Anne D Harnoncourt

Admission to the Philadelphia Museum of Art will be free on Saturday in honor of director Anne d'Harnoncourt, who died June 1, 2008. The museum will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (The new timed-ticket "Late Renoir" exhibition is not included with free admission.) "Anne d'Harnoncourt, my predecessor, passed away two years ago this month," said Timothy Rub, the museum's director and chief executive. "To honor her memory and all that she did for this institution and the community it serves, we encourage our visitors to come and discover the collections.

You can't blame Chris Potter for being a little flummoxed. Tasked with composing a new piece of music based on one of the paintings in the Philadelphia Museum of Art's collection, the saxophonist was handed not a lush, colorful masterpiece of French impressionism or an explosion of color à la Jackson Pollock, but a stark, austere black-on-white piece by the minimalist Ellsworth Kelly. "To be honest," Potter recalls, "my first reaction when I saw it was, 'Wow, what on Earth am I going to do with this?

On the walls of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, starting today, near the usual first-person flourishes saying "Degas" or "G. Braque," astute visitors will begin noticing the appearance of a new signature. It says: Anne d'Harnoncourt. All around the museum - in Gallery 119 with the Wyeths, at the Japanese Temple and Teahouse, in the Perelman annex - museum staff spent the week putting up evidence that Anne Was Here. Blue labels with the d'Harnoncourt signature have been placed next to works acquired during her era, which ran as curator of 20th-century art from 1972 to 1982 and as director from 1982 until her death in June.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art today will name as its new leader Timothy Rub, chief executive officer of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Rub, 57, will take the post on Sept. 1, succeeding Anne d'Harnoncourt, who died last June after a quarter-century at the museum's helm. "This, for me, was a remarkable opportunity," Rub said. "This is a decision that I made with my heart as well as my mind. Philadelphia is just one of this country's great museums. " He leaves Cleveland after only three years - a short tenure, but an eventful one. During that time, the museum undertook a major expansion, acquired important new works, and was embroiled in the controversial question of provenance in an episode that ended with the return of 14 allegedly stolen or looted ancient works (all acquired decades ago, apparently innocently)

Anne d'Harnoncourt, 64, the formidable, high-spirited personification of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and an indefatigable advocate for the arts as central to the city's identity, died Sunday night. She passed away at her Center City home after undergoing a surgical procedure last week, said Art Museum chairman H.F. "Gerry" Lenfest. The Art Museum did not release a cause of death; there will be no autopsy, he said. "It's a shock and it's very sad. It's unimaginable - the museum world without her," said Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a friend and colleague for decades.

In an unassuming gallery on the first floor of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a special exhibition is showcasing two of the greatest works ever created by artists in America. Both are inextricably bound to the cultural history and identity of Philadelphia - and both nearly disappeared from the city in recent years via out-of-town sales. But Thomas Eakins' The Gross Clinic (1875) and Augustus Saint-Gaudens' Angel of Purity (1902) remain here, thanks in no small measure to the efforts of museum president Anne d'Harnoncourt, who died unexpectedly in June.

Of all the mighty and splendiferous works in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a homey little woodcarving of a tree full of birds is one of Anne d'Harnoncourt's favorites. "Each of us connects with the things in our collection in a different way," she says. "One man's beautiful is another man's ugly. " The director of the Art Museum is taking us on a tour of her eclectic, quirky, personal choices. "I picked some funny categories," she says with a laugh, "and some serious ones.

I WAS HONORED AND PROUD to serve on the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Board of Trustees with Anne d'Harnoncourt. My appointment by City Council President Anna C. Verna as a board member who represents Council afforded me the privilege to work closely with, and get to know first-hand, the amazing person Anne was, and always will be remembered as. In my opinion, Anne was larger than life itself. Anne's professional accomplishments in the art community and world were insurmountable.

Anne d'Harnoncourt, director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art since 1982, confirmed yesterday that she has declined the job of director at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Although d'Harnoncourt, 51, made her decision during the summer, she acknowledged that it may not be widely known. "When you decide to stay somewhere, you don't send out a press release," she joked. D'Harnoncourt was one of several museum directors named as a possible successor to Richard E. Oldenburg, who announced his resignation as MoMA director in September 1993.

Officials of the Philadelphia Museum of Art yesterday dedicated a gallery containing a Japanese Buddhist temple to the SmithKline Beckman Corp. in honor of the company's gift of $1 million to the museum. The money is the first major contribution to the museum's capital funding campaign, which museum officials hope will reach $50 million. It is the largest corporate gift the museum has received. "We're hoping it will prompt other corporations into giving to the campaign," said Henry Wendt, SmithKline Beckman's chairman and chief executive officer, shortly after he and museum director Anne D'Harnoncourt unveiled a small sign naming a room in the museum's Oriental Collections wing the SmithKline Beckman Gallery.

You can't blame Chris Potter for being a little flummoxed. Tasked with composing a new piece of music based on one of the paintings in the Philadelphia Museum of Art's collection, the saxophonist was handed not a lush, colorful masterpiece of French impressionism or an explosion of color à la Jackson Pollock, but a stark, austere black-on-white piece by the minimalist Ellsworth Kelly. "To be honest," Potter recalls, "my first reaction when I saw it was, 'Wow, what on Earth am I going to do with this?

It dangled high in the air, a connector seeking a connection, before slowly being lowered into the waiting earth. At 11:45 Wednesday morning, the Philadelphia Museum of Art was at last plugged in. After hours of maneuvering and digging and pondering, the museum installed the latest addition to its outdoor sculpture garden, a gift from the collector and philanthropist David Pincus - Claes Oldenburg's Giant Three-Way Plug, Scale A ...

Admission to the Philadelphia Museum of Art will be free on Saturday in honor of director Anne d'Harnoncourt, who died June 1, 2008. The museum will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (The new timed-ticket "Late Renoir" exhibition is not included with free admission.) "Anne d'Harnoncourt, my predecessor, passed away two years ago this month," said Timothy Rub, the museum's director and chief executive. "To honor her memory and all that she did for this institution and the community it serves, we encourage our visitors to come and discover the collections.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art today will name as its new leader Timothy Rub, chief executive officer of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Rub, 57, will take the post on Sept. 1, succeeding Anne d'Harnoncourt, who died last June after a quarter-century at the museum's helm. "This, for me, was a remarkable opportunity," Rub said. "This is a decision that I made with my heart as well as my mind. Philadelphia is just one of this country's great museums. " He leaves Cleveland after only three years - a short tenure, but an eventful one. During that time, the museum undertook a major expansion, acquired important new works, and was embroiled in the controversial question of provenance in an episode that ended with the return of 14 allegedly stolen or looted ancient works (all acquired decades ago, apparently innocently)

The Philadelphia Museum of Art yesterday won the Venice Biennale's Golden Lion award for best national pavilion - the first by a commissioner of the U.S. Pavilion since 1990. In a ceremony at the pavilion attended by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, the museum accepted honors for "Bruce Nauman: Topological Garden," echoing the capture of a similar top award two decades ago for its Jasper Johns show. "We're all so happy," Art Museum chairman H.F. "Gerry" Lenfest said. "What it represents to me is what a great loss it was when Anne d'Harnoncourt died a year ago, and the museum has not lost a step despite that.

VENICE, Italy - The Philadelphia Museum of Art yesterday won the Venice Biennale's Golden Lion award for best national pavilion - the first by a commissioner of the U.S. Pavilion since 1990. In a ceremony at the pavilion attended by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, the museum accepted honors for "Bruce Nauman: Topological Garden," echoing the capture of a similar top award two decades ago for its Jasper Johns show. "We're all so happy," Art Museum chairman H.F. "Gerry" Lenfest said.

VENICE, Italy - The Philadelphia Museum of Art yesterday won the Venice Biennale's Golden Lion award for best national pavilion - the first by a commissioner of the U.S. Pavilion since 1990. In a ceremony at the Pavilion attended by Italian president Giorgio Napolitano, the museum accepted honors for "Bruce Nauman: Topological Garden," echoing the capture of a similar top award two decades ago for its Jasper Johns show. "We're all so happy," said Art Museum chairman H.F. "Gerry" Lenfest.

On the walls of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, starting today, near the usual first-person flourishes saying "Degas" or "G. Braque," astute visitors will begin noticing the appearance of a new signature. It says: Anne d'Harnoncourt. All around the museum - in Gallery 119 with the Wyeths, at the Japanese Temple and Teahouse, in the Perelman annex - museum staff spent the week putting up evidence that Anne Was Here. Blue labels with the d'Harnoncourt signature have been placed next to works acquired during her era, which ran as curator of 20th-century art from 1972 to 1982 and as director from 1982 until her death in June.

In death as in life, she got them to look at art. And to Anne d'Harnoncourt last night, they said thank you and good-bye. About 2,000 friends, colleagues and admirers gathered at the Academy of Music for a warm and polished tribute to d'Harnoncourt, the longtime Philadelphia Museum of Art director whose death from a heart attack June 1 shook the local arts community and the tight-knit international art establishment. The event, held on what would have been her 65th birthday, may not mitigate the kind of grief and dismay that has gripped the Art Museum in the last few months, but it does draw down an unofficial curtain on a summer of mourning.

In an unassuming gallery on the first floor of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a special exhibition is showcasing two of the greatest works ever created by artists in America. Both are inextricably bound to the cultural history and identity of Philadelphia - and both nearly disappeared from the city in recent years via out-of-town sales. But Thomas Eakins' The Gross Clinic (1875) and Augustus Saint-Gaudens' Angel of Purity (1902) remain here, thanks in no small measure to the efforts of museum president Anne d'Harnoncourt, who died unexpectedly in June.