Fine Arts

In her Paris salon, Gertrude Stein once told Ernest Hemingway: "You can either buy clothes or buy pictures. It's that simple. " To Stein, a writer who befriended many painters, including Picasso, the choice was that simple. She collected art with a passion. A devoted collector of art, such as paintings, photography or pottery, is uncompromising. Art takes hold of the heart and does not let go. From the initial purchase to the next-to-last (there is rarely a last purchase for the aficionado)

One of Philadelphia's strengths has been the artists it has generated in almost every medium; one of its weaknesses is that so many of them achieve success after leaving the city. Bringing that thought to mind is a painting that is expected to fetch one of the top prices at next week's spring gallery auction of Freeman/Fine Arts of Philadelphia Inc. The 36-by-28-inch oil on canvas has a French title, Vieille Maison a Pont-Aven and depicts a rundown residence in a French farming village.

Gloucester County College is spending $250,000 to make its fine-arts center more handicapped friendly. The Deptford campus project, which is scheduled to be completed by July, includes reconstructing and improving the walkway from the Instructional Center and College Center to the fine-arts building; creating four handicapped parking spaces next to the fine-arts building and a walkway from those spaces to the building's entrance; and rebuilding the...

Scarcely a week ago, it still looked like a work in progress, this quietly ambitious $3.5 million makeover of the nation's oldest art museum. Outside the Victorian Gothic building north of City Hall, workers noisily toiled on the sidewalk. Inside, some walls lacked their paintings, sculptures remained shrouded in plastic and the new cafe looked like someone's half-renovated kitchen. Today, following five-and-a-half months of construction chaos, the Museum of American Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts should be ready to reintroduce itself - with a more accessible visage, a coherent mission and, museum leaders hope, a place in Philadelphia's expanding cultural sense of self.

With "The Art of Stories, The Stories in Art," a family program featuring costumed storytellers and hands-on craft workshops, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts celebrates storytelling tomorrow. Temujin, a Pittsburgh-based storyteller and musician, will perform at 11:30 a.m., 12:45 p.m. and 2 p.m. Using oral sound effects and a talking drum, Temujin presents his participatory stories in the tradition of the itinerant African bard. The program also features continuous presentations by Civil War historyteller Jack Briggs.

Except for a dearth of diminutive foliage, the two tiny rooms on display in the window at the Fine Arts Co. of Philadelphia Inc. look like refugees from the miniature display at the annual Philadelphia Flower Show. One is a "messy bedroom," its bed unmade and clothes strewn upon the chaise longue. The other, a dining room, is tidier and far more detailed. The cord of the working miniature table lamp leads to a miniature wall outlet, and attached to the miniature room's outer wall is an envelope with extra leaves for the 3-by-5-inch dining-room table and the explanation: "In case they have company.

Tony Visco hopes that his students don't lose themselves tomorrow. It's possible they could, considering all the hoopla expected on Broad Street in celebration of Constitution Day. Visco, a sculptor, teaches at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where students are in an uproar over academy President Frank Goodyear's proposal to convert historical art studios at the academy's Broad and Cherry street location into gallery space....

Judging from yesterday's opening session of the two-day sale at the Fine Arts Co. of Philadelphia, prices at today's session, featuring decorative arts, furniture, and carpets, should do better than the catalogue price estimates. Silver in particular "took off" yesterday, according to James Buckley, Fine Arts' vice president. To be sure, some of the price estimates in the $10 catalogue seemed low. But Buckley, noting that the silver commodity market is not particularly strong, suggested that buyers were particularly interested in the repousse patterns offered yesterday.

At first, the idea of having a rap group perform in a fine-arts museum sounds a bit off the wall - especially if the wall is part of the Victorian Gothic splendor of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. With the controversy over gangsta rappers, rap songs don't exactly leap to mind when the subject is artwork. But that's no problem for the Green Paper Company, the rap group that took center stage (actually, a table with the group's portable stereo) yesterday morning during a family art workshop at the academy, 118 N. Broad St. The twenty-something guys from Germantown - who call themselves Roe, Gos and D.J. Stan - are used to dispelling preconceptions and prejudices about rap music.

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts earned $1.487 million for its American art acquisition fund when it sold 27 European paintings at two auctions last week in New York. A 19th-century classic, The Birth of Venus by the French painter Alexandre Cabanel, supplied the biggest chunk of the total. It sold for $834,500 at Christie's, including buyer's premium. The hammer price was $750,000, a world auction record for this artist. With a few exceptions, the academy is selling its European art to strengthen its holdings of American art, in which it specializes, particularly from the second half of the 20th century.