40 works showcases Qing-dynasty porcelains made during the 60-year reign of the Kangxi emperor (1662-1772).

  The contemporary royals of Europe became avid collectors of these Chinese porcelains, most famously Augustus the Strong (1670 – 1733), elector of Saxony and king of Poland. Two pieces formerly in the collection of Augustus will be on view, including a covered jar that exemplifies the virtuoso technical and artistic abilities of the Chinese porters. On a pale green ground—which inspired the French name for the ware, famille verte—the artist created a series of three panels, each depicting an animal (a lion, an elephant, and a mythical qilin), in enamel colors. While the artist who decorated this piece remains anonymous, many court painters were employed by the imperial porcelain factory established by the Kangxi emperor, himself an avid collector of these polychrome wares.

  Curator: Felice Fischer, The Luther W. Brady Curator of Japanese Art and Curator of East Asian Art
  Location: Gallery 226

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• To Love, Honor and Obey? Stories of Italian Renaissance Marriage Chests
  Ongoing from July 3, 2010
  
  In Renaissance Italy, betrothal and marriage were celebrated with a variety of events as well as commemorative works of art. Often elaborate, these objects marked the joining of a couple while symbolizing wealth and demonstrating alliances between powerful families.
  Particularly significant were cassoni, large storage chests produced in pairs and typically used to hold the bride’s dowry. In mid-15th-century Florence, these chests were sometimes paraded through the city in wedding processions, and were designed to complement other furnishings made for the new couple’s bedchamber This exhibition includes two complete chests and related painted panels in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, all produced in Tuscany in the mid-to late-15th century. To Love, Honor and Obey? considers the contexts for which marriage chests were made and used, techniques employed by craftsmen in producing them, and the sources and meanings of their decoration. Usually representing moral exemplars intended for the education of the married couple—particularly the wife—the tales and images that decorate cassoni help illuminate Italian Renaissance art, life and society

  This exhibition is supported by Maude de Schauensee.

  Curator: Jack Hinton, Assistant Curator of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture
  Location: Gallery 209

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