The two exhibitions, which occupy all but one of the museum's galleries, dovetail seamlessly. A viewer can proceed from one into the other almost without realizing that a boundary has been crossed.
The Hood-Miller show consists mainly of loans from Hood's granddaughter, Sarah Hood Bodine.
It's not all about mother and daughter, however; the approximately 75 paintings also represent their mentors, colleagues, and friends, liberally mixed in.
Some of the latter works are lent; others come from the museum's collection.
"Flirting" is essentially a collection show, and as such it should strike viewers as more familiar. One prominent element gives it distinction, however: a group of about a dozen works lent by Karen Segal, herself a painter and collector of Philadelphia artists.
Segal's contribution announces her promised gift to Woodmere of 82 paintings by local artists such as Jane Piper, Jan Baltzell, Bill Scott, Rose Naftulin, Jacqueline Cotter, Stuart Shils, Doris Staffel, and Eileen Goodman.
It's a major benefaction to a museum that specializes in Philadelphia art.
With these two exhibitions, museum director William R. Valerio has woven a complex tapestry, from which three major and closely related themes readily emerge.
The first is the career of Hood, initially a wife and mother who became a serious painter in middle age. Under the tutelage of Arthur B. Carles and Henry McCarter, she achieved impressive results as a colorist.
As his own paintings indicate, Carles was a strong advocate of color used structurally, and he influenced a number of local artists to follow his lead.
This leads us into the second major theme, the prominence of assertive color in a sizable body of local modernist painting.
