American Art

American folk art from the estate of a well-known New York dealer and a collection of quilts from a central Pennsylvania consignor will be the highlights of two auctions - one tomorrow, the other a two-session sale next weekend. Both should offer some affordable items. The folk art, from the collection of the late John Gordon and his wife, Leah, will be featured at Pook & Pook Inc.'s sale of furniture, art and accessories May 12 and 13. Gordon was a New York dealer who rode the crest of the wave of interest in American folk art in the 1970s.

The nation's newest museum building opens in Center City today as a part of the nation's oldest art museum, and when Kim Sajet took a walk into one of its vast galleries, the artworks spoke directly to her from the walls. This surprised even Sajet, who has been living, professionally, with the works of "The Chemistry of Color," a collection of art by 41 African American artists in Philadelphia from 1970 to 1990. But there she was yesterday morning, standing in the middle of the show with a group of docents from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, giving them her curator's take on the work.

Maybe it was The Cosby Show, said influential gallery owner Mercer Redcross. Hanging on the walls of the Huxtables' home was the work of African American artists, Redcross said, and African Americans in the 1980s took note. Or perhaps it was simply the inevitable flow of history that finally produced a sizable art-buying community among U.S. blacks, he said. Either way, what observers call a rising class of art-savvy African Americans could be seen inside Temple's Liacouras Center this weekend at the 18th annual Philadelphia International Art Expo.

The Barnes Foundation has received a grant of $150,000 from the Henry Luce Foundation to support the publication of a comprehensive catalog of the foundation's collection of American art. The foundation's American collection of more than 300 paintings and works on paper is one of its most significant assets. However, in most discussion of the foundation, the American works are overshadowed by the better-known French masterpieces. According to Emily Croll, director of the foundation's Collections Assessment Project, the three-year enterprise will result in a book that describes in detail 100 of the most important American works and illustrate them in color.

When Romare Bearden died in 1988 at age 76, he was acclaimed as one of the most significant African American artists of the 20th century. While his work explored black themes, particularly jazz, it also embodied the lessons of modern art, especially cubism. This is abundantly evident in "Romare Bearden: Narrations," a handsome and tightly focused exhibition of 61 collages and watercolors at the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington. Despite the show's modest size and scope, it illuminates Bearden's major themes and effectively summarizes his creative method.

The traveling exhibit "The Human Factor: Figuration in American Art, 1950-1995" at Ursinus is a great disappointment. True, "Human Factor" is a 48-item show that brings to the fore a number of artists who can lay claim to being some of the best and brightest of American figure painters of that era. Indeed, this is one of the precious few midseason group shows in the suburbs to feature so many nationally known painters. So why complain. This exhibit will do as an introduction to the subject for some people.

For most of the 19th century, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts collected and exhibited European as well as American art. It was perfectly natural, then, for multimillionaire businessman Henry C. Gibson, a Philadelphian, to bequeath his art collection of more than 100 works, most by European artists, to the academy in 1892. Yet ironically, even as the museum was receiving Gibson's substantial gift, it was beginning to eliminate European art from its purview. It had started to become what it is today, exclusively an institution for American art. The museum sold some European paintings in 1898, and 85 more in four sales between 1986 and 1996.

Darrel Sewell came to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1973 to take over the new department of American art. For 29 years, he has been its only chief curator. Now, with the department on the verge of major expansion and reorganization, he has decided to retire on Oct. 1 and leave that responsibility to a successor. She will be Kathleen Adair Foster of the Indiana University Art Museum, who was a curator at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts during the 1980s. Sewell, 62, said this week that the museum's expansion into the Perelman annex across Kelly Drive would lead to the creation of new galleries for American art in the museum's main building.

The Francis Criss exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts offers a critic the ultimate delight - discovery of a talented painter occupying a pivotal point in 20th-century American art. And this painter, Francis Criss, has solid Philadelphia roots. Born in 1901, he lived in the city from 1904, when his family immigrated from London, to 1925, when he moved permanently to New York. In between, Criss studied at the Graphic Sketch Club, now the Fleisher Art Memorial, and at the academy.

During the mid-19th century, American art produced an effusion of landscape painting as artists responded to spectacular vistas that they interpreted as manifestations of divine power and glory. Philadelphian William Trost Richards (1833-1905) became a prominent member of this landscape cadre, although his pictures tended to be less flamboyant than typical examples from the Hudson River School. Richards is remembered today primarily for his seacoast scenes from Rhode Island and New Jersey.