10
August
2020
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09:29 AM
America/New_York

Upcoming Schedule of Exhibitions through Fall 2021

New Galleries of American Art
Opening May 7, 2021
Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Galleries

A major re-installation devoted to the presentation of the museum’s extensive holdings of American Art spanning 1650 through 1840 will inaugurate the museum’s new 10,000 square foot suite of galleries for American Art, a distinctive feature of Frank Gehry’s Core Project of the Facilities Master Plan, which also includes new galleries for Contemporary Art, together adding more than 20,000 square feet of gallery space within the museum’s footprint.

The opening of these galleries in early 2021 will represent the first major expansion and reinterpretation of the museum’s renowned collection of American Art in over 40 years. Arranged chronologically and thematically, this new installation will showcase the rich diversity of cultures and creative traditions that contributed to the formation of early American artworks. New interpretations of this collection explore the artistic ties linking the Americas to Asia; the role of enslavement in the production and financing of art throughout the period; Philadelphia's role as an influential cultural capital; and the stories and works of Black, women, and Indigenous artists, promoting the museum’s vision to bring the collection to life and advancing scholarship in the field.

The galleries begin by exploring how trade and colonization forcibly brought together Indigenous people, Europeans, and Africans, creating new cultures in the Americas. The first gallery contrasts the English Quaker culture of William Penn’s colony, as an outpost of the British empire, to the cultural traditions of the Lenape people in the Delaware Valley and the Spanish viceroyalty in Mexico. Another gallery explores how global connections were made and shaped by a network of trade that linked the Western hemisphere to Europe, Africa, and Asia. Further in, a gallery shows how some American artists developed a visual language based on the traditions of their European homelands. This gallery introduces painters John Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, and Benjamin West, who demonstrated ambition, originality, and persistence in rising to international stature from provincial roots.

One gallery compares and contrasts the English and German cultures that thrived in both Philadelphia and southeastern Pennsylvania environs. Special displays highlight groups of miniatures, fraktur, and textiles to evoke the diversity and richness of domestic life.

The museum’s collection of the work of the Peale family—the most comprehensive in the country—includes a remarkable series of family portraits and representative works by America’s earliest professional women painters. The story of the Peale Museum, the country’s first public collection of art and natural history, will be told in portrait and still-life paintings and in cut silhouettes made by Moses Williams, an artist enslaved by the Peales.

One gallery explores Philadelphia's role as the capitol of the new nation from 1790 to 1800, when Philadelphia led the country not only politically, but also through contributions to the development of a new and distinctively American sense of artistic style. Described as the Athens of America, the city reinterpreted the ancient classical past in its architecture and arts, drawing upon the legacy of democratic Greece and republican Rome to create a compelling visual language representative of the aspirations of the new nation.

Presidential China from 1780 – 1980 is displayed in new and beautifully-lit casework. Made for and used by United States presidents from George Washington to Ronald Reagan, the museum’s collection illustrates changes in national symbolism, the role of the presidency, and different modes of dining across three centuries.

The re-installation also addresses transformational changes beginning in the 19th century sparked by territorial expansion (and subsequent Indigenous displacement) industrialization and immigration. Serving this spirit of national ambition, a robust style of late classicism shaped the decorative arts, while technological developments made affordable production possible on a large scale. Philadelphia, with the largest free Black community in the country, was home to many Black artists. The natural world, seen as emblematic of American promise, sparked a new landscape tradition in Philadelphia in work by Thomas Doughty and Thomas Cole, fathers of the Hudson River School. The last section explores how European cultural traditions took on new forms in the young United States, especially through works created by the Pennsylvania Germans from about 1800 through 1850. On view will also be Edward Hicks’s Peaceable Kingdom, with its depiction of Penn’s treaty with the Indians, which revisits the mythology of Pennsylvania’s founding.

The reinstallation was planned by a cross-departmental curatorial team that has worked closely on the selection of works and contemporary understanding.

Curatorial Team:
Kathleen A. Foster,
Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Curator of American Art; Director, Center for American Art; David Barquist, Curator of American Decorative Arts; Alexandra Kirtley, The Montgomery-Garvan Curator of American Decorative Arts; Carol Soltis, Project Associate Curator; John Vick, Collections Project Manager; Rosalie Hooper, Collections Interpreter and Project Curatorial Assistant; with Jessica Todd Smith, Susan Gray Detweiler Curator of American Art and Manager of the Center for American Art; Elisabeth Agro, The Nancy M. McNeil Curator of American Modern and Contemporary Crafts and Decorative Arts.

New Galleries of Modern and Contemporary Art

New Grit: Art & Philly Now
Opening May 7, 2021
Daniel W. Dietrich II Galleries

For artists who live, work, and pass through the city, Philadelphia has become a creative crossroads in which a rich array of voices and perspectives drive inspired and experimental contemporary work in a wide variety. This special exhibition will take the pulse of the city’s current art scene through the lens of 25 artists: Mohamed Bourouissa, Doug Bucci, Nichole Canuso, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Alex Da Corte, Micah Danges, David Hartt, Sharon Hayes, Jane Irish, Jesse Krimes, Mi-Kyoung Lee, Roberto Lugo, Ken Lum, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Eileen Neff, Odili Donald Odita, Michelle Angela Ortiz, Howardena Pindell, Tim Portlock, Hiro Sakaguchi, Judith Schaechter, Becky Suss, Daniel Traub, Kukuli Velarde, and Wilmer Wilson IV.

It will inaugurate the museum’s new 10,000 square foot suite of galleries for modern and contemporary art, a distinctive feature of Frank Gehry’s Core Project of the Facilities Master Plan, which also includes new galleries for American Art, together adding more than 20,000 square feet of gallery space within the museum’s footprint.

The exhibition is planned by a cross-departmental team of curators who have worked closely with each artist on the selection of their works. Shining a spotlight on the city as catalyst for local to international creativity, it builds on the history of Philadelphia as a place for the exchange of ideas, civic engagement, and imagination.

Curatorial Team:
Elisabeth Agro, Nancy M. McNeil Curator of American Modern and Contemporary Crafts and Decorative Arts; Peter Barberie, Brodsky Curator of Photographs, Alfred Stieglitz Center; Erica F. Battle, John Alchin and Hal Marryatt Associate Curator of Contemporary Art (Team Lead); Dilys Blum, Jack M. and Annette Y. Friedland Senior Curator of Costume and Textiles; Kathryn B. Hiesinger, J. Mahlon Buck, Jr. Family Senior Curator of European Decorative Arts after 1700; with curatorial assistance by Tally de Orellana, former Daniel W. Dietrich II Fellow in Contemporary Art, and Charlotte Lowrey, Coordinator of Curatorial Initiatives, Contemporary Art. The exhibition benefited from the research contributions by Michelle Millar Fisher, former Louis C. Madeira IV Assistant Curator of European Decorative Arts and Emily Schreiner, former Zoë and Dean Pappas Curator of Education, Public Programs.

Jasper Johns: Mind/ Mirror
September 29, 2021–February 13, 2022.*
Dorrance Special Exhibition Galleries, second floor

Jasper Johns, arguably the single most influential living American artist, has spent his radically inventive, seven-decade career redefining every artistic medium in which he has worked. In an unprecedented collaboration, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York will simultaneously stage this retrospective of Johns’s career, featuring a vast body of work that includes painting, sculpture, drawings, prints, books, and costumes and set design.

Inspired by the artist’s long-standing fascination with mirroring and doubles, the two halves of the exhibition will be reflections of one another, featuring themes, methods, and images that echo both within each of the two venues, and between them. The two-part exhibition will offer viewers an immersive, well-rounded, and innovative exploration of the artist’s fundamental working logic, and the many phases, facets, and masterworks of his remarkable ongoing evolution.

Locations
Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (simultaneous)

Curators
This exhibition is organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. The organizing curators are Carlos Basualdo, the Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Scott Rothkopf, Senior Deputy Director and Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator, the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Support
Bank of America is the National Sponsor

The Opening Celebrations are sponsored by Christie’s

 

 

In Philadelphia, major support is provided by Constance Hess Williams and Sankey Williams.

This exhibition is also supported by the Women’s Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art—including special gifts from the estates of Patricia Sweet Clutz and Phyllys “Fifi” Fleming—the National Endowment for the Arts, Susan and James Meyer, and through the museum’s endowment with the Annenberg Foundation Fund for Major Exhibitions, the Robert Montgomery Scott Endowment for Exhibitions, the Kathleen C. and John J. F. Sherrerd Fund for Exhibitions, and the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Fund for Exhibitions.

 

 

 

 

In New York, this exhibition is sponsored by

 

 

Major support is provided by Susan and John Hess.

Generous support is provided by Judy Hart Angelo.

Additional support is provided by Chris Harland and Ashley Leeds and Norman Selby and Melissa Vail Selby.

 

*Previously scheduled to open October 28, 2020 but postponed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Future Fields Commission: Martine Syms
Previously scheduled for Fall 2020, this exhibition will be rescheduled to later dates.
Alter Gallery 276

Martine Syms is the second recipient of the Future Fields Commission in Time-Based Media and this exhibition is the first in the US to feature the artist's newly commissioned work, which was also recently acquired into the museum collection. For the commission, Syms will create an interactive video installation that will build upon the artist’s interest in the proliferation, circulation, and consumption of images, as well as her continued research into machine systems and technologies that deprive, and at times erase, Black bodies, voices, and narratives of visibility and agency. The new artwork will premiere at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin in spring 2021 and then travel to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in fall 2021.

Martine Syms (American, born 1988) is a Los Angeles-based artist who has developed an interdisciplinary approach that bridges the different domains of film, performance, installation, and publishing. Investigative in practice, her works employ multiple technologies to explore representations of the Black female body and reveal the ways in which identity, history, and power are constructed, performed, packaged, and consumed. This new commission has provided support during a pivotal moment in Syms’s career, allowing her to extend her multi-faceted approach towards new and increasingly experimental techniques while deepening her investigations into the representations of Blackness across generations, geographies, mediums, and traditions.

The Future Fields Commission in Time-Based Media supports the production and acquisition of a new video, film, sound, or performance work every two years. It is a joint initiative between the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy.

Curators
Amanda Sroka, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art
 
Irene Calderoni, Curator, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo 

Sean Scully: The Shape of Ideas
Previously scheduled for 2020, this exhibition will be rescheduled to later dates.
Dorrance Special Exhibition Galleries, second floor

This major retrospective will feature the artist’s most significant works from the 1970s to the present. It will closely examine his contribution to the history of abstract art and his mastery of technique by focusing on the various mediums, motifs and scales that have defined the artist’s practice over time. The exhibition will center on paintings, drawings, prints, and pastels, demonstrating the integral relationships between works in various media, which are rarely exhibited together.

A new publication will accompany the exhibition, authored by Timothy Rub, the George D. Widener Director and CEO, with Amanda Sroka, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art. It will be the first to thoroughly examine Sean Scully’s art within a biographical context. Co-published by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Yale University Press, the catalogue will present an in-depth account of Scully’s work and his most significant bodies of work informed by extensive recent interviews with the artist and comprehensive art historical research. The book begins with a preface by Marla Price, Director of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and author of Scully’s multivolume catalogue raisonné, and an essay by the poet and art critic Kelly Grovier on the unique contribution Scully has made to the history of abstraction. Featured contributions include reprints by which historically contextualize Scully’s work by William Feaver, Deborah Solomon, Donald Kuspit, Arthur C. Danto, and Michael Auping. 256 pages. ISBN: 9780876332955.

Scully (American, born Ireland in 1945) is a painter, printmaker, sculptor and poet. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Harkness Fellowship, as well as a two-time Turner Prize nominee. Scully’s works are in numerous private and public collections, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. In 2015, Scully participated in the Venice Biennale with his solo exhibition Land Sea at the Palazzo Falier. The upcoming retrospective will be the artist’s first of this scale in the United States since Sean Scully: Twenty Year, 1976-1995, which was presented in 1995 at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. The artist divides his time between New York, England, and Germany.

Curators
Timothy Rub, The George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer
Amanda Sroka, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art

Support
Sean Scully: The Shape of Ideas is made possible by Emily and Mike Cavanagh and Constance and Sankey Williams, with support from the museum’s endowment through the Annenberg Foundation Fund for Major Exhibitions, the Robert Montgomery Scott Endowment for Exhibitions, the Kathleen C. and John J. F. Sherrerd Fund for Exhibitions, the Gloria and Jack Drosdick Fund for Special Exhibitions, and the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Exhibition Fund.

The accompanying publication has been generously supported by Lisson Gallery, which also provided support for the exhibition. Credits as of January 3, 2020.

Ongoing Exhibitions

Art of Care
Extended through April 4, 2021
Korman Galleries 221-224

In recognition of the essential healthcare workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, the new exhibition Art of Care examines the ways artists have portrayed medical care across the last century. This presentation of documentary materials, posters, and artistic meditations includes a broad range of approaches to caregiving, from informal networks of care and mutual aid to professional medical procedures and emergency interventions. Some of the featured artists are themselves doctors, while others rely on their observations and experiences as patients. Art of Care explores how artists have turned to images to champion caretaking in times of crisis, or to advocate for people who are denied care in such situations. Highlights include a monumental portrait study of a wartime nurse by Elizabeth Catlett; an imaginative and empathetic rendering of a public clinic by Mabel Dwight; and photographs by W. Eugene Smith chronicling the varied and challenging labor of Maude Callen, a nurse-midwife stationed in the rural South.

Curators
Amanda Bock, The Lynne and Harold Honickman Assistant Curator of Photographs, and Laurel Garber, The Park Family Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings

Now, She: Two Sculptures by Ursula von Rydingsvard
Through May 2021
Anne d’Harnoncourt Sculpture Garden

Two monumental sculptures by Ursula von Rydingsvard, Bronze Bowl with Lace, and Elegantka II, are on view in the Anne d’Harnoncourt Sculpture Garden. These works are representative of the artist’s signature forms, scale, materials, and techniques, and convey a sense of deep emotion.

Bronze Bowl with Lace (2013-2014, cast 2017-2018) was cast from a full-scale cedar model. The top of the bronze is perforated and delicately lit from within with a soft amber light that lights during the evening. Elegantka II (2013-2014, cast 2016) is an exact urethane resin cast of another full-scale cedar model. The natural spiral form undulates and shifts from its narrow base through a knotty midsection and into its voluminous crown. It is situated on a mound near the entrance to the Sculpture Garden.

Ursula von Rydingsvard was born in Deensen, Germany and has lived and worked in New York since the 1970s. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is represented in the collections of major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Modern Art; the National Gallery of Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. In 2015, Princeton University permanently installed her first monumental work in hand-pounded copper. She has been honored by the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture, and has received three awards from the American section of the International Association of Art Critics, and the International Sculpture Center Lifetime Achievement Award. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Curator
Alice Beamesderfer, the Pappas-Sarbanes Deputy Director for Collections and Programs

Marisa Merz
Through July 11, 2021

Gallery 271

This installation celebrates the life and legacy of pioneering Italian artist Marisa Merz (1926–2019). Occupying a unique and pivotal position in postwar European art, Merz’s work combines a keen attention to materials with a deeply personal symbolism.

Coming of age in Italy in the turbulence of the 1960s, she is the sole female artist affiliated with Arte Povera—a term coined in 1967 to describe a group of artists whose work emphasized process and the use of unconventional materials in an attempt to connect art and life.

Imbuing the ordinary with redemptive and revelatory qualities, Merz’s sculptures, paintings, and drawings employ malleable materials like copper wire, wax, and unfired clay. As these elements are knotted, woven, and recombined—techniques often linked to craft and female labor—she insistently subverts antiquated stereotypes of the feminine and the maternal through the incorporation of heavy metals and industrial paints.

For many years Merz refrained from both dating her artwork and presenting it in traditional exhibition settings. This selective participation in the larger art system stemmed from her conception of art as inseparable from and entwined with daily life. Equally inspired by Byzantine religious icons, Renaissance painting, and domestic interactions with her husband, Mario Merz, and daughter, Beatrice, her work reflects an ongoing exploration of the tensions between the private and the public, the spiritual and the profane.

This gallery features a number of the artist’s recurring visual motifs, such as the female head, the flowing fountain, and musical instruments whose sounds are heard only in the viewer’s mind. With their delicate and textured surfaces, Merz’s works beckon us into a cosmos all her own.

Support
Marisa Merz was organized in collaboration with the Fondazione Merz, Turin. It has been made possible with support from the museum’s endowment, through the Daniel W. Dietrich II Fundfor Excellence in Contemporary Art.

Expanded Painting from the 1960s and 70s
Through Fall 2021
Gallery 274

Several new installations in the galleries highlight artworks from the permanent collection by ethnically diverse and women artists. An upcoming contemporary installation on Expanded Painting from the 1960s and 70s features work by such artists Sam Gilliam and Dorothea Rockburne, offering a fresh view of the history of abstract painting.

Curator
Amanda Sroka, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art

Ghosts and Fragments
Through Fall 2021
Gallery 270

Ghosts and Fragments includes works by Nick Cave, Lonnie Holley, Glenn Ligon, and Susan Rothenberg that conceptually speak to the haunting absences and fractured presences of marginalized bodies.

Curator
Erica F. Battle, The John Alchin and Hal Marryatt Associate Curator of Contemporary Art

Fault Lines: Contemporary Abstraction by Artists from South Asia
Through October 10, 2021
Alter Gallery 276

Spanning the period from the 1960s to the present, this exhibition features six artists from South Asia whose works uniquely embrace and reconfigure the visual language of Minimalism to address questions of home, memory, and belonging. The artists are: Tanya Goel (b. 1985, active in New Delhi), Sheela Gowda (b. 1957, active in Bangalore), Priya Ravish Mehra (1961-2018, active in New Delhi), Prabhavathi Meppayil (b. 1965, active in Bangalore), Nasreen Mohamedi (1937-1990, active in Baroda), and Zarina (b. 1937-2020, born Aligarh; active in New York).

In this selection, lines vibrate in and out of focus—some thick and overdrawn, some faint and tenuous, and others punctuated by the scribbles of the artist’s notations. Across the mediums of painting, sculpture, textiles, and works on paper, the line becomes a map and a metaphor for moving through physical, temporal, and psychological landscapes. This exhibition interweaves disparate geographies and shared formal vocabularies to offer new definitions of abstraction while investigating fundamental concerns about our human condition and the fractured worlds we inhabit. This presentation has been organized collaboratively between the museum’s Contemporary and South Asian Art Departments.

Curator
Amanda Sroka, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art

Support
This exhibition has been made possible with support from the museum’s endowment, through the Daniel W. Dietrich II Fund for Excellence in Contemporary Art

Painting Identity
Ongoing
Gallery 219

Painting Identity will explore how a diverse selection of 20th century American artists used portraiture and figure painting to explore the characters of their subjects and reflect upon broader social issues. Among the highlights will be Portrait of James Baldwin by Beauford Delaney and Taboo by Jacob Lawrence to Last Sickness by Alice Neel and Miss T by Barkley Hendricks.

Curator
Jessica Todd Smith, The Susan Gray Detweiler Curator of American Art and manager of the Center for American Art

Horace Pippin: From War to Peace
Ongoing
Fernberger Family Gallery 208

Drawn from the collections, the exhibition includes five paintings and one study in oil, offering a glimpse into Pippin’s lived experience an African American soldier in World War I and artist of the 20th century. Notable works on view include The Getaway, 1939, Mr. Prejudice, 1943, a study for The Barracks, 1945, and The Park Bench, 1946, a reflective portrayal of a man sitting on a bench.

An original artist who was able to distill his experiences and memories into images of great power, Horace Pippin often painting scenes inspired by his service in World War I, landscapes, and allegorical images that speak to slavery and racial segregation. Pippin was wounded in action fighting in World War I in the 369th Infantry Regiment. After returning to his home in West Chester Pennsylvania, Pippin turned to painting to help his mental and physical recovery. The works in the installation highlight Pippin’s unique brushstrokes and explores how he used his left arm to move his injured right arm in order to paint, demonstrating unparalleled ingenuity and originality in making memorable works of art.

Curator
Jessica Todd Smith, The Susan Gray Detweiler Curator of American Art and manager of the Center for American Art

The Return of The Gross Clinic by Thomas Eakins
Ongoing
Gallery 211

This September, the museum welcomes the return of Thomas Eakins’s The Gross Clinic by making it the centerpiece of a new installation in its galleries of American art. As part of the co-ownership agreement with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the display of Eakins’s masterpiece, which was painted in 1876, rotates between the two institutions every several years. Now back at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this painting is on view in a new installation with other works of art from the collection that reflect the growing cosmopolitan spirit and ambition displayed by Eakins and his contemporaries during the last few decades of the nineteenth century. One of Eakins’s greatest achievements, The Gross Clinic can be seen together with the artist’s second major painting of a medical subject, The Agnew Clinic of 1889, on loan from the University of Pennsylvania.

The Gross Clinic is recognized as one of the greatest American paintings ever made. The young and little-known Eakins created it specifically for Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exhibition, intending to showcase his talents as an artist and to honor the scientific achievements of his native Philadelphia. Choosing the city’s world-famous surgeon and teacher Dr. Samuel Gross as his subject, Eakins sets the scene in Jefferson Medical College’s surgical amphitheater. Dr. Gross is shown leading a clinic of five doctors operating on the left thigh of a patient, demonstrating to students the relatively new surgical procedure he had developed to treat bone infections.

Curator
Kathleen Foster, Robert L. McNeil, Jr., Senior Curator of American Art Director, Center for American Art Philadelphia Museum of Art

Reinstallation of 19th-Century European Art Galleries
Galleries 250, 252, 253, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265

The museum has renovated and reinstalled 14 of its galleries dedicated to European art of the 19th-century, creating engaging new dialogues among the painting, sculpture, and decorative arts on view. Thematic presentations focusing on Impressionism, Art Nouveau, and other movements, are interspersed with displays dedicated to single artists or rooms exploring the role of industry and design in the period. On view are many of the museum’s most acclaimed works of art, including Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings by Mary Cassatt, Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, and their contemporaries, as well as furniture by such celebrated designers and artisans as Charles-Guillaume Diehl, Hector Guimard, Edward William Godwin, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The reinstallation provides an opportunity to explore a range of 19th-century European narratives through a fresh contemporary lens.

Gallery 253 titled “Painting Nature” explores the growing appeal of Realism and how artists turned to nature for inspiration in rendering scenes of everyday life. Work by Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899), one of the most famous female artists during the nineteenth century, is installed alongside those of Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), who vowed only to paint what he could see. In this arrangement focused on artists who depicted scenes of ordinary life, Courbet’s seascape Marine: The Waterspout, 1870, is installed near Jean-François Millet’s realistic portrayal of French peasants using torches in a nighttime hunting scene titled Bird’s-Nesters, dated 1874. The installation explores how these artists’ styles and choice of subject matter differed from the practices set forth in art academies and demonstrates how they helped to chart a path for the Impressionists. The majority of works on view in this gallery are from the collection of the distinguished Philadelphia lawyer and art collector, John Graver Johnson (1841-1917), and reveal his astute eye for the art of his time and his generosity to his native city.

Grand paintings in the Academic style characterized by idealized subject matter and a refined touch are the focus of works on view in Gallery 255, titled “Academic Art.” These paintings and sculptures boast polished surfaces, skillful lines, and subjects that were designed to educate and appeal to a wide variety of audiences. Key works include Eduard Charlemont’s Moorish Chief, 1878; Marcello’s Pythian Sibyl, Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s classically inspired painting, A Reading from Homer, 1885; the newly-acquired Vase of the Titans; a sculptural ceramic by Auguste Rodin and Albert Carrier-Belleuse; and other examples that reflect the ideals cultivated in art schools and official salon exhibitions throughout Europe. Beyond France, national art academies sprang up in England, Austria, and Germany.

Another gallery is devoted to artists who challenged the academic system. French landscapes, portraits, still lifes, and urban scenes by artists Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Alfred Sisley, and Claude Monet, are all presented in a large room dedicated to Impressionism, Gallery 252. Blended colors, visible brushwork, and dynamic compositions are visible in celebrated canvases, installed alongside sculptures of galloping horses and elegant ballet dancers by Degas, as well as bronzes depicting the athletes and fragments of the human body by master sculptor Auguste Rodin. The installation illuminates how these artists revolutionized painting as well as sculpture, choosing to capture the fleeting natural effects of the world around them in ways that felt like lived experience.

Gallery 259, “Beyond Paris,” features artists who responded to the effects of French Impressionism throughout Europe. Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s Mermaid, 1896, is surrounded by paintings and sculpture to evoke the painting’s original setting in a house in Norway and demonstrate how Munch and his fellow Scandinavian, French, and American artists adopted and adapted the color, light, and brushwork of Impressionism. This gallery brings together well-known paintings by artists John Singer Sargent, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Frits Thaulow, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Antonio Mancini, Viggo Johansen, Emilio Sanchez Perrier, among others, to show how different locations served as sources of inspiration and influenced painters leading into the twentieth century.

An intimately scaled gallery is devoted entirely to works by Paul Cézanne, highlighting his distinctive brushstroke and the ways in which he explored color and light to convey shapes and the solidity of forms. Fruit on a table, several portraits of his wife, and scenes from secluded groves in Aix-en-Provence fill the walls of Gallery 260. The new arrangement brings together some of his most important work in the collection to underscore the artist’s intense study of form, structure, and shape. The installation also draws attention to works by Cézanne in other nearby galleries and makes connections with other examples that are housed at the Barnes Foundation, suggesting that the artist’s work is perhaps better represented in Philadelphia than anywhere else.

In the late 1800s, many artists brought modernity to the female nude. Visitors can compare and contrast this theme in painting and sculpture by artists ranging from Cézanne, Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, to Francis Picabia and French sculptor Aristide Maillol in Gallery 264 titled “Modernizing the Bather.” In addition, Gallery 256 is devoted to works on paper and presents rotating displays of photographs, prints, drawings, and pastels revealing the ways that artists brought innovation to each of these media.

The Resnick Rotunda houses the museum’s renowned collection of works by Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Paul Gauguin. Installed together for the first time in Gallery 261, the museum’s Post-Impressionism collection highlights the diverse ways in which these artists developed new stylistic devices to render personal and expressive scenes of everyday life. Four Van Gogh paintings: Rain, 1889, Sunflowers, 1889, Portrait of Madame Augustine Roulin and Baby Marcelle, 1888, and Portrait of Camille Roulin, 1888, hang side-by-side, allowing visitors to consider the artist’s use of color in a range of subjects painted over a single year. Other walls in this space contain Toulouse-Lautrec’s vibrant depiction of dancers and customers mingling in the Moulin Rouge nightclub and Henri Rousseau’s mysterious scene of two monkeys and a milk bottle, The Merry Jesters, 1906.

A sequence of rooms exploes design revolutions occurring at the same time. The Arts and Crafts movement that flourished in Britain in the 1880s was a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, favoring handmade craftsmanship over machine-made products. On view in Gallery 258 are works by William Morris and decorative wallpapers and furniture designs by other British makers that exemplify Morris’ advice to: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” Gallery 262 is dedicated to Art Nouveau—the expressive style that emerged in the late 1890s in response to more historical artistic styles—and its modernist variants in Austria and Germany that evolved towards abstract styles and repeating patterns. Notable works that define this movement include pieces by Émile Gallé, Hector Guimard, and Edward William Godwin.

Two additional rooms, Galleries 251 and 254, will be completed next spring. The scope of the recent renovations (completed last winter before the museum’s March closure), includes intensive cleaning, resurfacing the walls, fresh wall colors, refinishing floors, as well as adding new casework, window treatments, and seating for visitors. The curatorial team includes Jennifer Thompson, the Gloria and Jack Drosdick Curator of European Painting and Sculpture and Curator of the John G. Johnson Collection; Kathryn Hiesinger, the J. Mahlon Buck, Jr. Family Senior Curator of European Decorative Arts after 1700; Curatorial Fellow Olivier Hurstel; and Research and Exhibition Assistant Eileen Owens.

Support
Support for the reinstallation of the galleries of nineteenth-century European art has been generously provided by Robert and Lynne Pollack, an anonymous donor in honor of Williamina and Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee, Barbara B. and Theodore R. Aronson, John and Gloria Drosdick, Mr. and Mrs. Stewart A. Resnick, Harriet and Ron Lassin, Maxine de S. Lewis, Katherine Sachs, and Martha McGeary Snider.

Support for both the exhibition The Impressionist’s Eye and the reinstallation of the galleries of nineteenth-century European art has been generously provided by Lyn M. Ross, Joan F. Thalheimer and Lois G. and Julian A. Brodsky. The Impressionist’s Eye was made possible by presenting sponsor Bank of America. Contributions to the exhibition were also made by The Robert Montgomery Scott Endowment for Exhibitions, The Laura and William C. Buck Endowment for Exhibitions, The Gloria and Jack Drosdick Fund for Special Exhibitions, The Harriet and Ronald Lassin Fund for Special Exhibitions, The Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Fund for Exhibitions, and an anonymous donor.

Credits as of October 28, 2019.

Chinese Art Galleries
Main Building, Third Floor

The presentation showcases art in all media, including paintings, sculpture, porcelains, ceramics, carvings, metalwork, costume and textiles, furniture, and contemporary works.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art houses one of the country’s earliest Chinese art collections, initially established through purchases made at the Centennial International Exhibition held in Philadelphia in 1876. Today it includes more than 7,000 works in a wide range of media spanning more than 4000 years. Strengths include Tang dynasty (618–907) tomb figures, Song dynasty (960–1127) ceramics as well as Ming (1368–1644) and Qing dynasty (1644–1911) imperial art and Buddhist sculpture. The collection includes more than 500 paintings, dating from the 12th to the 20th centuries, as well as costumes and textiles, furniture, jades, lacquer wares, and cloisonné. It also features three remarkable architectural interiors: an early 15th century coffered ceiling from an imperial Buddhist temple, a 17th century painted wood reception hall, and an 18th century scholar’s study that provide context for the collection and an exceptional immersive experience.

This renovation and reinstallation of the Chinese galleries is part of an ongoing series of reinstallations of the museum’s collection that began with the Rodin Museum in 2012 and continued with the renovation of its galleries of South Asian art in 2016. The reinstallation is led by project director Dr. Hiromi Kinoshita, The Hannah L. and J. Welles Henderson Associate Curator of Chinese Art, who’s interpretive plan is arranged around key themes through which four thousand years of art can be understood.

Coinciding with the reopening of its galleries of Chinese art, the museum has published Chinese Art: Highlights from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in association with Yale University Press (256 pp.) This illustrated book features highlights ranging from antiquity to the present day. It includes an introductory essay by Dr. Kinoshita about the collection’s formation, illuminating its unique character and importance. The volume is available for purchase in the Museum Store or online via store.philamuseum.org.

Curator
Hiromi Kinoshita, The Hannah L. and J. Welles Henderson Curator of Chinese Art

South Asian Art Galleries
Main Building, Third Floor

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 in a complete transformation of our renowned South Asian galleries. 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 galleries also feature significant physical improvements, such as state-of-the-art lighting, flooring, and casework that enhance the presentation of storied objects.

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.

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

Support
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)

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We are Philadelphia’s art museum. A world-renowned collection. A landmark building. A place that welcomes everyone. We bring the arts to life, inspiring visitors—through scholarly study and creative play—to discover the spirit of imagination that lies in everyone. We connect people with the arts in rich and varied ways, making the experience of the Museum surprising, lively, and always memorable. We are committed to inviting visitors to see the world—and themselves—anew through the beauty and expressive power of the arts.

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