This fall’s art season is moving right along with significant exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and a show of two of South Philadelphia’s more accomplished artists at the Da Vinci Art Alliance.
Uptown, the Art Museum is wrapping up its yearlong celebration of its 125th anniversary with a handsome installation of gifts presented to the museum for its birthday. Also at the museum is a small, elegant show of British etchings that looks at the output of the Etching Club of London shortly after its founding in 1838, along with a selection of later prints.
Starting on home turf, David Foss is showing his new paintings and Kathryn Pannepacker, her new weavings, at the Da Vinci Art Alliance, 704 Catharine St., through Nov. 30. Foss is coordinator of the Art in City Hall program and administrator of the Da Vinci Alliance; Pannepacker, a classically trained tapestry-weaver, has for the past five years been working with tin foil, branches, pipe cleaners and other materials that, she said, would be considered "blasphemous" to her colleagues in Aubusson, France.
Foss is showing mixed-media paintings with a variety of textures, colors and forms for a strong emotional impact. He considers his work to demonstrate the passage of time through the creative process. Foss also has concurrent shows at the Philadelphia Art Alliance’s Satellite Gallery and Parallels Gallery in Old City.
Pannepacker is showing a series of wall weavings of strip cloth and aluminum foil. The "work explores the beautiful nuances of single colors in strip-cloth against the bold patterns woven with coiled aluminum foil," according to the artist. Her work also was in evidence at the recent Fringe Festival, where she wove a large outdoor aluminum-foil installation alongside the Arden Theater.
Over at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, "Gifts in Honor of the Museum’s 125th Anniversary," which runs through Dec. 8, comprises single gifts, large and small collections, paintings, decorative arts and furniture — everything from a Japanese earthenware jar dating from 2,500-1,500 B.C. to a recently completed painting by Jasper Johns. In short, it is a collection, filling six galleries, that most museums would consider adequate for their entire inventory.
The installation is quite handsome and includes American painting and furniture, Pennsylvania German fraktur, African sculpture, Japanese textiles, avant-garde menswear, 20th-century women’s fashions, Italian Renaissance ceramics, French etchings, American and European photography, pottery and costumes.
Some of the striking attributes are the American decorative arts and photography, Indian art from the Bellak Collection and the bust of Benjamin Franklin by Houdon. As the museum notes, the gifts celebrating its birthday are rich and varied, spanning "centuries, cultures and continents."
The varied pieces are installed according to their "affinities with one another, including aspects of nature, spirituality, the human figure and the artist’s touch." All of this has been coordinated by Alice Beamesderfer, associate director of collections, in what must have been a bewildering array of judgments and decisions. The result is a first-rate, handsome museum-in-a-museum. The art itself has been donated over the past five years as part of the celebration and the effort was chaired by Harvey Shipley Miller, a museum trustee.
Also running at the museum is "The Etching Club of London: A Taste for Painters’ Etchings," through Jan. 2. The show is installed in the Eglin Gallery and is culled from the museum’s own collection of prints. The exhibition offers a unique opportunity to survey both the museum’s holdings in this area and also The Etching Club of London’s role in the revival of this art form in the mid-19th century. The club dates back to 1838 and in a most British-like manner, went against the contemporary popular art of mechanical reproduction. The club’s original members included Richard Redgrave and Charles West Cope. Other members included William Holman Hunt and Samuel Palmer. The club published 10 volumes of original etchings, such as the works of William Shakespeare and John Milton and The Deserted Village by Oliver Goldsmith.
By and large, the etchings are detailed, well-executed, emotional and tinged with fantasy, all elements that fueled the revival of etching as a viable art form in England in the mid-1800s. That was a generation before artists such as Francis Seymour Haden and James McNeill Whistler began using the technique, an involvement that often has led to them being credited with its revival. The show was organized by Andrea Fredericksen, a curator in the department.
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David Foss and Kathryn Pannepacker
Through Nov. 30
Da Vinci Art Alliance
704 Catharine St.
Free to the public
Hours: Wednesdays, 6-8 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 1-5 p.m.
215-829-0466
Gifts in Honor of the Museum’s 125th Anniversary
Through Dec. 8
and
The Etching Club of London: A Taste for Painters’ Etchings
Through Jan. 2
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26th Street
215-763-8100
www.philamuseum.org
Museum admission: $10 general; $7 seniors, students and ages 5-18; pay what you wish on Sundays
