An artful end

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As 2006 comes to an end, the art world continues to move at high speed.

The biggest news was the sale of the famous 1875 Thomas Eakins painting "Gross Clinic" by Thomas Jefferson University Hospital to a yet-to-be-built museum in Arkansas funded by a Wal-Mart heiress. The terms of the sale allowed the painting to stay in Philadelphia if $68 million was found to match the offer. This same group also bought Asher Brown Durand’s "Kindred Spirits" from the New York City.

Last week, Mayor John Street announced the painting will stay in Philadelphia. About $30 million was donated by several organizations both in and out of state, which convinced Jefferson to push the deadline for raising the remaining funds to Jan. 31. Wachovia Bank joined in the fray by promising to make up the difference of what is left to collect at the end of next month with a loan. Fund-raising, however, will continue.

The largest contributor was the Annenberg Foundation with $10 million. Three other foundations — Lenfest, Pew, and Neubauer — each kicked in $3 million. Once the asked amount is met, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts are to share ownership of the painting.

Like many cultural institutions, the Philadelphia Museum of Art needs to provide exhibitions that will satisfy its audience and money-makers, as well as explore new fields. This has been a blockbuster year of widely divergent shows. Consider the contrast between a retrospective of 70 years of Andrew Wyeth and the current "Tesoros" that encompasses 300 years of Latin American works. It’s like booking "Guys and Dolls" in the same theatrical season as an obscure Samuel Beckett, or an opera company staging productions of both Puccini and Kurt Weill. The Latin American show ends with the year, and it must not be missed.

While at the art museum, two different types of sculpture may draw attention. With all the "Rocky Balboa" hype, check out its namesake’s statue newly installed on the front lawn, and then visit the spider on the front terrace. The 9-foot-tall, 27-foot-wide bronze arachnid is on loan from a private collection. Made by Louise Bourgeois, it is one of a series she created in the early 1990s. Other variations have defined public space in St. Petersburg, the Tate in London, the Museo Guggenheim in Spain and Rockefeller Center in New York City. The contrast between "Rocky" and "Crouching Spider" will tell all that needs to be told about art and non-art.

Switching from two works at one museum, there is an unusual joint acquisition with two others, the Delaware Art Museum and the Brandywine River Museum. They’re sharing a 1903 Howard Pyle piece titled "Richard de Bury Tutoring Young Edward III." The painting, a base for an etched illustration, complements both museums’ collections. It is on view at the Delaware and will be a part of the Brandywine’s major show "Howard Pyle and the American Renaissance" March 17 to May 20. The Delaware also has an upcoming major exhibition featuring the works of John Sloan in the fall, drawing on donations from the artist’s widow.

On another front, the Fleisher Art Memorial on Catharine Street is getting ready to welcome a new executive director to replace the museum’s longtime dynamo, Thora Jacobson. Matthew Braun, head of the History Center in Tompkins County in Ithaca, N.Y., will fill the role. Braun graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a bachelor of fine arts degree and was an artist in residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting and the Santa Reparata Printmaking Studio in Florence, Italy. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. He’ll have his work cut out for him, as Jacobson cast a tall shadow and was as beloved as she was effective.

Starting next month, the town will be in the grip of Tut-mania. The mega-show opens Feb. 3 at The Franklin Institute and is complemented by vast collections of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The two are collaborating for the Egyptian madness.

To match the impending frenzy, note that the usually level-headed University Museum is offering Tut burgers in its cafeteria and visitors who want to see both exhibits can travel cross-town on a Tut Trolley.