Arshile Gorky

In this new 2009-10 art season, the Muppets square off against modernism and Renoir goes up against Hollywood. The mix of exhibitions planned by the region's art museums has rarely been so eclectic. Add to that another new wing to be opened at Doylestown's Michener Art Museum and a Philadelphia-wide festival of graphic art in early 2010 and you'll be hard-pressed to find an excuse not to sample something from this enticing menu.   Art Museum curator Michael Taylor talks about his five-year exploration of "quintessential bohemian" Arshile Gorky at http://go.

The Pew Exhibitions Initiative will dole out about $1 million this year to support eight exhibitions, including a major retrospective by the Philadelphia Museum of Art that will explore the career of modernist painter Arshile Gorky. Pew is also providing funds for early planning of two exhibitions. The Art Museum will receive $250,000 from the grantmaking organization, a unit of the Pew Charitable Trusts, to help fund the 180-work Gorky exhibition, which is scheduled to start in October and run to January 2010.

The New York abstract painter Norman Bluhm is one of the most underrated artists of his generation. While some of his contemporaries such as Kenneth Noland and Andy Warhol stopped developing altogether and experienced creative failure, Bluhm, subject of "Works on Paper, 1947-1986," an exhibit at the Allentown Art Museum, developed a commanding presence outside the limelight. Bluhm, 68, found a way to evolve out of his origins in abstract expressionism, extending and transforming that heritage.

Gorky retrospective. Arshile Gorky was a survivor, first of the genocide in his native Armenia and then of an adjustment to American culture and modern art. On Oct. 21, the Philadelphia Museum of Art will open the largest exhibition in nearly three decades for a key figure in the development of avant-garde art in America. (215-763-8100 or www.philamuseum.org .) Late Renoir. Bookending the 2009-10 season in late spring is the Art Museum's other major presentation, a survey of what Pierre-Auguste Renoir created during his late years.

An auction is the easy way to sell a collection of art or antiques, but it always entails a risk. Moreover, some items aren't suitable for auction because they're idiosyncratic or too far ahead of the market. Selling to a dealer, on the other hand, may not deliver the very best price for every object in a collection. Bates and Isabelle Lowry decided on an uncommon alternative. They are offering for sale 50 selections from their collection of offbeat folk art at an exhibition at the Janet Fleisher Gallery in Center City.

The month of May brings auctions involving the collections of two prominent individuals and a collection of worldwide importance. The collection of modern and contemporary art owned by the late H. Gates Lloyd and his wife, Lallie, is world famous. It will be offered by Sotheby's in New York at two two-day sales: The first will be contemporary art on Wednesday and Thursday, the second will be modern art on May 11 and 12. Lloyd died in November at age 92 at his home in Haverford.

Michael R. Taylor, the highly regarded curator of modern art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, has been named director of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. He will assume his new position in August, succeeding Brian Kennedy, who moved to the Toledo Museum of Art in September. Taylor, who was named the Art Museum's first modern art curator in 2004, said in a statement that he was "absolutely delighted" with his new position. The Hood's collection, he said, offered "exciting possibilities," particularly in the area of "student-driven exhibitions, which I believe hold the key to the museum's future success.

In what may be a precedent, the Philadelphia Museum of Art will charge premium ticket prices for its forthcoming show "Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris. " Such pricing generally is reserved for large exhibits involving loans from other museums. But the great majority of the nearly 200 works in the Picasso show are from the museum's own collection; a few pieces will come from private holdings. The museum has seldom, if ever, used special ticketing for an in-house show, though that is standard practice at some other institutions.

To eyes grown accustomed to much recent contemporary art, the show "Selected Paintings and Sculpture" at Marian Locks Gallery, with its strongly abstract-expressionist leanings, has a historical patina. Since Makler Gallery scaled down its activities and went private several years ago, we've had no local gallery conspicuously showing art of the abstract-expressionist generation of painters and sculptors from the '40s and '50s. So the opportunity to view vital works from this era by such noted contemporaries as Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline, who shared style and ideology, is a welcome one. Quite touching - and one of the finest works on view - is de Kooning's small, unfocused painting Woman in a Landscape XII (1968)

Michael R. Taylor, the highly regarded curator of modern art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, has been named director of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. He will assume his new position Aug. 15, succeeding Brian Kennedy, who moved to the Toledo Museum of Art in September. Taylor, who was named the Art Museum's first modern art curator in 2004, said in a statement that he was "absolutely delighted" with his new position. The Hood's collection, he said, offered "exciting possibilities," particularly in the area of "student-driven exhibitions, which I believe hold the key to the museum's future success.

Michael R. Taylor, the highly regarded curator of modern art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, has been named director of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. He will assume his new position in August, succeeding Brian Kennedy, who moved to the Toledo Museum of Art in September. Taylor, who was named the Art Museum's first modern art curator in 2004, said in a statement that he was "absolutely delighted" with his new position. The Hood's collection, he said, offered "exciting possibilities," particularly in the area of "student-driven exhibitions, which I believe hold the key to the museum's future success.

"I think," said Michael R. Taylor, flashing a bright smile, "I'm going to take a little break now. " It's not that he's haggard from pulling together the Philadelphia Museum of Art's next big exhibition, Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris, which opens tomorrow with more than 200 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper. In fact, the Picasso extravaganza has been immensely satisfying, a kaleidoscopic coda to 2009, Taylor's annus mirabilis, during which art and its public presentation and discussion poured out of him in tidal flows.

In what may be a precedent, the Philadelphia Museum of Art will charge premium ticket prices for its forthcoming show "Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris. " Such pricing generally is reserved for large exhibits involving loans from other museums. But the great majority of the nearly 200 works in the Picasso show are from the museum's own collection; a few pieces will come from private holdings. The museum has seldom, if ever, used special ticketing for an in-house show, though that is standard practice at some other institutions.

In this new 2009-10 art season, the Muppets square off against modernism and Renoir goes up against Hollywood. The mix of exhibitions planned by the region's art museums has rarely been so eclectic. Add to that another new wing to be opened at Doylestown's Michener Art Museum and a Philadelphia-wide festival of graphic art in early 2010 and you'll be hard-pressed to find an excuse not to sample something from this enticing menu. Gorky retrospective. Arshile Gorky was a survivor, first of the genocide in his native Armenia and then of an adjustment to American culture and modern art. On Oct. 21, the Philadelphia Museum of Art will open the largest exhibition in nearly three decades for a key figure in the development of avant-garde art in America.

Gorky retrospective. Arshile Gorky was a survivor, first of the genocide in his native Armenia and then of an adjustment to American culture and modern art. On Oct. 21, the Philadelphia Museum of Art will open the largest exhibition in nearly three decades for a key figure in the development of avant-garde art in America. (215-763-8100 or www.philamuseum.org .) Late Renoir. Bookending the 2009-10 season in late spring is the Art Museum's other major presentation, a survey of what Pierre-Auguste Renoir created during his late years.

The Pew Exhibitions Initiative will dole out about $1 million this year to support eight exhibitions, including a major retrospective by the Philadelphia Museum of Art that will explore the career of modernist painter Arshile Gorky. Pew is also providing funds for early planning of two exhibitions. The Art Museum will receive $250,000 from the grantmaking organization, a unit of the Pew Charitable Trusts, to help fund the 180-work Gorky exhibition, which is scheduled to start in October and run to January 2010.

True art collectors are a rare breed. Anyone with money can buy art, but only true collectors can distinguish a great work from a merely good one, or spot emerging talent before the rest of the world notices. True collectors are brave; they trust their instincts rather than the herd. Eleanor Biddle Barnes Lloyd, known to her friends as "Lallie," was one of them. Between the late 1930s, when she first began to collect in earnest, and her death in 1985, she created one of the most distinctive collections of modern and contemporary art in America.

The month of May brings auctions involving the collections of two prominent individuals and a collection of worldwide importance. The collection of modern and contemporary art owned by the late H. Gates Lloyd and his wife, Lallie, is world famous. It will be offered by Sotheby's in New York at two two-day sales: The first will be contemporary art on Wednesday and Thursday, the second will be modern art on May 11 and 12. Lloyd died in November at age 92 at his home in Haverford.