Born in Romania in 1876, Constantin Brancusi studied the fine arts in his native country before immigrating to Paris in 1904. After completing his training at the École des Beaux-Arts, he broke with traditional sculptural practices, creating a language of sculpture that reduced forms to their essential elements. As influential today as during the artist's lifetime, Brancusi's sculpture and his ideas about art continue to challenge and inspire contemporary artists.

Tina Modotti: Photographs is the first comprehensive exhibition of the photography of Tina Modotti (1896-1942). In the catalogue which accompanies the exhibition, guest curator Sarah M. Lowe refers to Modotti as "the best-known unknown photographer of the twentieth century."

Downsizing the Image Factory is a touring program of American independent and experimental film and video organized originally by video artist Jason Simon for exhibition in France. This group of works presents what Simon calls "a fractured and chaotic accounting of American life as seen in and from its cracks and corners."

The year 1996 marks a milestone in the history of Philadelphia as a leader in medical education and pharmaceutical manufacturing. The Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science began offering courses in pharmacy in 1821, and in 1997 celebrated its 175th anniversary, making it the oldest school of pharmacy in the United States. Potions, Pills, and Purges: The Art of Pharmacycommemorates this historic occasion, and also reminds us that in Philadelphia the arts and sciences have a venerable tradition of creative interaction that continues today.

The display includes ten Himalayan meditation paintings called thangkas--vividly colored, extremely complex visualizations of the Buddhist pantheon--that are intended to help the viewer-meditator gain the experience of enlightenment. Some portray the union of compassion and wisdom symbolized by the sexual embrace of a god and goddess, while others are mandalas that represented the Buddhist enlightened universe surrounding a palace-temple of the gods. Also on view are a number of ritual objects depicted in the paintings.

Nam June Paik is one of the pioneers of video and television as art forms. Born in 1932 in Korea and trained as a pianist and composer, Paik was first known in the late 1950s and early '60s for his often outrageous performances with altered instruments. Early sources of inspiration came from his association with Fluxus, an international group that challenged traditional notions about art, and from his collaborations with other avant-garde artists such as John Cage. This exhibition features some of Paik's most important single-channel videos over the last 30 years.

During the last twenty-five years outsider art--produced at a distance from the world of museums, galleries, and academic art schools--has been widely collected and exhibited in cities from London to São Paolo to Milwaukee and Philadelphia. The prints and drawings shown here are by nine individuals who are or were patients at the Austrian State Psychiatric Hospital near Vienna. Their work has formed a highly visible part of recent international interest in the phenomenon of outsider art.

Rolywholyover A Circus is a composition for museum created by the composer, writer, philosopher, and visual artist John Cage (1912-1992). One of the last large-scale projects that Cage conceived prior to his death, Rolywholyover A Circus transforms the Philadelphia Museum of Art into the setting for a constantly changing array of art, performances, film and video screenings, readings, and special programs.

This exhibition of about 75 prints and drawings selected from the Museum's rich collections, many of which will be on view for the first time, traces the artistic development of some of the most influential artists working in Germany during the first decades of the twentieth century

Video and Film by Philadelphia Artists will be presented at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from April 4 through June 11, 1995. This program presents work by 13 artists who are Discipline Winners in Media Arts from the 1993-94 Pew Fellowships in the Arts. These artists are finalists and winners in this program that has awarded grants to individual artists since 1991, providing them with the opportunity to dedicate themselves to their artistic work for up to two years.

The Kalachakra ("circle of time") sand mandala is a sacred ritual design belonging to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition called Vajrayana. It is a brilliantly colored, symmetrical design of geometric patterns measuring about five feet in diameter. Mandalas are used to intensify the imagination and to stimulate the creativity needed by the Buddhist practitioner for visualized mediations.

The Barnes Foundation is home to one of the world's finest collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and early modern paintings ever assembled by an individual. Eighty of the greatest masterpieces from this outstanding collection have been selected for a historic exhibition which marks the first and only time that the works will be on view outside the Barnes Foundation galleries in Merion, PA.

The tapes in this four part program are united by the question "What is the true meaning of Romance?" which has found new urgency in the work of feminist art and art criticism. Sources as varied as television soap opera, literature for adolescent girls, movie genres like film noir and "weepies," and the gothic novel and its pulp descendants all serve as subtexts for this exhibition's video meditations on Romance.

Dorothea Lange was an unabashed champion of the common person. Using the record making properties of the camera, she documented the plight of ordinary people during the Great Depression, and was able to study and record the social and economic conditions of migratory laborers entering California in the 1930s and 40s.

Lawrence Weiner has been using language as his medium since the 1960s. He uses words in the context of visual art, rather than poetry or literature, to make works about familiar materials and processes. This project for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, using the text COPPER & NICKEL & SWEAT MIXED UPON THE GROUND, was originally conceived by the artist for the empty pediment on the outside of the Museum building, flanking the East Courtyard.

This program of videos accompanies a new work made by the artist for the Philadelphia Museum of Art as part of the "Museum Studies" series.

This exhibition is a loan installation of approximately 100 to 200 objects of popular culture collected in Japan.