New and Upcoming Exhibitions

• Interactions in Clay: Contemporary Explorations of the Collection
  March 31 – July 11, 2010
  
  

  Chosen for their adventurous and experimental attitudes toward traditional ceramic practices, four artists interact with historical works or spaces to discover new meanings and formal strategies inspired by works of art in the Museum. The artists’ interpretations will range in scope and location, from Walter McConnell’s ongoing exploration of wet clay manifested within the Pillard Hall from a Temple in Gallery 224, to Paul Sacaridiz’ interest in city forms displayed in relation to the Pennsylvania German furniture in the Joan and Victor Johnson Gallery 115 in the American Galleries. The Lansdowne Room (Gallery 297), a 1760s London drawing room, serves as inspiration for two artists. Betty Woodman’s abstract vases and wall pieces celebrate the architectural and ceramic forms displayed in the Lansdowne room and will be shown in the adjacent Gallery 295. Ann Agee’s wallpaper highlights the cultural contrast between the aristocratic Lansdowne Room and the utilitarian Millbach Kitchen (Gallery 285) where her work will be shown.

  The Clay Studio has developed this project in conjunction with Independence: The 44th Annual National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts Conference, to be held in Philadelphia March 31 – April 3, 2010. Guest curators for the project are Jody Clowes, Jo Lauria, John Perreault, and Judith Tannenbaum.

  Curator: Elisabeth Agro, The Nancy M. McNeil Associate Curator of American Modern and Contemporary Crafts and Decorative Arts
  Location: Galleries 115, 224, 285, and 295

  This exhibition was commissioned by The Clay Studio of Philadelphia, in collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Support for the development and planning of the project is provided by the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, a program of the Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by the University of the Arts. Additional support is provided by the William Penn Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. The exhibition was developed by guest curators Jody Clowes, Jo Lauria, John Perreault, and Judith Tannenbaum. Elisabeth Agro, The Nancy M. McNeil Associate Curator of American Modern and Contemporary Craft and Decorative Arts, is the organizing curator for the Museum’s presentation.

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• Art in Revolutionary Philadelphia
  April 17 through fall 2010
  
  

  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.

  Curator: Alexandra Kirtley, Associate Curator of American Art
  Location: Galleries 286 and 287 This exhibition is made possible by the Center for American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

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• Visions of Venice: Eighteenth-Century Prints from the Collection
  April 24 – July 18, 2010
  
  

  Venice in the 18th century was a leading cultural center, where painting and sculpture, printmaking and drawing flourished alongside music and theater, fashion and design, attracting travelers from around the world. Prompted by this thriving tourist trade, Venetian artists created lively prints of the city and its people for aristocratic visitors to take as souvenirs.

  The exhibition features more than 70 works by artists such as Canaletto, Marco Ricci, Giovanni Battista, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, and Pietro Longhi. The images celebrate the life and beauty of the city with the characteristic inventiveness of the Venetian Rococo style. Topographical or imaginary views of Venice (vedute) dominated the market, recording unique architecture as well as major ceremonies and festivals. Capricci, blending fantasy and reality in spirited scenes of classical ruins, were also popular, while genre prints or representations of everyday life among all social classes were sought after by tourists and Venetians alike. The exhibition is further enlivened by a small selection of drawings and paintings by notable Venetian masters.

  Curators: Sarah Cantor, The Dorothy J. del Bueno Curatorial Fellow in the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, and John Ittmann, Curator of Prints
  Location: Berman Gallery, ground floor

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• Live Cinema/Histories in Motion: Jennifer Levonian, Martha Colburn, Joshua Mosley
  April 30 – July 25, 2010
  
  April 30 – May 31, 2010: Take Your Picture with a Puma (2010), by Jennifer Levonian. Stop-motion animation using watercolors and collage. 7:00 minutes.
  June 1 – June 27, 2010: Join the Freedom Force (2009), by Martha Colburn. Mixed media animation. 3:56 minutes.
  June 29 – July 25, 2010: International (2010), by Joshua Mosely. Mixed-media Animation, 5.5 minutes.

  Contemporary artists increasingly employ animation to examine formal elements of studio-based practice in narrative contexts that address personal and communal experiences. Combining paper cut-outs, collages, drawings, watercolors, and sculptures with stop-action techniques and computer technology, Histories in Motion presents animated films by three young artists with Philadelphia ties, as well as a selection of the sculptures, collages and works on paper used to create them. Each artist’s animation and accompanying artworks will be on view for approximately one month.

  Take your Picture with a Puma Take your Picture with a Puma will be on view April 30 – May 31, 2010, with accompanying watercolors by Levonian.

  Martha Colburn’s Join the Freedom Force (2009), a fast-paced collage of images inspired by street protests around the world, utilizes the language and materials of filmmaking to comment on popular culture, consumerism, politics, and sexuality. Through a collage of live-action (paint-on-glass) animations, found footage and documentary filmmaking techniques, Colburn creates a mesmerizing portrait of contemporary issues expressed in the public realm. Samples of Colburn’s elaborately layered collages will accompany Join the Freedom Force (June 1 – June 27, 2010).

  Joshua Mosley’s International (2010) focuses on two historical figures, the American builder and philanthropist George Brown and Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek. Using stop-motion animation, the Philadelphia-based artist constructs an imaginary conversation that identifies Brown and Hayek’s perspectives on how a nation’s ideal economic and social order should evolve. International will be on view June 29 – July 25, 2010, together with a sculpture installation by Mosley.

  Histories in Motion will be accompanied by a program of public events, including an opening musical and visual performance by Martha Colburn on April 30.

  Live Cinema is a series of programs in the Video Gallery of the Museum that explores the vast production of single-channel video and filmwork by a diverse group of local, national, and international artists. In the last decade an ever-increasing number of contemporary artists have appropriated these mediums as an artistic outlet, in a dialogue with the early video and Super 8 practices of the 60s and the tradition of experimental filmmaking. Each program of the Live Cinema series focuses on a specific aspect of this work, in order to both map and analyze this important facet of contemporary art production. Live Cinema programs are accompanied by a brochure in which writers discuss the works exhibited, and also by public lectures program.

  Curator: Adelina Vlas, Assistant Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art
  Location: Galleries 178 and 179, 1st floor This exhibition is made possible by the Edna W. Andrade Fund of The Philadelphia Foundation.

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• Water Work
  May 15 – July 18, 2010
  
  This exhibition features images in which water is the principal theme, highlighted in a selection of modern and contemporary prints, drawings, and photographs from the permanent collection. Some 15 works will be on view, ranging from Ellsworth Kelly’s brush and ink drawing Reflections in the Seine (1950), to Untitled (after Tomb of the Diver, Paestum) (2002), a crayon and charcoal drawing on blue paper by Robert Moskowitz. Works by artists including Ed Ruscha, Roni Horn, Robert Moskowitz, Vija Celmins, and Georgia O’Keeffe will also be on view.

  Curator: Innis H. Shoemaker, The Audrey and William H. Helfand Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs
  Location: Stieglitz Gallery, ground floor

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• Late Renoir
  June 17 – September 6, 2010
  
  Focusing on the final three decades of his career, Late Renoir is the first exhibition to survey the achievement of the great Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) during the last three decades before his death. Some 80 of the artist’s paintings, sculpture, and drawings will be on view, accompanied by a selection of works by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Pierre Bonnard, and others who were inspired by the master. A landmark exhibition, Late Renoir examines new directions that the artist explored several decades after he and others such as Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro created the new style of painting known as Impressionism. This new and widely admired phase in Renoir’s career propelled him into the modern age and, at the same time, enabled him to recapture a classical past with expressive brushwork and a palette of sensuous colors that were both lyrical decorative.

  Late Renoir includes major works on loan from public and private collections in Europe, the United States, and Japan. It will be organized chronologically, enabling the visitor to appreciate the evolution of Renoir’s late style, beginning with portraits and genre scenes and examining his full embrace of the nude and mythological subjects.

  Itinerary: Los Angeles County Museum of Art (February 14-May 9, 2010); Philadelphia Museum of Art (June 17-September 6, 2010)
  Curator: Jennifer Thompson, The Gloria and Jack Drosdick Associate Curator, European Painting Before 1900
  Catalogue: The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.
  Location: Dorrance Galleries

  This exhibition is supported in part by The Annenberg Foundation Fund for Major Exhibitions and by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Major foundation support for this exhibition is provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts and The Robert Lehman Foundation. Additional support is provided by The Women's Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Bank of America; Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Abramson, Barbara B. and Theodore R. Aronson, Maude de Schauensee, Mr. and Mrs. Robert E. Linck, Martha Hamilton Morris and I. Wistar Morris III, Mr. and Mrs. John M. Thalheimer, Harriet and Larry Weiss, and other generous contributors to the Renoir Salon; and other individual donors. Promotional support provided by NBC 10 WCAU; Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau (PCVB) and the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation (GPTMC); The Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News, and Philly.com; and Amtrak.

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• John G. Johnson and the Theatrum Pictorium of David Teniers II
  June 12 through fall 2010
  
  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 of European Painting Before 1900
  Location: Johnson Study Gallery 273
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• Plain Beauty: White Porcelain of the Joseon Dynasty (1392 – 1910) and the “Vessel” Series by Bohnchang Koo
  June 19 – September 26, 2010
  
  White porcelains have been produced in Korea since the beginning in the 15th century and have often reflected the ideals and taste of the Joseon dynasty (1392-1910) which promoted the virtues of a frugal and restrained lifestyle. The production of porcelain continued throughout the early 20th century, yielding vessels of diverse functions, sizes, and shapes. In China, the preference for plain white wares was long ago replaced by lavishly decorated vessels with flamboyant, multicolored patterns, and as a result monochrome wares remained a uniquely Korean phenomenon.

  This exhibition explores the elegant beauty of plain white Korean porcelain with objects drawn from the Museum’s collections and loans from other collections in the United States. The works range from a small water dropper to an imposing globular “moon jar.” The porcelains are complemented by an installation of large-scale photographs by Koo Bohnchang (b. 1953), which capture the subtle beauty of undecorated white porcelains. Koo visited museums within and outside Korea to develop the almost portrait-like images, which feature off-center compositions, sectional details, and subtle pink tones.

  Curator: Hyunsoo Woo, The Maxine and Howard Lewis Associate Curator of Korean Art
  Location: Levy Gallery, Perelman Building

  This exhibition is made possible by the Korea Foundation. Additional support is provided by The James and Agnes Kim Foundation Endowment for Korean Art.

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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 em¬ployed 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

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

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• Hanging Around: Modern and Contemporary Lighting from the Permanent Collection
  July 17 – October 10, 2010
  
  Since the invention of the electric light in the early 20th century, designers have been experimenting with various ways to dress up the light bulb. Lighting fixtures—and particularly hanging lamps—received attention from designers such as American George Nelson, who in the decades after WWII, responded to a demand for fixtures that were both aesthetically functional and modern. This exhibition of some 20 hanging lamps drawn from the Museum’s collection of modern and contemporary design explores the variety of ways designers used materials and technology to find new ways of diffusing and reflecting light.

  Artists such as Poul Henningsen, a Danish industrial designer and architect, experimented with unusual designs, creating objects such as PH Artichoke lamp (1958), composed of staggered and stacked reflectors in a configuration that resembles, as its name suggests, an artichoke. Others experimented with materials, some of them new, like plastic, and others merely low-tech materials adapted for a new purpose, like Italian artist Bruno Munari’s Falkland lamp (1964), an elegant undulating column of elasticized fabric. In recent years, designers have experimented with new technologies, producing imaginative creations such as German designer Ingo Maurer’s “Wo bist du, Edison?” (“Where Are you, Edison?”), made in 2003. One of Maurer’s most technically advanced works, “Wo bist du, Edison?” features a 360-degree holographic image of a light bulb hanging above the shade, hidden in a socket in the shape of Thomas Edison’s profile.

  Curator: Donna Corbin, Associate Curator of European Decorative Arts
  Location: Collab Gallery, Perelman Building

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AN EAKINS MASTERPIECE
• Picturing the West: Yokohama Prints 1859-1870s
  Fall 2010
  
  Cut off from the outside world by a policy of isolation enforced by the ruling Tokugawa shogunate, Japanese citizens were naturally curious about the Westerners who arrived on their shores following Commodore Matthew Perry’s historic voyages to Japan in 1853–1854. This fascination led to the flourishing of hundreds of color woodcuts portraying the foreigners who came to the country after Japan opened its borders to trade with the United States, France, Britain, the Netherlands and Russia at the end of the 1850s.

  The exhibition of approximately 90 woodcuts, selected from the Museum’s extensive collection of 19th-century Japanese prints, showcases the rising interest in the dress, habits, and technologies of the newly arrived Westerners. The prints on view depict the coal-powered steam vessels known as “Black Ships,” hoop-skirted women and men in top hats, as well as imaginary views of the foreigners’ home countries. The Westerners residing in the burgeoning Japanese city of Yokohama were especially popular subjects.

  Once a small fishing village, Yokohama was completely transformed into a major international port for trade as foreigners set up their own districts and the city expanded with an unprecedented flow of travelers and goods. Print publishers sent artists to Yokohama to make sketches on site and supplemented eye-witness accounts with imagery borrowed from illustrations in Western journals and newspapers. The resulting prints are a curious blend of convention and novelty, where traditional color woodcut techniques and methods of production are combined with new subjects and sources of imagery.

  Curator: Shelley R. Langdale, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings
  Location: Berman and Stieglitz Galleries, ground floor
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• Eakins on Paper: Drawings and Watercolors in honor of the 150th Anniversary of the Philadelphia Sketch Club
  September – December 2010
  
  In honor of the 150th anniversary of the Philadelphia Sketch Club, a selection of 10 rarely-seen drawings and watercolors will survey the early work of Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), considered as one of the great draftsmen in American art. Life-class drawings in charcoal from his student days during the 1860s at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts illustrate the central focus on figure drawing that inspired the formation of the Sketch Club that same decade. After study in Paris from 1866 to 1870, Eakins returned to Philadelphia to share his expertise with the club's members, offering critiques at their life-class sessions in the 1870s before he began to teach at the Academy. Other examples of Eakins' figure subjects in pen and ink and watercolor on view will include a rare wash drawing of Dr. Samuel Gross from 1875, based on the image in The Gross Clinic, and unusual tracings from his own photographs in the early 1880s, documenting his scientific interest in human anatomy. These drawings will be displayed alongside figure subjects and portraits in oil, and in conjunction with the special exhibition on The Gross Clinic (on view in the Perelman Building), to demonstrate Eakins's reputation as a master of realism.

  Curators: Kathleen Foster, The Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Senior Curator of American Art
  Location: Provident National Bank Gallery 118

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• Desert Jewels: North African Jewelry and Photography from the Xavier Guerrand-Hermès Collection
  September 4– December 5, 2010
  
  Three decades of objects collected by Xavier Guerrand-Hermès of the renowned Paris-based fashion empire illuminate the diversity and beauty of traditional North African jewelry design. Including some 80 pieces of jewelry and nearly 30 late-19th- and early-20th-century photographs by artists from Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Egypt, and Tunisia, Desert Jewels features ornate necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings, most of which have never been publicly displayed. Designers working with inventive combinations of silver, coral, amber, coins, and semi-precious stones highlight cultural threads shared by many North African societies, while exploring local variations in materials and motifs.

  North African jewelry came to the attention of Western collectors in the 19th century when archaeological monuments in the region were being explored, visited, and in some cases, pillaged. The jewelry was also captured in photographs by artists including the Scotsman George Washington Wilson, the Neurdine brothers from France, and the Turkish photographer Pascal Sabah, who visited the region and photographed landscapes, architecture, markets, and people adorned in their jewels. Some of these images were used for postcards, while other remained hidden in little-known collections. This exhibition is organized by the Museum for African Art in New York.

  Curator: Dilys Blum, The Jack M. and Annette Y. Friedland Senior Curator of Costume and Textiles
  Location: Spain Gallery, Perelman Building Hyunsoo Woo, The Maxine and Howard

  Desert Jewels: North African Jewelry and Photography from the Xavier Guerrand-Hermès Collection is organized by the Museum for African Art, New York, and supported, in part, by the Robert Lehman Foundation.

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• Mark Cohen: Strange Evidence
  Fall 2010
  
  Working primarily in small Pennsylvania rust-belt cities like Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, where he lives, Mark Cohen photographs people and places encountered at random. This exhibition of some 50 of Cohen’s black-and-white and color photographs made during the past 40 years reveal elemental aspects of human behavior and urban life, charting transformations that have occurred in Pennsylvania cities and demonstrating that even the most subjective photographs can reveal historical truths.

  Part of a generation of street photographers that includes Robert Frank, William Klein, and Lee Friedlander, Cohen works in a close-up, graphically bold style, focusing on odd suburban enigmas often featuring children from around his home town. His images are often unsettling, showing us a world filled with anxieties, accidents, and desires. While they seem to reveal aspects of human behavior and urban life, they are far from objective documents, as he often employs an aggressive flash and radical cropping. The resulting images are clearly shaped as much by Cohen’s encounters with his subjects as by the people and places themselves.

  Curator: Peter Barberie, The Brodsky Curator of Photographs
  Location: (Levy Gallery, Perelman Building)
  

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• Michelangelo Pistoletto: From One to Many, 1956 – 1974
  October 30, 2010 – January 16, 2011
  
  

  Michelangelo Pistoletto (Italian, b. 1933) is among the most influential European artists living today, and as a founder of Arte Povera in the 1960s, is credited for having played an integral role in introducing many contemporary participatory practices to the United States. As the first focused survey of works by Pistoletto in this country in over two decades, the exhibition of more than 100 works will place Pistoletto’s work in the context of post-war Italy and Western Europe, while relating his work to developments in American art post-1960, including Pop Art, Minimalism and Conceptual Art. It will also emphasize the participatory aspect of his work, and will include loans from both American and European public and private collections, many of which have never been exhibited before in the United States.

  Pistoletto began exploring the tension between the individual human figure and the anonymous spectator at the beginning of his career. After first portraying himself in his paintings, he then sought to include the spectator through the progressive use of increasingly reflective surfaces, such as the Quadri specchianti (Mirror Paintings), incorporating the viewer’s image into the work as a fundamental part of its experience.

  The exhibition will also include sections devoted to Pistoletto’s Plexiglas works from 1964 that clearly prefigure Conceptualism, his Stracci (Rags) sculptures from the late-1960s and early-1970s that exemplify his Arte Povera period, and interactive documentation of the performance work that he produced with his Zoo group from 1968 to 1970. A centerpiece of the show will be Pistoletto’s Oggetti in meno (Minus Objects), a group of sculptural objects created in 1965 and1966.

  Exhibition Catalogue:
  The exhibition will be accompanied by a full-color 320-page catalogue, Michelangelo Pistoletto: From One to Many, 1956-1974 published in English by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in conjunction with Yale University Press. Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo (MAXXI) will produce an Italian-language catalogue. The catalogue will be edited by Carlos Basualdo, the Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Curator of Contemporary Art, with contributions by art historians Jean-François Chevrier, Claire Gilman, Gabriele Guercio, and Angela Vettese, as well as the Museum’s Conservator of Paintings Suzanne Penn. It is available in the Museum Store ($65), or via the internet at www.philamuseum.org. Michelangelo Pistoletto: From One to Many, 1956 – 1974 is 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 for Special Exhibitions Press Images

• Michelangelo Pistoletto: Cittadellarte
  October 30, 2010 – January 16, 2011
  
  Pistoletto’s current project Cittadellarte will be represented in conjunction with Michelangelo Pistoletto: From One to Many, 1956-1974. Cittadellarte is an interdisciplinary laboratory for art and cultural production, founded by Pistoletto in his hometown of Biella, Italy (near Turin) in 1998, where Pistoletto has developed several autonomous and self-organized offices focusing on art, economics, education, politics, ecology, and communication. The name Cittadellarte refers to both a fortified enclave and city of art and the artist’s program represents Pistoletto’s commitment to an “art [that is] at the center of a responsible process of transformation of society.” At the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the installation will highlight the intellectual, political, and social dialogues fostered by Cittadellarte, and its associated program of activities will utilize the exhibition space as a social and educational forum.

  The Cittadellarte installation will host a series of performances, lectures, and workshops bringing the spirit of the artistic center to the Museum and the city of Philadelphia. Programming for Cittadellarte is being developed by the Museum’s Education Department in close consultation with the Modern and Contemporary staff in the Curatorial Department, the artist, and staff members of Cittadellarte. The programming developed for Cittadellarte will also include the collaboration of grass roots organizations and other institutions in the city.

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

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• Alessi: Ethical and Radical
  November 2010 to spring 2011
  
  Alessi is widely regarded as the world’s most innovative and influential maker of kitchen utensils, or in the company’s parlance, “house-hold objects.” The company was founded in 1921 by Gio¬vanni Alessi in the region of Lake Orta in the Italian Alps, an area known for highly developed traditions in wood and metal. This exhibition presents the company’s history in designing household objects made by leading designers, while explor¬ing ecological concerns, new technologies, and other themes represented by the objects on view.

  In the 1950s, under the leadership of Carlo Alessi, Giovanni’s grandson, the company made the decision to commission household objects by leading Italian architects. Alberto Alessi—the fourth generation in this family-owned enter¬prise—took over the management of Alessi in the 1970s. Maintaining the sensibility of handicraft while working in materials ranging from stainless steel to plastic, Alberto Alessi brought the company to the forefront of international design through collaborations with architects and designers including Achille Castiglioni, Michael Graves, Ettore Sottsass, and Philippe Starck. Alessi’s current catalog presents the result of the firm’s work with more than 200 designers, such as Ron Arad, David Chipperfield, Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel, and Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of the architectural firm SANAA.

  Alessi: Ethical and Radical presents the company’s history in objects while explor¬ing ecological concerns, new technologies, and other themes. The exhibition is supported by Collab, a nonprofit group that supports the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s modern and contemporary design collection and programs. Alberto Alessi will receive Collab’s Design Excellence Award for 2010.

  Curator: Kathryn Hiesinger, Curator of European Decorative Arts after 1700
  Location: Collab Gallery, Perelman Building

  This exhibition is supported by Collab

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• Arts of Bengal: Town, Temple, Mosque
  March 13 through August 2010
  
  The great cities of Bengal (modern Bangladesh and parts of eastern India) have long functioned as artistic hubs where professional painters, weavers, and sculptors catered to both local and European clientele. Under British colonial rule, artists in Calcutta (modern Kolkata), Dacca (Dhaka), Murshidabad, and Patna, produced silver vessels adorned with scenes of rural life, silk saris brocaded with images of urban pleasures, and paintings of colorful festivals. Temples and mosques, often decorated with intricately molded terracotta bricks, also fostered artistic creativity. Some even provided venues for artists to sell paintings satirizing city life. Bengal’s rich urban fabric also offered inspiration to artist-intellectuals such as Jamini Roy, Mukul Dey, and Nandalal Bose as they sought to forge a modern aesthetic in the decades leading up to and following independence. Through works drawn from the Museum’s collections, this exhibition explores the texture of life and art in Bengal’s cities from the eighteenth century to the twentieth.
  

  Curator: Yael Rice, Assistant Curator of Indian and Himalayan Art, and Darielle Mason, The Stella Kramrisch Curator of Indian and Himalayan Art
  Location: The William P. Wood Gallery 227

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• Flora and Fauna in Korean Art
  March 13, 2010 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 images of 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 friends” 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"(ahn). 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 Chosŏn 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 Chosŏn 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 East Asian Art Gallery 238

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• Visions of Venice: Eighteenth-Century Prints from the Collection
  April 24 – July 18, 2010
  
  Venice in the 18th century was a leading center of European culture. The arts of painting and sculpture, printmaking and drawing flourished alongside music and theater, fashion and design, attracting travelers from around the world. Prompted by this thriving tourist trade, Venetian artists created lively prints of the city and its people for aristocratic visitors to take home.

  This exhibition surveys the broad range of Venetian print production, featuring over 70 works by artists such as Canaletto, Marco Ricci, Giovanni Battista and Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, and Pietro Longhi. The images on view celebrate the culture and beauty of the city with the characteristic inventiveness of the Venetian Rococo style. Vedute, topographical or imaginary views of Venice, dominated the market, recording the city’s architecture as well as major ceremonies and festivals. Capricci prints, blending fantasy and reality in spirited scenes of classical ruins, were also popular, while genre prints, or representations of everyday life among all social classes, were sought after by tourists and Venetians alike. The exhibition is further enlivened by a small selection of drawings and paintings by notable Venetian masters.

  Curators: Sarah Cantor, The Dorothy J. del Bueno Curatorial Fellow in the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, and John Ittmann, Curator of Prints.
  Location: Berman Gallery, ground floor
  

  
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• Water Work
  Summer 2010
  
  This exhibition features images in which water is the principal theme, highlighted in a selection of modern and contemporary prints, drawings, and photographs from the permanent collection. Some 15 works will be on view, ranging from Ellsworth Kelly’s brush-and-ink drawing Reflections in the Seine (1950), to Untitled (after Tomb of the Diver, Paestum) (2002), a crayon-and-charcoal drawing on blue paper by Robert Moskowitz. Works by artists including Ed Ruscha, Roni Horn, Robert Moskowitz, Vija Celmins, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Georgia O’Keeffe will also be on view.

  Curator: Innis H. Shoemaker, The Audrey and William H. Helfand Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs
  Location: Stieglitz Gallery, ground floor
  

• Late Renoir
  June 17 – September 6, 2010
  
  Focusing on the final three decades of his career, this international traveling exhibition explores the innovative techniques Pierre-Auguste Renoir (French 1841-1919) adopted in response to his dissatisfaction with the limitations of the Impressionist method and subject matter that he pioneered earlier in his career.

  Devoting himself to joyful subjects such as bathers, domestic scenes, and landscapes, Renoir eventually came to use fluid brushstrokes and a remarkable palette to depict scenes influenced by classical mythology and by his recent move to the south of France. While he was troubled by arthritis and became increasingly limited in his movements, he turned for inspiration to the scenes around him, winning the admiration of the modernist avant-garde who recognized and admired in the monumentality of his figures and smooth handling of paint that Renoir had gone beyond Impressionism to create art that was both classical and modern. Renoir’s late work began to fall out of favor with critics in the mid-20th century, and the exhibition will provide an opportunity to revisit this period of Renoir’s career and to assess his substantial legacy for younger painters such as Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso. Approximately 80 paintings, drawings, and sculptures by Renoir will be displayed alongside 20 works by artists who emerged in the next generation.

  This exhibition is organized by the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, the Musée d'Orsay, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This exhibition is supported in part by The Annenberg Foundation Fund for Major Exhibitions. Major foundation support for this exhibition is provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts and The Robert Lehman Foundation. Additional support is provided by The Women's Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, generous contributors to the Renoir Salon, and other individual donors. Promotional support is provided by Amtrak.

  Itinerary: The Grand Palais, Paris (September 23, 2009-January 4, 2010); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (February 14-May 9, 2010); Philadelphia Museum of Art (June 17-September 6, 2010)
  Curator: Jennifer Thompson, The Gloria and Jack Drosdick Associate Curator, European Painting Before 1900
  Catalogue: The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.
  Location: Dorrance Galleries

  Press Images
• Plain Beauty: White Porcelain of the Chŏson Dynasty (1392 – 1910) and The “Vessel” Series by Bohnchang Koo
  June 19 – September 26, 2010
  
  Simple monochrome white porcelains have been produced in Korea since the beginning in the 15th century and have often reflected the ideals and taste of the Chosŏn dynasty (1392-1910) which promoted the virtues of a frugal and restrained lifestyle. The production of porcelain continued throughout the early 20th century, yielding vessels of diverse functions, sizes, and shapes. In China, the preference for plain white wares was long ago replaced by lavishly decorated vessels with flamboyant, multicolored patterns, and as a result monochrome wares remained a uniquely Korean phenomenon. This exhibition explores the elegant beauty of plain white Korean porcelain with objects drawn from the Museum’s collections and loans from other collections in the United States. The works range from a small water dropper to an imposing globular “moon jar.” The porcelains are complemented by an installation of large-scale photographs by Koo Bohnchang (b. 1953), which capture the subtle beauty of undecorated white porcelains. Koo visited museums within and outside Korea to develop the almost portrait-like images, which feature off-center compositions, sectional details, and subtle pink tones.

  Curator: Hyunsoo Woo, The Maxine and Howard Lewis Associate Curator of Korean Art
  Location: Levy Gallery, Perelman Building
  

Ongoing Exhibitions

• Common Ground: Eight Philadelphia Photographers in the 1960s and 1970s
  Through January 31, 2010
  
  The 1960s were a critical period for the art of photography in Philadelphia, as artists including Emmet Gowin, Will Larson, and Ray K. Metzker—among the first to be trained in university art departments—came to Philadelphia to teach in the city’s renowned art schools, bringing with them experimental approaches to the medium.

  Common Ground examines work by these internationally acclaimed artists along with superb work by lesser-known figures, including some of their students, who pushed photographic experimentation to explore both the medium and the social and sexual politics of the era. In addition to highlighting eight strong bodies of work, the exhibition demonstrates the rich exchange of ideas possible within a city's artistic community.

  Metzker’s Composites: Philadelphia (1964), catalogs time and motion through a sequence of images, presenting an elegant meditation on photography's unique qualities among the visual arts. At the same time, it is a penetrating vision of urban life during the 1960s. The exhibition will include work by Will Brown, Emmet Gowin, Catherine Jansen, Will Larson, David Lebe, Sol Mednick, Ray Metzker, and Carol Taback.

  Curator: Peter Barberie, Curator of Photographs, with Julia Dolan, The Horace W. Goldsmith Curatorial Fellow
  Location: Julien Levy Gallery, Perelman Building

  Press Release | Press Images

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