Arts

The Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia became the Please Dance Museum yesterday when Tap Team Two & Company stepped in. The duo helped inaugurate "PNC Bank of Stars," a program designed to bring performing arts to the museum. Mayor Rendell, singer Gary Rosen and Chaku the Children's Chuckler were also on the opening bill.

A new American operetta is debuting at McCarter Theatre in Princeton tomorrow. It is as American as it is unexpected, and the story of its coming-to-be is a good example of how the arts ought to work in a country so often art-averse. The title of the piece is Night Governess, and its brilliant, witty composer is Polly Pen. It's based on Behind a Mask, a suspense tale Louisa May Alcott wrote under the pseudonym of A.M. Bernard. (And you thought she did only Little Women.) The tale concerns a family's newly hired governess - who seems to have some devious ends in view.

The Fleisher Art Memorial opens its fall season with its first three-artist exhibit, showing the works of Todd Noe, a metal sculptor who makes familiar yet whimsical objects; sculptress Mei-Ling Hom, who draws on Chinese-American culture in her installation, and Stuart Shils, a painter of city and rural landscapes. The three artists are the first of 15 selected from the Fleisher's prestigious Challenge Series, a competition that drew nearly 500 applicants. The gallery will continue its three-person exhibits through the year until all 15 artists have been exhibited.

Inquirer critic and culture writer Peter Dobrin tells you who's making news, noise and splash in the Philadelphia arts world and beyond at

Miguel-Angel Corzo was inaugurated yesterday as the second president of The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Corzo - one of just a handful of Latino college or university presidents in the United States - was formerly the director of the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles. He's also an accomplished scholar, educator and international consultant for the visual arts who has written and edited more than 20 books and organized one of the three most successful museum exhibitions in U.S. history.

Waving small plastic shovels, a crowd of 100 well-wishers broke symbolic ground Thursday on a new performing arts center for Norristown that officials hope will help bring cultural revival and economic prosperity back to the beleaguered Montgomery County seat. I'm so thrilled," said Erin Reilly, cofounder of Theatre Horizon, Norristown's professional drama company. "Today is the day when dreams come true. It's an auspicious beginning. " While the renovation to the first floor of the former Bell Telephone Building will provide permanent digs for the drama company for the first time, a lot more is riding on the $1 million project.

Inquirer critic and culture writer Peter Dobrin tells you who's making news, noise, and splash in the Philadelphia arts world and beyond at www.philly.com/philly/blogs/artswatch .

The rich blue salvia is in bloom. Ditto the red yarrow, the yellow yarrow and the pure white bellflower. Thousand of flowers stand at attention, like horticultural brigades waiting to march up the hill and pour through the columned west entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. They create a splashy parade ground — great squares of blue, red, yellow and white — where before had been a simple swath of green lawn. These flowers, which will fade and be superseded by others coming into bloom (next up: blue false indigo, red blanket flower, yellow false indigo, white gaura)

The animal kingdom will dominate two sales at Freeman's at the end of next week, with Audubon prints at one and equestrian paintings and related sporting art at the other. Prices at both are expected to take off. The 10 Audubon prints, plus an eight-volume edition of his Birds of America, are among the nearly 750 lots of fine books, maps, and manuscripts that Freeman's will offer beginning at 10 a.m. Thursday at the gallery at 1808 Chestnut St. About half came from a single consignor who bought from a big dealer, according to David Bloom, who cataloged the sale with Kerry-Lee Jeffrey.

The Wharton Esherick Museum's exhibition "Poplar Culture, the Celebration of a Tree" at Historic Yellow Springs is an inspired use of a towering tulip poplar that had to be cut down. The end result: the 75 artworks now on display, crafted from the tree that stood outside eminent woodworker Esherick's studio door on a wooded hill in Paoli. None of the works at Yellow Springs, which range from large furniture to a little spoon, tell the full story of what can be done when you can't save a tree.

THE PHILADELPHIA Live Arts Festival has announced the lineup for its 2012 show, which will once again feature a mix of international and homegrown performers. The centerpiece of the festival, which runs from Sept. 7-22, will be the U.S. premiere of Back to Back Theatre's experimental work "Food Court," which deals with bullying, body image and the abuse of power. The dance program is split down the middle, with two acts hailing from Montreal and two from Philly. Among the former is Sylvain Émard Danse's "Le Grand Continental," a work featuring 200-plus amateur dancers — the largest dance piece ever performed at the Live Arts Fest.

IT TOOK SEVEN punches on a SEPTA eight-ride One Day Convenience Pass ($7) to see 10 Art in Transit projects — a three-hour journey on the Market-Frankford and Broad Street lines, with a stop at Suburban Station. Many of the projects are beyond the ticket gates and thus viewable for paying riders only. The projects vary widely and although they all succeed as public art, some can't compete with SEPTA's overwhelming infrastructure of walls, exposed beams, platforms, stairways and gates.

"WALKING ON Sunshine," the newest SEPTA Art in Transit piece on the platforms of the rehabbed Spring Garden station, is unexpectedly cheery and colorful. With its snappy, patent-leather shine, it gives the underground station "soul," as one appreciative rider put it. This creation of Philadelphia artist Margery Amdur is one of 21 art projects SEPTA has created systemwide since 1998, when Art in Transit began at the behest of then-new SEPTA general director Jack Leary. Leary came from Boston, which had an art program in its MTA; he wanted art for Philadelphia, too. Everybody up and down the SEPTA line embraced the idea, according to Elizabeth Mintz, who came on board at the same time as Leary and is the authority's director of communications and manager of the Art in Transit program.

In its mission to draw inspiration from black culture in Philadelphia, an arts organization is offering its yearly breakout conversation among artists, writers and citizens. The 28th annual Celebration of Black Writing, which began Monday and continues until June 2, attracts creative people from many realms - performance and spoken-word artists, authors, editors, journalists, musicians and other cultural craftspeople. Its events cover a wide window of African-American artistic expression and technique, including performances, readings and film screenings, chick lit, advocacy journalism, urban fiction and black mental health.

Here's the funny thing about Art, Yasmina Reza's much-produced comic drama about three men and a painting: It's truly a matter of perspective. A director can go serious with it, or sharp, as Act II Playhouse's Bud Martin did earlier this season, or, as is the case with Hedgerow Theatre's Penelope Reed, she can blunt its edges and treat it as a light comedy. And it will still suit the room. It's handy that this script yields so willingly to a company's point of view. Translated from the original French by Christopher Hampton, its catalyst is a white-on-white canvas purchased for 200,000 francs that reflects all the colors and shades in the longtime friendship among three men: Marc (Tom Teti)