Venice Biennale

THE PHILADELPHIA Museum of Art has announced a new acquisition. Timothy Rub, head of the Cleveland Museum of Art, will be taking the job artfully inhabited for 28 years by Anne d'Harnoncourt, who died suddenly one year and one month ago. It was d'Harnoncourt's brilliance that kept Philadelphia's museum on the world map, but, in the past year, it became clear that the museum's administrative strength ran deeper than a single person. Led by a hardworking board of directors, chaired by H. F. "Gerry" Lenfest, and a talented staff, the museum didn't miss a beat.

Janet Kardon, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Institute of Contemporary Art, one of the most influential art centers in the city, is leaving to become director of the American Craft Museum in New York City. Kardon, ICA director for 10 years, confirmed the move yesterday but declined to give details, pending an official announcement from the institute on Wednesday. American Craft Museum officials could not be reached for comment. During Kardon's tenure, the institute continued its tradition of bringing the newest trends in art to Philadelphia, and she oversaw plans to dramatically expand the ICA's space and operations.

If Philadelphia has lifted its famously charming veil of parochialism in any sustained way, it has been through two cultural exports: international touring by the Philadelphia Orchestra, and, for more than a century, stepping onto the art world's big stage at the Venice Biennale. No Philadelphians were represented at the first Biennale in 1895, but by the second international exposition in 1897, Philadelphia-born painter Julius L. Stewart started a long tradition of area artists and museums staking a claim for the city as a source of art ideas.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art's exhibition at the 2009 Venice Biennale this summer will explore Bruce Nauman's work over four decades with about 30 pieces in neon, sculpture, performance and other media. The American artist will create a new sound installation. And the show now has a name, and a more refined theme. "Bruce Nauman: Topological Gardens," which opens in Venice on June 7, invokes in its title the branch of mathematics in which geometric figures remain unchanged even when spaces are stretched (but not broken)

Every other year, the art world arrives in the ravishing city of Venice with ready appetites for a new vision of contemporary art - and with knives sharpened. The 110-year-old Venice Biennale is the oldest and most prestigious of the international art expositions, but it shares one thing with every other big show meant to summarize the whims and gropings of the last year or two of art: It is immensely easy to find a thousand flaws of missed connections, of too many artists, and too little clarity or visionary substance.

Imagine Philadelphia producing an annual festival of the arts on a par with Charleston's Spoleto, Brooklyn's Next Wave and the Venice Biennale. Imagine dozens of world-renowned artists and performers unleashing a two-week torrent of avant garde creativity all around the city, including pieces inspired by some of our grandest and quirkiest Philadelphia sites. We, and the rest of the world, would experience our city from an entirely new perspective, and in a breathtaking new light.

Steve Powers, an Overbrook native and 1987 graduate of Robert E. Lamberton High School, has merged graffiti, sign painting and storytelling into an artistic career that has grabbed the attention of international art judges as well as people who ride the Cyclone at Coney Island. His most recent project is the Dreamland Artist Club, a group of artists he organized to repaint Coney Island's naive-style signs (Dreamland alludes to one of Coney Island's most famous defunct amusement parks)

WHERE would you take an out-of-towner with just three days to explore Philly - after the trip to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell? That's the question the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance was wrestling with over the last few months as it prepared for the arrival of some important guests - nearly 1,400 of them, in fact, representing Americans for the Arts (AFTA), the leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts across the U.S. This weekend, this city will have the privilege of hosting AFTA's 2008 convention, "American Evolution: Arts in the New Civic Life," which will bring together those who work in the arts in the private and public sectors.

It may seem obvious that thinking about art isn't the same as making it. But what about thinking about art, and calling that art? The impending millennium has produced a lot of the latter, as artists and putative artists struggle to develop rationales for not knowing what to do next. Thinking about art to extreme can produce anti-art, the aesthetic counterpart of antimatter. That's what Jeanne Silver-thorne gives us in her exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art. The Philadelphia native's first museum show is really an installation, in which all the pieces work together to establish an environment.

Bruce Nauman is one of the most admired and influential artists in America, so it seems slightly incongruous that for three decades he has lived on a horse ranch in the middle of New Mexico. He does get around, though. In 1999 he shared (with Louise Bourgeois) the Golden Lion Award for best artist at the Venice Biennale. He'll be a major presence in Venice again this year, thanks to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which is curating the American pavilion. The Biennale, after more than a century still one of the most prestigious international art exhibitions, opens June 7 and runs through Nov. 22. Art Museum curators Carlos Basualdo and Michael R. Taylor, the U.S. commissioners, have prepared a thematic investigation of Nauman's career, which began in the mid-1960s.

There can be little doubt that the Bruce Nauman show at the 53d Venice Biennale, closing today, will reverberate in significant ways for the artist, the Biennale, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which curated this selective career retrospective. The museum lined the outside of the U.S. Pavilion with multicolor Nauman neon words, giving the small Neoclassical building a beckoning presence on the Biennale's leafy grounds. It also expanded the show beyond the famed art fair into two other Venice venues - a possibly unprecedented strategy that led to unusual chance encounters with the work.

THE PHILADELPHIA Museum of Art has announced a new acquisition. Timothy Rub, head of the Cleveland Museum of Art, will be taking the job artfully inhabited for 28 years by Anne d'Harnoncourt, who died suddenly one year and one month ago. It was d'Harnoncourt's brilliance that kept Philadelphia's museum on the world map, but, in the past year, it became clear that the museum's administrative strength ran deeper than a single person. Led by a hardworking board of directors, chaired by H. F. "Gerry" Lenfest, and a talented staff, the museum didn't miss a beat.

The conceit of Bruce Nauman's Days is so simple you might be tempted to dismiss it out of hand. One of two new, related Nauman audio installations to be unveiled when the Venice Biennale opens to the public today, Days compels visitors to walk down an alley created by two rows of speakers. Recorded voices recite the days of the week. "Sunday. Tuesday. Wednesday . . .," says a voice, one of the seven you can hear distinctly from the 14 flat, white speakers. That's all. That's the whole piece.

If Philadelphia has lifted its famously charming veil of parochialism in any sustained way, it has been through two cultural exports: international touring by the Philadelphia Orchestra, and, for more than a century, stepping onto the art world's big stage at the Venice Biennale. No Philadelphians were represented at the first Biennale in 1895, but by the second international exposition in 1897, Philadelphia-born painter Julius L. Stewart started a long tradition of area artists and museums staking a claim for the city as a source of art ideas.

In a way, it began with Napoleon's conquest of Venice in 1797. Then, almost a century later, the idea itself was dreamed up by artists over coffee at Florian's on the Piazza San Marco. But first there was the matter of relocating the elephant named Toni. These disparate events led to the birth in 1895 of the Venice Biennale, which for as long as anyone can remember has been accepted as the art world's most important gathering. The international exhibition, opening for the 53d time next Sunday, reliably makes big waves, if only for the reliable fretting from many of its 200,000-plus visitors that it no longer makes big waves.

Bruce Nauman is one of the most admired and influential artists in America, so it seems slightly incongruous that for three decades he has lived on a horse ranch in the middle of New Mexico. He does get around, though. In 1999 he shared (with Louise Bourgeois) the Golden Lion Award for best artist at the Venice Biennale. He'll be a major presence in Venice again this year, thanks to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which is curating the American pavilion. The Biennale, after more than a century still one of the most prestigious international art exhibitions, opens June 7 and runs through Nov. 22. Art Museum curators Carlos Basualdo and Michael R. Taylor, the U.S. commissioners, have prepared a thematic investigation of Nauman's career, which began in the mid-1960s.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art's exhibition at the 2009 Venice Biennale this summer will explore Bruce Nauman's work over four decades with about 30 pieces in neon, sculpture, performance and other media. The American artist will create a new sound installation. And the show now has a name, and a more refined theme. "Bruce Nauman: Topological Gardens," which opens in Venice on June 7, invokes in its title the branch of mathematics in which geometric figures remain unchanged even when spaces are stretched (but not broken)

WHERE would you take an out-of-towner with just three days to explore Philly - after the trip to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell? That's the question the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance was wrestling with over the last few months as it prepared for the arrival of some important guests - nearly 1,400 of them, in fact, representing Americans for the Arts (AFTA), the leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts across the U.S. This weekend, this city will have the privilege of hosting AFTA's 2008 convention, "American Evolution: Arts in the New Civic Life," which will bring together those who work in the arts in the private and public sectors.

In a bold stroke promising to burnish its international profile, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and its proposal for an exhibition on American artist Bruce Nauman have been selected to represent the United States at the 53d Venice Biennale. The Nauman show, chosen from 11 submissions to the State Department, will open in June 2009 in the U.S. Pavilion of the famed Biennale, whose International Art Exhibition is one of the most important art gatherings in the world. "It's a wonderful thing to be able to express your belief in an artist and express it on an international stage," Art Museum director Anne d'Harnoncourt said.

Every other year, the art world arrives in the ravishing city of Venice with ready appetites for a new vision of contemporary art - and with knives sharpened. The 110-year-old Venice Biennale is the oldest and most prestigious of the international art expositions, but it shares one thing with every other big show meant to summarize the whims and gropings of the last year or two of art: It is immensely easy to find a thousand flaws of missed connections, of too many artists, and too little clarity or visionary substance.