PHILADELPHIA – Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia’s premier institution for interpreting the art and culture of the Philadelphia region, announces the opening of five new exhibitions on Sunday, April 3 alongside a full calendar of engaging programs, including a Friday evening jazz series in April, children’s activities, and lectures. The museum will also introduce new visiting hours including extended evening and weekend hours, beginning April 3.

New museum hours (as of April 3) are: Tuesday through Thursday 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m., Friday 10:00 a.m.–8:45 p.m., Saturday 10:00 a.m.- 6:00 p.m., and Sunday 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Woodmere is located at 9201 Germantown Avenue in the historic cobblestoned Chestnut Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia. Admission to special exhibitions is $10 for adults, $7 for seniors, and FREE for students and children. For visitor information, call (215) 247-0476 or visit www.woodmereartmuseum.org.

Woodmere Art Museum will present two exhibitions in conjunction with the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (PIFA) – Charles Demuth in the City of Lights, which explores the work of one of America’s greatest modernists, and Violet Oakley and the Women Artists of Paris, which offers an intimate look at the Philadelphia/Mt. Airy illustrator, muralist, and stained glass artist.

Visitors to Woodmere will also gain a fresh perspective on the museum through three new exhibitions showcasing objects from the permanent collection, including an exhibition of Impressionist and landscape paintings of Pennsylvania, a second exhibition exploring the murals of Violet Oakley (on view for the first time since receiving conservation work), and an exhibition of objects from the personal collection of museum founder Charles Knox Smith.

An overview of each exhibition is provided below. In addition to these exhibitions, Woodmere will offer family programming, a Jazz music series, lectures and gallery talks, specialty tours, instructional art classes and workshops, and other special events.

William R. Valerio, who was appointed as the Patricia Van Burgh Allison Director and CEO of Woodmere Art Museum in September 2010, has placed more of Woodmere’s permanent collection on public view than ever before. Valerio came to Woodmere from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where he served as Assistant Director for Administration.

Woodmere recently renovated the grand Kuch Gallery, the rotunda-like space which houses major exhibitions, as well as the Founders Gallery and Parlor Gallery. In the coming year, Woodmere will continue to improve the museum interior and outdoor landscape.

Woodmere Art Museum staff members, alongside Valerio, collaboratively curated all of the new exhibitions opening this Spring, with the exception of Charles Demuth in the City of Lights which is guest curated by Anne Lampe, the Executive Director of The Demuth Museum.

EXHIBITIONS
April 3 – June 26, 2011

Journey to Paris at Woodmere Art Museum 

Woodmere Art Museum joins arts and cultural organizations around the city to kick off the inaugural Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts 2011 (PIFA). Woodmere will present two special exhibitions exploring the artistic energy and brashly innovative spirit of Paris in the early twentieth century. A special April jazz series will also be presented in conjunction with PIFA. [See Friday Evening Jazz below for details.]

Charles Demuth in the City of Lights
Antonelli I Gallery

The American modernist painter Charles H. Demuth (1883–1935) is one of America’s great artists of the twentieth century. Primarily a watercolorist, Demuth also painted with oils during his career and later became a prominent Precisionist painter, a style of painting which combines realism and geometric planes. The exhibition Charles Demuth in the City of Lights, presented by Woodmere Art Museum in collaboration with The Demuth Museum in Lancaster, traces Demuth’s adventures in Paris, showing how this great American artist of Pennsylvania came to find his unique voice.
            Charles Demuth was born and raised in Lancaster and lived much of his life in the Pennsylvania region. After finishing his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Demuth embarked on the first of several trips to Paris in 1907. This was a fortuitous year for Demuth as he would see a retrospective of the work of Paul Cézanne, an exhibit that influenced many major figures of the burgeoning modernist movement including Demuth.
            “His mind … was greatly broadened by travel,” wrote Philadelphia Inquirer art critic Helen Henderson in 1947. “He discovered in himself a kinship with the original thinkers, the exotics, if you will, of his day in France – Baudelaire, Huysmans, Gautier, Toulouse Lautrec, Henry James, and later Proust. He was abundantly curious in the French sense of the word and investigated and followed up every clue that led to the revelation of the spirit of his time.”
             Anne Lampe, the Executive Director of The Demuth Museum, is the exhibition’s curator. An audio tour is available, accessible by a cell phone call-in system. This exhibition is made possible with support by the Samuel S. Fels Fund.

Violet Oakley and the Women Artists of Paris
Antonelli II Gallery

Violet Oakley (1874–1961), born to an artistic family in Bergen Heights, New Jersey, relocated to Philadelphia in 1895, later settling in the Mt. Airy neighborhood in the Northwest region. During her lifetime, Oakley grew to become one of the great citizen artists of Philadelphia, a supporter of the city’s artists, a popular and well-spoken civic leader, and internationally known pacifist. She was also a driving force in the life of Woodmere Art Museum and constant support to her partner, Edith Emerson, who was Woodmere’s director from 1940 through 1978.
            In 1893, Oakley’s journey of professional education in the arts began when she enrolled as a student at the Art Students League in Manhattan. A year later, Oakley, who was only 20 years old, decided to travel to Paris, the art capital of the world. In the company of some of the finest artists of the time in Paris’ schools, museums, and exhibition spaces, she would encounter and be influenced by Impressionism, a revolutionary movement in nineteenth-century painting. She would most certainly see the work of two of its leading practitioners, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt.
            The exhibition features the works created by Oakley during this time, and a sample of works by artists she encountered in Paris including: Mary Cassatt’s The Pink Sash (Ellen Mary Cassatt) (c. 1898), in which the artist’s virtuosity with pastel is abundantly evident; Cecilia Beaux’s society painting,Portrait of Hannah Rose Hoffman Lee (1893), made in Philadelphia just a few years prior to Oakley’s enrollment in her portrait class; and Berthe Morisot’s The Drawing Lesson (1888), a self portrait with the artist’s daughter, Julie Manet.

Companion Lectures

Charles Demuth in the City of Lights
Monday, April 11, 11:00 a.m. (Free)
with Anne Lampe, Executive Director, Demuth Museum

Paris, 1910 to 1920: A Decade that Changed Modernism
Sunday, April 17, 1:00 – 4:00 p.m. ($30, $24 for members)
with Matthew Palczynski, Staff Lecturer for Western Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art

After Paris: Demuth and His Circle in America
Sunday, May 1, 2:00 – 3:00 p.m. ($15, $12 for members)
with Mark D. Mitchell, Associate Curator of American Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Explore Woodmere’s Collection Like Never Before

Woodmere Art Museum will present three new exhibitions featuring objects from the museum’s permanent collection. The exhibitions offer an in-depth view of the museum’s diverse collection of material and include materials that have never been publically displayed alongside museum favorites.

Pennsylvania Impressionism and Landscape from the Collection of Woodmere Art Museum and the Promised Gift of Dr. Dorothy J. del Bueno
Kuch Gallery and Balcony Gallery

Beginning in the 1940s, Woodmere Art Museum began exhibiting and collecting the work of Pennsylvania Impressionists. Since that time, the collection has deepened and broadened through many important and generous gifts. This exhibition showcases the recently promised gift of the collection of Dr. Dorothy J. del Bueno, which includes works by William L. Lathrop, Alice Kent Stoddard, Martha Walters, and Ethel Ashton. Integrated with Woodmere’s holdings, this incredible gift adds depth and scope to the museum’s permanent collection while also further demonstrating the strength and volume of Woodmere’s collection of art by women artists.

Companion Lectures

Pennsylvania Impressionists
Wednesday, May 25, 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. (Free)
with Peg Bachman on the work of Pennsylvania Impressionists in Woodmere’s collection

Violet Oakley: The Building of the House of Wisdom
Schnader Gallery

In 1910-11, Violet Oakley, in collaboration with Frank Miles Day, a leading architect of the American Renaissance, created a monumental mural cycle titled The Building of the House of Wisdom for the entrance hall of a townhouse designed for Charlton Yarnall at 17th and Locust Streets in Philadelphia. Inspired by Oakley’s love of Renaissance art, her original design included a central glass dome, three large lunettes, four pendentives, and six smaller octagonal panels built into the architecture. In both its subject and media, the decorative program that Oakley conceived was layered and complex, one that fused art and architecture in its meaning, its imagery, and its construction. The completed mural cycle was a metaphor for the progression of human civilization.
               Oakley saw her role as an artist as one of civic responsibility and embraced the humanistic ideals of the Renaissance for art to affirm the dignity and worth of all people. She wanted her art to express the ability of human reason to find universal truth and morality, and to convey an optimistic attitude about the potential for humankind. These ideas informed the design of The Building of the House of Wisdom. Immersed in the style of the Renaissance, the Yarnall house murals evoke a glorious past in order to enhance the present.
            The murals on display are among the most monumental works of art by Violet Oakley in museum collection. Edith Emerson, Oakley’s partner and former director of Woodmere, rescued the murals from demolition. This exhibition marks the first time the public will see The Building of the House of Wisdom muralpanels in their conserved state.

Selections from the Charles Knox Smith Collection
Ongoing | Founders Gallery and Parlor Gallery

Charles Knox Smith (1845–1916), founder of Woodmere Art Museum, believed that collecting art was a noble journey with a moral, spiritual, and patriotic dimension. Born in 1845, the defining political and social event of Smith’s life was the Civil War, and his collection is grounded in the social context of post Civil War Philadelphia. Certain works of art tell stories that are directly tied to the war, like Franklin Briscoe’s Picket’s Charge, which shows the final push of the confederates against General Meade at Gettysburg, and Sarah Fisher Ames’ extraordinary marble bust, Abraham Lincoln, which is among the greatest treasures of Smith’s collection.
            Other works of art tell stories of nobility and self-sacrifice, such as Benjamin West’s The Fatal Wounding Sir Philip Sydney (1806), and Edward Harrison May’s Lady Jane Gray Going to Her Execution (1864). Smith was a devout and pious man, and he collected landscape paintings by such great American artists of the 19th century as Frederic Edwin Church, Jasper Cropsey, and Edwin Darch Lewis that expressed the cycles of day and night, life and death, and the spirituality of nature.

FRIDAY EVENING JAZZ AT WOODMERE
April 8 – 29, 2011

Woodmere celebrates Jazz Appreciation Month on Fridays in April with music, food, drink, and children’s programming. These programs are offered in conjunction with PIFA and in partnership with Lifeline Music Coalition, Inc.

Friday, April 8
Paris Nightlife, 7:00–9:00 p.m.
$20 ($15 members)
Visitors can travel back to turn-of-the-century Paris as Woodmere is transformed into an intimate and informal cabaret with cozy tables, a variety of French wines and cheeses, and performances by the acclaimed Arpeggio Jazz Ensemble.

Friday, April 15
Cole Porter Night, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
$10 ($5 members)
Pianist Reiko Okuda and bass player Warren Oree will play the music of the great American composer Cole Porter. A growing number of American musicians lived and worked in Paris as the city embraced American jazz. Among them was Porter, whose time in the French capital informed much of his later work. Wine and cheese will be served.

Paris for Kids: Story Hour, 6:00–7:00 p.m. (Free)
While the adults listen to the songs of Cole Porter, kids can join in a story hour featuring Bonsoir Lunne (Goodnight Moon) and Madaleine.

Friday, April 22
Seine-suous Strings, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
$10 ($5 members)
This evening features jazz violinist Marina Vishnyakova, who studied as a classical violinist in Russia, and later came to Philadelphia to study under world-renowned jazz violinist John Blake, Jr. at the University of the Arts. Wine and cheese will be served.

Paris for Kids: Circus Creatures, 6:00–7:00 p.m. (Free)
Kids can make their own circus creatures inspired by the work of artist Alexander Calder, while parents enjoy music, wine and cheese.

Friday, April 29
Django Night, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
$10 ($5 members)
Jazz guitarist David Joel celebrates the music of Django Reinhardt. Born in Belgium, Reinhardt grew up near Paris. He went on to invent a new style of jazz guitar and be- came a pioneering composer who influenced many other musicians. Wine and cheese will be served.

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