Ellsworth Kelly

Every so often Works on Paper Gallery sheds its somewhat staid personality as a purveyor of prints and drawings by blue-chip contemporary artists, and the change is so abrupt — so seemingly out of nowhere — that it always makes me smile. It turns out that Evan Slepian, the gallery's owner, fell under under the spell of street art four years ago and will probably continue his presentations of urban artists he admires. The latest to be given the privilege of reinventing the gallery's main space is Then One, an artist, designer, illustrator, and muralist who lives in northern New Jersey.

Barnes Foundation president Richard H. Glanton said it was "a no-brainer. " When Louise Reed, a trustee of the Pennsylvania Ballet, asked to host a reception at the foundation's Merion art gallery for people who made large donations to the ballet, Glanton jumped at the chance, he testified yesterday in Montgomery County Orphans Court. "This is what every responsible institution in the city would love to have the opportunity to do: showcase the assets of the institution to wealthy patrons of the arts," Glanton said.

It's clearly a sign of the times that "Post Painterly Abstraction," the title of the current group show at Locks Gallery, could pass for one of those painfully artspeaky contemporary labels for a trend. In fact, Clement Greenberg, the reigning American art critic of the 1950s and 1960s, came up with the term, and it's the one most closely associated with him today. The former champion of abstract expressionism and its dense, agitated surfaces used it as the title for an exhibition he organized for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1964, of paintings by 31 artists - among them Helen Frankenthaler, Ellsworth Kelly, Morris Louis, Frank Stella, Jules Olitski, Gene Davis, and Kenneth Noland - who favored a new style of openness and linear clarity.

Sunday Rockin' the Fourth What better way to celebrate Independence Day than with the lead singer of Free? Paul Rodgers , also well-known for helming sensational '70s stars Bad Company, headlines the Let Freedom Rock Fest , which includes a 25-minute fireworks spectacular and starts at 6 p.m. at Cooper River Park , South Park Drive and East Cuthbert Boulevard, Pennsauken. Admission is free. Call 610-667-8500. Monday Cool off Here's a rarity: The Philadelphia Museum of Art is open on a Monday (10 a.m. to 5 p.m.)

A three-legged Shaker candle stand sold for a record $154,000, and a similar red-stained cherry stand with tapering spider legs and a gently swelling shaft brought $91,000 at a Robert Skinner auction in Bolton, Mass., in March. The more expensive stand had the names of two Shaker eldresses and the date 1837 stamped on the bottom. It makes one wonder why Shaker design - the product of the 19th-century Shaker religious communities - is considered so special. A new installation of Shaker furniture at the Shaker Museum in Old Chatham, N.Y., provides a clue.

The shimmering glass mosaic created by Maxfield Parrish and Louis Comfort Tiffany as the crown jewel of the Curtis Building has been sold, and studies are under way to determine how best to strip the mural from its home of nearly a century and ship it to an anonymous buyer. "There is an agreement of sale," said attorney Marc D. Brookman of the Center City law firm of Duane Morris & Heckscher. Brookman, whose firm has handled some asset sales for the estate of John W. Merriam, owner of the mural, declined to give any other details, citing a confidentiality agreement covering the sale; local sources familiar with the deal estimate the price at more than $5 million.

Thirty-five years ago, a bunch of young Philadelphians got together with the idea of helping the Museum of Art expand its collection. They called themselves the Friends of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and good friends they turned out to be. Over the years, the volunteers, recruiting more volunteers to join them, raised more than $2.5 million that purchased more than 200 works of art. Many of the works were by contemporary American artists,...

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?

The Barnes Foundation, whose renowned collection of early modernist art will open in May on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway after moving from Merion, plans to install a soaring sculpture by contemporary master Ellsworth Kelly near the entrance to its new building. The Barnes Totem , a slender, stepped blade rising 40 feet into the air, is a gift from the Neubauer Family Foundation, Barnes officials said. Joseph Neubauer, vice chair of the Barnes board of trustees, characterized the bead-blasted stainless-steel work as a gift for the city, a welcoming statement to gallery visitors and passersby alike.

German Gomez's exhibition at Bridgette Mayer Gallery offers further proof of this gallery's increasingly international focus. Gomez's life-size color photographs of nude and partially clothed men, one series of which re-creates Michelangelo's "The Damned" from his Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel and many of which are composites of several male figures or faces torn from their original photographs and reassembled, are clearly the work of...