No little cat feet for art this season - it comes at us with a rush, beginning Saturday with the opening of a spacious annex to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. After that come exhibitions in Philadelphia for Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Charles Demuth and in Reading for Edgar Degas.
In Wilmington, the fabled Bancroft collection of Pre-Raphaelite art returns to its home at the Delaware Art Museum on Sept. 23 after more than two years of traveling around the country. And in February, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo's agonized art arrives in Philadelphia.
Once past the first wave of familiar faces, a few less-celebrated but equally intriguing talents will present themselves, notably American precisionist painter Elsie Driggs and Colombian satirist Fernando Botero.
Herewith, the major art attractions from now through spring.
- Edward J. Sozanski, Inquirer art critic"Renoir Landscapes." We think of Renoir as a figure painter, but during the first 30 years of his career the master of the pneumatic nude also investigated nature, especially effects produced by natural light. This exhibition reveals a painter enchanted by bold color and energetic brushwork. At the Philadelphia Museum of Art beginning Oct. 4. 215-684-7500 or www.philamuseum.org.
"Degas and the Art of Japan," a major production for the Reading Public Museum, will reveal the extent to which the artist was influenced by Japanese art, especially block prints and fans. Pictures by Degas will be paired with Japanese images, some of which he owned, to demonstrate affinities. Opens Sept. 29. 610-371-5850 or www.
readingpublicmuseum.org.
"Cecilia Beaux." A leading American portraitist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Beaux is one of Philadelphia's most accomplished painters. This retrospective of more than 85 works argues that she deserves a more prominent position in American art history. Opens at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Feb. 2. 215-972-7600 or www.pafa.org.
"Frida Kahlo." The agony and the ecstasy of the fabled Mexican painter go on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Feb. 20. Since her death in 1954, Kahlo has become revered for her feminism, her deeply introspective and often disturbing images, and her fortitude in the face of medical disability.
Art makes noise. "Ensemble," which opened at the Institute of Contemporary Art Friday, refutes the notion that visual art is mute. Guest curator Christian Marclay, a musician, has brought together a variety of sculptures and installations, some of them visitor-activated, that produce sounds or music. 215-898-7108 or www.icaphila.org.
Fernando Botero. His paintings and sculptures of grotesquely inflated people aren't always taken seriously, but the Colombian-born artist is a serious critic of colonialism, social customs and political instability in Latin America. A traveling retrospective opens at the Delaware Art Museum March 15. 302-571-9590 or www.delart.org.
Elsie Driggs, who died in 1992, was a lesser-known, but not less-talented, member of the precisionist movement. These artists favored hard-edged renderings of industrial subjects such as factories and bridges. Driggs, who lived in Lambertville, N.J., is the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the James A. Michener Art Museum beginning Jan. 19. 215-340-9800 or www.michenerartmuseum.org.
"Ashcan Realist" John Sloan's views of New York City will go on view at the Delaware Art Museum Oct. 20 in an exhibition of paintings, drawings, prints and photographs. Befitting his socialist politics, "Sloan's New York" focuses on people and street life rather than architecture.
This season's treasure-chest special is "River of Gold" at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. This trove of precious pre-Columbian artifacts was excavated by a museum expedition to central Panama in 1940. The 120 gold objects include plaques, pendants and bells created more than a thousand years ago. 215-898-4000 or www.museum.upenn.edu.
The Charles Demuth Museum in Lancaster, the artist's hometown, is touring its collection for the first time. On Sept. 22, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts will open a show of more than 30 works that define the famed modernist's career, from childhood to late floral pieces.
Philip Pearlstein, a contemporary American realist, earned his considerable reputation with paintings of large-scale nudes in domestic settings. An exhibition opening Saturday at the Michener Art Museum will focus on works from the last 20 years.
Philadelphia printmakers. Graphic art flourished in the second quarter of the 20th century, especially in Philadelphia. "Angels, Alleys and Animal Acts," opening at Woodmere Art Museum Sept. 23, focuses on five influential local artists of the period - Julius Bloch, Benton Spruance, Robert Riggs, G. Ralph Smith, and Earl Horter. 215-247-0476 or www.woodmereartmuseum.org.StartTextArt trivia
"Why shouldn't art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world." - Pierre-Auguste Renoir
In 1895, Philadelphia-born Cecelia Beaux became the first female instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
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For listings of additional art events, go to http://go.philly.
com/fallarts07EndText