Upcoming Exhibitions

Wild: Michael Nichols
June 27 – September 17, 2017
Press Preview: June 22, 2017
Dorrance Galleries, the Great Stair Hall, and the permanent collection galleries

The first major art museum exhibition dedicated to one of the world’s leading nature photographers will survey Michael Nichols achievement over the course of several decades. From the Serengeti and the Congo Basin in Africa to the giant sequoias and redwoods of the American west, Nichols focuses on the beauty and wonder of nature with a keen interest in the preservation of natural spaces. His photographs will be presented with paintings, sculpture, and works in other media from the Museum’s collection to show the wild’s crucial importance as a subject for artists across time, offering a unique context for Nichols’ work.

The exhibition coincides with a major new biography about the artist, A Wild Life: A Visual Biography of Photographer Michael Nichols, published by Aperture. Related programs include public lectures by world-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall, and Michael Nichols.

Art Splash, presented by PNC Arts Alive, is the Museum’s popular family program that runs in conjunction with the special exhibition. From June 27 through September 4, it includes gallery explorations, studio activities, and weekend festivals with musical performances themed to nature. Storytime in the galleries, extended hours on Friday evenings, and tours designed for children on the autism spectrum are just some of the new experiences families can find at Art Splash this summer.

Curators
Peter Barberie, The Brodsky Curator of Photographs, Alfred Stieglitz Center
Guest co-curator, Melissa Harris

Support for the Wild: Michael Nichols exhibition is provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts with additional support from Leslie Miller and Richard Worley, National Geographic, Lyn M. Ross, Lynne and Harold Honickman, Donna D. and Marvin Schwartz, Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Anderson, Barbara B. and Theodore R. Aronson, The Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Exhibition Fund, Mrs. Susannah D. Rouse, Constance and Sankey Williams, and other generous donors. (Credits as of May 3, 2017).

Art Splash is presented by PNC Arts Alive, with additional support from The Women’s Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Mari and Peter Shaw. (Credits as of April 7, 2017).

Philadelphia Assembled
Now–July 2017: Throughout Philadelphia
September 10–December 10, 2017: Perelman Building
Press Preview: Friday, September 8, 2017

The first exhibition of its kind at the Museum, Philadelphia Assembled joins art and civic engagement. Realized in collaboration with a network of creators and activists from across Philadelphia, the project explores the city’s changing landscape and tells a story of active resistance and radical community building. This network includes artists, storytellers, gardeners, healers, and other community members, working together to explore social issues that resonate in “The City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection.” Philadelphia Assembled asks: how can we collectively imagine our futures?

Actions, conversations, meals, installations and other events tied to the Philadelphia Assembled initiative are happening now throughout the city. In September, the objects created through each network will fill the Perelman galleries on the first floor. Admission during the run of the exhibition will be Pay What You Wish. A map of project locations and a schedule of public events can be found on the PHLA website.

Curators
This project is initiated by artist Jeanne van Heeswijk, together with hundreds of collaborators from across the city.

Philadelphia Assembled is made possible by the William Penn Foundation, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Wyncote Foundation, Nancy M. Berman and Alan Bloch, Lynne and Harold Honickman, Mr. and Mrs. Milton S. Schneider, Constance and Sankey Williams, Mondriaan Fund, Lyn M. Ross, and The Netherland-America Foundation. Credits as of April 25, 2017.

Old Masters Now: Celebrating the Johnson Collection
November 3, 2017– February 19, 2018
Press Preview: October 26, 2017
Dorrance Galleries

At the time of his death in 1917, the New York Times described John G. Johnson as “the greatest attorney of the English-speaking world … probably less known to the general public in proportion to his importance than any other man in the United States.” A disciplined connoisseur and amateur art historian, Johnson amassed one of the finest collections of European art in America, including French Impressionism, early Italian and Renaissance pictures, and many important 17th-century Dutch and Flemish paintings. Johnson’s collection of nearly 1,500 works spans the 13th to 19th centuries and provides a cornerstone of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s gallery installations.

This exhibition marks the centenary of Johnson’s death on April 13, 1917, and his extraordinary bequest to his native city. Bringing together about sixty key works, it celebrates the collector and reveals the ways in which the collection continues to be a rich source of discovery and research. The Museum’s stewardship of the Johnson Collection and the ways in which curators and conservators work with its objects—through conservation treatments, in-depth investigations of artists and attributions, and scholarship—will be illuminated in the exhibition and in related programming.

Highlights of the exhibition include Édouard Manet’s The Battle of the U.S.S. “Kearsage” and the C.S.S. “Alabama,” 1864, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s Purple and Rose: The Lange Leizen of the Six Marks, 1864, as well as major works by Dutch and Netherlandish painters, including Judith Leyster’s The Last Drop, c.1639, and Rogier van der Weyden’s The Crucifixion, with Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist Mourning, c. 1460, and Italian paintings including Titian’s Portrait of Archbishop Filippo Archinto, 1558, and Masolino and Masaccio’s Saints Peter, Paul, John the Evangelist and Martin of Tours, c. 1427–28.

Curators
Jennifer Thompson, The Gloria and Jack Drosdick Curator of European Painting and Sculpture and Curator of the John G. Johnson Collection
Christopher D. M. Atkins, The Agnes and Jack Mulroney Associate Curator of European Painting and Sculpture before 1900
Mark Tucker, The Neubauer Family Director of Conservation
Teresa Lignelli, The Aronson Senior Conservator of Paintings

This exhibition has been made possible by The Annenberg Foundation Fund for Major Exhibitions, The Robert Montgomery Scott Endowment for Exhibitions, The Women’s Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Kowitz Family Foundation, Friends of Heritage Preservation, Lawrence H. and Julie C. Berger, The Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Exhibition Fund,  The Harriet and Ronald Lassin Fund for Special Exhibitions, The Robert Lehman Foundation, Lyn M. Ross, and Saul Ewing LLP.

Support for the accompanying digital publication has been provided by Lois G. and Julian A. Brodsky, Martha Hamilton Morris and I. Wistar Morris III, an anonymous donor, and other generous individuals.

Credits as of June 21, 2017

Patricia Urquiola: Between Craft and Industry
November 18, 2017 - March 2018
Press Preview: November 17, 2017
Alter Gallery 176

Spanish-born designer Patricia Urquiola takes a humanist approach to her work by fusing the artisanal with modern technologies. This is the first showing of her work in an American museum featuring her work in product, interior, and architectural design. Her process, from concept to final product, will be shown through prototypes, models, drawings, photographs, and video interviews with the artist.

Featured objects include the Fjord armchair, a rethinking of a mid-twentieth-century Nordic chair, and rugs from Urquiola's Mangas line. Among the more recent work will be Openest, an innovative office system for Haworth that was awarded the Best of NeoCon Competition in 2014. Photographs will show Urquiola's architectural commissions, including the award-winning Ideal House project, which was shown in Cologne, and the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Barcelona in 2005.

On November 18, Urquiola will receive the Design Excellence Award from Collab, a group that supports the Museum's modern and contemporary design collection and programs. The Student Design Competition will take place on November 13. This year's competition is to design a piece of furniture that is the focal point of a room and incorporates storage. Designs will be on display on the East Balcony on the evening of November 15.

Curator
Donna Corbin, Guest Curator

Ongoing Exhibitions

Witness: Reality and Imagination in the Prints of Francisco Goya
Through September 6, 2017
Korman Galleries 120–123

As court painter to four successive rulers of Spain, Francisco José de Goya de Lucientes bore witness to decades of political turmoil and social change. The exhibition spotlights choice selections from four of his major print series made between 1797 and 1824: Los Caprichos (The Caprices), Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War), La Tauromaquia (Bullfighting), and Los Disparates (The Follies), all drawn from the Museum’s complete sets. The individual works on display reveal Goya’s ability to move between documentary realism and expressive invention, and engage a broad variety of themes from the spectacle of bullfighting to the chaos of life during the Napoleonic occupation of Spain. His celebrated etching The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, often interpreted as a self-portrait, conveys the period’s ever-present struggle between reason and imagination. This important work is on view along with other exquisite prints that show the inventive imagery and techniques that make Goya one of the greatest graphic artists of all time.

Curators
Danielle Canter, The Margaret R. Mainwaring Curatorial Fellow
Shelley Langdale, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings

Cy Twombly’s Iliad
Through October 8, 2017
Tuttleman Gallery 174 and Alter Gallery 176

Cy Twombly’s Fifty Days at Iliam returns to the Museum from a retrospective of the artist’s work at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The celebrated painting cycle is presented alongside related drawings and sculptures. Twombly initially selected the six sculptures in this exhibition for the Museum in 2011 as complements to Fifty Days at Iliam. Five of those works are recent gifts of the Cy Twombly Foundation.

Curator
Carlos Basualdo, The Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Senior Curator of Contemporary Art

Support for this exhibition has been provided by The Daniel W. Dietrich II Fund for Excellence in Contemporary Art.

Marcel Duchamp and the Fountain Scandal
Through December 3, 2017
Anne d’Harnoncourt Gallery 182

This exhibition celebrates the centennial of Marcel Duchamp’s legendary readymade Fountain and reveals the backstory of its glory and ridicule in the early twentieth century. In April of 1917, a store-bought urinal was submitted and rejected at the “no jury” exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York, provoking a fierce debate over its designation as art. With works drawn from the Museum’s unrivaled Duchamp collection and archives, this exhibition explains how Duchamp, with help from several close friends, sprang his notorious Fountain on his contemporaries and explores the consequences that followed. With an emphasis on the circumstances and discussions surrounding this breakthrough moment, Marcel Duchamp and the Fountain Scandal highlights the still-relevant ideas that resulted from this crucial episode in the history of avant-garde art.

Curators
Matthew Affron, The Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art
John Vick, Collections Project Manager

This exhibition is made possible by the Young Friends of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. (Credits as of November 2016)

The Kiss
Rodin Museum
2151 Benjamin Franklin Parkway

This installation examines the embracing couple and the kiss as reoccurring themes in Rodin’s work. Bringing together bronzes, plasters, marbles, and terracotta works made by Rodin over a thirty-year period, the display explores the ways in which the sculptor depicted passion. Works such as The Minotaur, I Am Beautiful, Eternal Springtime, and Youth Triumphant demonstrate the variety of approaches, meanings, and allusions that Rodin brought to his figure groupings. In particular, Philadelphia’s copy of The Kiss, commissioned by Jules Mastbaum in 1926, is considered for its unique history and as an example of Rodin’s continuing appeal. As part of the reinstallation, other important Rodin sculptures, including The Thinker and the Monument to Balzac, are presented. The installation will run through January 2019.

The Rodin Museum on Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway is one of the world’s most celebrated places in which to experience the work of French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Open to the public in 1929, this remarkable ensemble of architecture, landscape, and sculpture, designed by architect Paul Cret and landscape architect Jacques Gréber, has been restored to its original splendor.

Curator
Jennifer Thompson, The Gloria and Jack Drosdick Curator of European Painting and Sculpture and Curator of the John G. Johnson Collection

South Asian Galleries
Main building

In a complete transformation of our renowned South Asian galleries, one of the world’s most significant collections of art from a vast area including India, Iran, Tibet, and parts of Southeast Asia is presented anew. Highlights include a stone temple hall from southern India, courtly Indian miniature paintings, ornate Buddhist works from Tibet and Nepal, colorful textiles, and lively temple sculptures. The newly installed galleries also feature significant physical improvements, such as state-of-the-art lighting, flooring, and casework that enhance the presentation of storied objects.

New works added to the collection include Shahzia Sikander’s video animation Disruption as Rapture (2016), which reimagines the Museum’s rare 1743 manuscript titled Gulshan-i-Ishq (Rose Garden of Love), and two large piccawai, or shrine hangings, gifted by H. Peter Stern on the occasion of his marriage to Helen Williams Drutt English in 2007, and in memory of Stella Kramrisch, 2015.

The exceptional collection of art from the Indian subcontinent gained prominence in 1919, with the donation of a South Indian temple hall, making Philadelphia the only place outside Asia where a visitor can experience the sculpted figures and architecture unique to the temples of India. Dr. Stella Kramrisch (1896–1993), one of the 20th century’s preeminent historians of India’s art, built the Museum’s South Asian collections, expanding them to include a full range of sculptures, paintings, textiles, and folk arts from across the subcontinent along with masterpieces of Buddhist art from Tibet. She donated over one thousand works of art. In recent decades, all aspects of the collection have been further enriched by important gifts and acquisitions including, notably, the bequest of Dr. Alvin O. Bellak’s extensive collection of Indian “miniature” paintings in 2004.

Curator
Darielle Mason, The Stella Kramrisch Curator of Indian and Himalayan Art

The reinstallation of the Museum’s galleries of South Asian Art was made possible by the Estate of Phyllis T. Ballinger, The Women’s Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Institute of Museum and Library Services, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, William Penn Foundation, Gupta Family Foundation Ujala, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, and The McLean Contributionship. Generous donors to this initiative include Steve and Gretchen Burke, Sailesh and Manidipa Chowdhury, Mr. and Mrs. Donald Kimelman, Mr. and Mrs. Shantanu RoyChowdhury, Pamela and Ajay Raju, the Jones Wajahat Family, Paritosh M. and Srimati Chakrabarti, Drs. Julia A. and Eugene P. Ericksen, Ira Brind and Stacey Spector, Lyn M. Ross, Dennis Alter, Andrea Baldeck M.D., Tushar and Amrita Desai, Shanta Ghosh, David Haas, Dr. Krishna Lahiri, David and Jean Yost, and other generous donors. Additional support for the Museum’s building project is provided by Hersha, Shanta Ghosh, and Osagie and Losenge Imasogie. (Credits as of October 2016)

Closing Soon

Phulkari: The Embroidered Textiles of Punjab from the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection
Through July 9, 2017
Joan Spain Gallery, Perelman Building

Phulkari are colorful embroidered textiles traditionally made in Punjab – a region that comprises north central India and eastern Pakistan. Ornate and labor-intensive, phulkari served as a significant symbol of a Punjabi woman’s material wealth and were deemed an important part of her wardrobe. This exhibition celebrates the promised gift of rare phulkari from the distinguished Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection, and brings them into context with other nineteenth- and twentieth-century examples from the Museum’s collection. The presentation shows how phulkari was traditionally worn and made and how it has been preserved after the disruptive Partition of 1947 which split the Punjab between India and Pakistan. The exhibition includes contemporary examples found in popular music and videos and fashion. Phulkari-inspired couture outfits by Manish Malhotra, one of India’s leading fashion designers, are on view, as well as video footage from his fashion shows that feature phulkari on the international stage.

Curators
Darielle Mason, The Stella Kramrisch Curator of Indian and Himalayan Art
Dilys E. Blum, The Jack M. and Annette Y. Friedland Senior Curator of Costume and Textiles
Dr. Cristin McKnight Sethi, historian of South Asian textiles, has written the major essays for the catalogue, website descriptions, and has consulted on the project.

This exhibition is made possible by Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz, The Coby Foundation, Ltd., and The Stella Kramrisch Indian and Himalayan Art Fund. (Credits as of November 2016)

Another Way of Telling: Women Photographers from the Collection
Through July 16, 2017
Julien Levy Gallery, Perelman Building

On display is a wide-ranging selection of black-and-white pictures by nineteenth and twentieth-century photographers such as Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, Anne Brigman, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Imogen Cunningham, as well as contemporary color work by Kelli Connell, Ann Parker, and Elaine Stocki. Photographs are grouped loosely around themes of performance, the studio, domesticity, portraiture, and street photography.

Of special interest are the great number of photographs on view that have not been exhibited at the Museum before, including a rare vintage portrait by Arbus; an early color photograph of Jean Cocteau by Gisèle Freund; studio work by the pioneering Austrian-born photographer Trude Fleischmann; and fine modernist views of Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery, An American Place, by Dorothy Norman. New acquisitions in this area include work by Sarah Charlesworth, Barbara Crane, Maya Deren, and Zanele Muholi.

Curator
Amanda Bock, The Lynne and Harold Honickman Assistant Curator of Photographs

Channeling Nature by Design
Through July 16, 2017
Collab Gallery, Perelman Building

From the handmade to the machine age, to contemporary issues of sustainability and digital design, Channeling Nature by Design provides a nuanced look at the history of one of the design profession’s most prominent sources of inspiration -- the natural world. It features examples from the Arts and Crafts Movement in Europe and the United States, the international phenomenon of Art Nouveau, organic mid-century design, and the vogue for biomorphic forms in recent decades. Works on view range from furniture, ceramics, glass, and metalwork to textiles and posters, drawn from the Museum’s collection.

Curator
Colin Fanning, Curatorial Fellow, European Decorative Arts and Design

Lino Tagliapietra: Painting in Glass
Through July 16, 2017
Skylit Atrium, Perelman Building

An installation of five large-scale glass panels created by master glass artist Lino Tagliapietra represents the artist’s departure from three-dimensional blown vessels to large-scale, free-standing panels in which the glass becomes a unique canvas. The works on view range date from the late 1990s through 2015 and vary in color, size, and pattern. Selected for their intense compositions, they demonstrate the artist’s use of conventional and experimental glass-making methods.

Curators
Elisabeth Agro, The Nancy M. McNeil Associate Curator of American Modern and Contemporary Crafts and Decorative Arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Andrew Page, Guest Curator

Support for this exhibition is provided by The Leonard and Norma Klorfine Foundation Endowed Fund for Modern and Contemporary Craft, the Center for American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and other generous donors. Assistance with fine art transportation is provided by the Lino Tagliapietra Murano Studio and Jim Schantz of Schantz Galleries, Stockbridge, Massachusetts. (Credits as of October 2016)

Bruce Nauman: Walks In Walks Out
Gallery 171
Through August 2017

The newly-acquired single channel video captures the artist in the process of making Contrapposto Studies, I through VII. Nauman is seen walking into and out of the view of a camera as it projects a sequence from Contrapposto Studies, I through VII, onto his studio wall. In its economic execution and seeming simplicity, the work conveys the visual relationship—and tension—between the artist and his projected image.

The Museum holds seminal videos and films by Nauman, including: Dance or Exercise on the Perimeter of a Square (1967-68), Walk with Contrapposto (1968), and Wall-Floor Positions (1968). Contrapposto Studies, I through VII is the most ambitiously scaled work by Nauman to join the Museum’s collection, and Walks In Walks Out presents the artist’s recent work in multiple contexts.

Curator
Carlos Basualdo, The Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Senior Curator of Contemporary Art

Contrapposto Studies I through VII and Walks In, Walks Out are jointly owned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pinault Collection. The funds used by the Philadelphia Museum of Art include the Henry P. McIlhenny Fund in memory of Frances P. McIlhenny, John Alchin and Hal Marryatt, Keith L. and Katherine Sachs, and Constance and Sankey Williams, with additional generous support from Mari and Peter Shaw, Dennis Alter, Barbara B. and Theodore R. Aronson, Mr. and Mrs. Berton E. Korman, Marguerite and Gerry Lenfest, and other donors.

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