Del. Art Museum shows off presents

The Delaware Art Museum has hit its art-collecting stride once again since reopening at its old location in 2005 after extensive renovations.

Its current show "Gifted," featuring 30-plus works, represents a creative outburst of gift-giving to the museum in the interim. Seeing it tends to make us look forward to what lies ahead as we view these freshly acquired paintings, prints, photos, a sculpture and ceramics.

Comfortably added to its American illustration unit are several interesting works by lesser-known illustrators it's a pleasure to discover, such as John Bennett and Bror Thure de Thulstrup.

Photographs get a boost over a wider span of time. In the best of these, Berenice Abbott happens upon an old New York hotel vista and gently enshrines it - no contrivance here.

Philadelphians also get their due: painter Tom Chimes, a lithograph by Eugene Feldman of Falcon Press, and printmaker Jerome Kaplan, whose color etching portrays a storefront shop.

Lately the museum has successfully entered a new area of exploration with considerable potential by acquiring works from the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel collection of contemporary art (to be displayed next spring, and only sampled here).

But in this show, it's the steps along the way - pristine watercolors by Jimmy Ernst, Tyrone Mitchell's sense of sculpture as a presence rather than an object, and yes, even that cranky, fusty old "Two Clowns" painting by Walt Kuhn - that make the show worthwhile, and impart an aesthetic value to the facts of history.

Edith Newhall's gallery reviews have moved from Weekend to The Inquirer's Arts & Entertainment section. You can find her there this Sunday.EndText

Salon des Amis Gallery. "Flex Box" is a casual name for a very spirited, all-invited show by 25 city and suburban artists at Salon in Malvern. Included are eight members of the Dumpster Divers, artists dedicated to making art from found objects.

Chanthaphone Rajavong, formerly of Laos, is the show's star with "Atomic Twins," an amazing pair of functional table lamps that allude imaginatively to that familiar landmark on Malvern's horizon, the cooling towers of the Limerick nuclear power plant. This light-sculpture is made from metal, gems and woven wire, and it projects intricate light patterns, opening up new territory for this skilled young artist in terms of both subject and construction.

Outstanding pieces by Dumpster Divers are Burnell Yow!'s collaged portraits and carpenter John Lindsay's unpretentious wooden boxes, while distinctive contributions to the show's surreal flavor are made by painter Patty Castner, with Amanda Ferraro, Amy Spearing and Nevin Snyder getting the nod for talented newcomers to the gallery.

Michener Art Museum. James Fuhrman, in his latest of several recent area solo shows, displays four wooden sculptures and a new steel piece in the Michener sculpture garden in Doylestown. And that's the right location, because Fuhrman is trying here to recover the sense of nature as a symbol of the eternal.

While there's something to be felt here of Eastern philosophy in his incorporating Zen circular forms that symbolize completion, fullness and inclusion in his solo "Contemplative Spaces," Fuhrman wants us to realize that "owning" a sense of the sacred isn't just an Asian birthright. It belongs to everyone. And it's ours to claim.

Good show.