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BY ALEX HO

In print | October 11, 2007

There may be a lot of cases where Philadelphia pales in comparison to other cities, but for the museum lover in you, Philly makes it all too easy. The Rodin Museum, the Free Library of Philadelphia, the Franklin Institute Science Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art all flank the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia’s very own scenic Champs-Élysées, conveniently comprising what is known as the museum district.

Taking advantage of the Philly Kick-Off’s free admission into museums, I hopped around the area, packing a short afternoon with what could and should be experienced over the course of several visits.

The Rodin Museum:

My first stop was to the Rodin Museum, which houses the works of French sculptor Auguste Rodin. A stranger to art history without a clue as to who Rodin was, I was grateful to find that Rodin’s most recognizable piece, The Thinker, was plopped in the center of the quaint garden that leads to the building. Upon approaching the museum, one encounters the famed Gates of Hell, to which Chelsea Davis 10, flashing back to her halcyon days of AP Art History, exclaimed, The Gates of Hell. Hell, yes! The Gates of Hall is an elaborately designed gateway that is particularly notable for the contrast between its low and high reliefs. Even my unschooled eye couldn’t help but be amazed by how far out the miniscule figures (mostly writhing in pain) stretched beyond the main structure.

Inside, Rodin’s works range from life-sized sculptures of famous people’s heads like Gustav Mahler to car-sized ones like The Burghers of Calais. Also, of the works represented in the museum, an overwhelming portion takes as its subject a comical-looking, plump, mustached man in various states of undress. The man is writer Honoré de Balzac, and Rodin’s fixation on him is nothing short of amusing. Even a parody by a German artist, depicting Balzac as a walrus, sits next to one of Rodin’s Balzacs.

The Rodin Museum is an impressive and comprehensive look at Rodin’s works that hardly takes half an hour to cover if you’ve got a busy schedule. Plus, admission is free, although there is a rather passive-aggressive policy of encouraging $3 donations.

Rodin Museum lies on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 22nd St., and its hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m."5 p.m. Free guided tours are given at 1 p.m. every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, and on the first and third Saturdays of the month. Visitors should gather in the Main Entrance Hall. (Tours are free after the suggested $3 admission donation.)

The Philadelphia Museum of Art:

Behind the spacious Eakins Oval where an equestrian George Washington is poised to charge at you, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is about as majestic a public space as you’ll get in Philly. This was my first time at the PMA, so I was somewhat dejected that my more seasoned company didn’t want to Rocky Balboa it up the steps with me.

We tackled the museum first by working through the gallery of European Art from 1850 to 1900, featuring familiar Impressionist pieces that I have always found easier to consume. Of course, being in the company of Swatties, I was quickly rebutted with the negative opinion of the Impressionist movement as insular and elitist with a tawdry color palette that became increasingly less apathetic to real life. To be sure, there were plenty of pieces that went for realism. One painting, My Friends by Viggo Johansen, is barely discernable as it depicts a gathering of friends in a darkened room with a single dim lamplight. Another particularly jarring picture, The Source of Life by Léon Frédéric, features vividly painted naked infants holding hands in a spring in the wilderness and had us sqeamishly shuffling away.

This gallery segued into the Modern and Contemporary Art gallery with plenty of works to appreciate or to scoff at. For every amazingly surrealistic View in Perspective of a Perfect Sunset by Eugene Berman or Ancient Bird and Mummified Bird by Leon Kelly, there was an odious piece with a self-reflexive statement about high and low art in a spiraled neon light sign.

I also checked out the PMA’s sections on medieval art and Asian art cleverly presented in recreations of architectural settings from the past. You can sit down and relax in a medieval cloister with picturesque archways, walk past Japanese ceremonial teahouses, and peer into the commons of a Ming dynasty official, making for art you not only can see, but can also experience.

The PMA also has countless temporary exhibitions, the highest-profile of them being the Renoir Landscapes, which run to Jan, 6, and the first major Frida Kahlo exhibition in the U.S. in 15 years, coming on Feb. 20. But there are also plenty of smaller treasures scattered about the museum. For example, the Free Library of Philadelphia is showcasing its collection of elaborately illustrated and unbelievably well-preserved folios from a 16th century Persian manuscript of Razmnama, the Book of War.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and admission is $10 with your student ID and free on Sundays.

Galleries at Moore:

With little time to spare, I raced to Logan Circle and checked out the art galleries at the Moore College of Art and Design. Besides being confused as to what parts of the building were galleries and what parts were the college’s residential facilities (I nearly walked into their dining hall, imagining it to be some elaborate performance art), I liked how much more low key and accessible the exhibits were in the context of a setting that wasn’t exclusively a museum. Until Oct. 21, Moore features Gnosis by its academic dean Dona Lantz, a collection of side-by-side photographs, juxtaposing candid everyday moments with inanimate objects. Another exhibit by Philly artist Joel Katz entitled Mississippi 1964 displays crisp black and white snapshots that creepily reincarnate a racially segregated culture from its safely relegated place in the past. The exhibit will end on Oct. 14.

Two upcoming exhibitions open on Oct. 26 Facts, Fantasies and Fictions, which according to the college’s web site, presents paintings and videos that explore various approaches to the narrative tradition in contemporary art and InSights, where artist Eva Wylie draws images from a variety of sources including the Internet, water bottles, travel magazines, advertisements, as well as from her own tourist’ photographs. The Galleries at Moore are located at 20th St. and Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and admission is free.

That’s where my day ended, but the museum district still has more to offer, some of which is listed below. The museum district is within walking distance either from 30th St. Station or from Suburban Station.

Institute of Contemporary Art, UPenn
118 S 36th St.

UPenn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
3260 S St.

Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site
22nd St. and Fairmount Ave.

Free Library of Philadelphia
1901 Vine St.

Academy of Natural Sciences
19th St. and Benjamin Franklin Parkway

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Broad and Cherry Sts.

The Fabric Workshop and Museum
1222 Arch St.

National Constitution Center
525 Arch St., Independence Mall

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