FOCUS ON GALLERIES A muted tint to displays of artwork

As any casual art-world observer could have predicted, this fall season looks to be a muted, sensible one - of reflecting, selecting from under-the-radar holdings and archives, shoring up, and sticking close to home. It's a correction, yes, but in many instances the scrutiny was long overdue.

Case in point: an exhibition at the University of Pennsylvania's Arthur Ross Gallery displaying the talents of David J. Kennedy (1816/17-1898), an immigrant to Philadelphia and a self-taught artist who was recognized in his day, but whose paintings became virtually unknown to Philadelphians over the last century. He and others illuminate the fall season. I'll be back to look at spring in January.

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David J. Kennedy at Arthur Ross Gallery. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, at 13th and Locust Streets, has the largest holdings of watercolors by David J. Kennedy but rarely has had the opportunity to exhibit them. Now, some of his fetching views of the city, loaned by the society to the University of Pennsylvania's Arthur Ross Gallery, are the stars of "West Philadelphia: Building a Community." Kennedy, a Scot, was a railroad clerk who taught himself to paint and went on to capture most of Philadelphia on paper. The English artist William Birch already had depicted views of Philadelphia in his popular prints, but did not take nearly as exhaustive an approach as Kennedy, who seemed possessed by his adopted city. It's fair to say he did for Philadelphia what the photographers Eugene Atget and Berenice Abbott did for Paris and New York, but earlier. (Through Oct. 11; 215-898-2083 or www.upenn.edu/ARG.)

Locks Gallery. Locks opens its fall season with a memorial exhibition for Philadelphia artist Thomas Chimes, who died on April 20, 2008, his 88th birthday. Chimes, whose mysterious paintings celebrated his heroes Marcel Duchamp, Thomas Eakins, and Alfred Jarry, among others, and whose career was the subject of a 2007 retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, will be represented by landscape and crucifixion paintings made between 1958 and 1965. The show's catalogue will include the artist's poems from that period, never previously published. (Through Oct. 16; 215-629-1000 or www.locksgallery.com.)