Fall Arts Guide: October art museum picks

Call it the season of the maker.

Philadelphia has always been a center for crafts-based artists, but this fall more will be on view than usual. In conjunction with November's Craft NOW Philadelphia conference, several local institutions, including the Art Alliance, the Clay Studio, and the Center for Design in Wood, will show work by some of the area's acknowledged masters.

Two shows will spotlight the monumental - or more accurately geological - porcelain sculpture of Paula Winokur. (In addition, an exhibition of works by fiber artist Ted Hallman and ceramist Robert Winokur have opened at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and will be on view through July.)

Meanwhile, at the Barnes Foundation, a show of more than 160 pieces of wrought iron from Viking times to the present will cast light on the many pieces of wrought iron Albert Barnes mounted on his gallery walls among the paintings. The Michener Museum will host a show from England featuring historic and contemporary quilts inspired by American traditions, and the Art Museum has a show of South Asian weaving.

Oh, and in a rare occurrence here, a few pieces by Michelangelo will be on display, along with some of his tools - a reminder that he made stuff, too.

The Wrath of the Gods: Masterpieces by Rubens, Michelangelo, and Titian
Through Dec. 6, Philadelphia Museum of Art
The centerpiece of this small but high-powered show is the museum's own "Prometheus Bound" by the Flemish baroque master Peter Paul Rubens and Franz Snyders, completed 1618. It will be flanked by some distinguished works that relate to the painting.

From the Prado in Madrid comes "Tityus" by Titian, whose composition seems to be a direct inspiration for Rubens. And from the British Royal Collection comes Michelangelo's drawing "Tityus," which also has, on its reverse, a variation in which the figure is the resurrected Christ.

(215-763-8100, philamuseum.org, Facebook, Twitter)

Aftermath: Photographs by Joel Meyerowitz
Through Dec. 22, Ursinus College's Berman Museum of Art
For nine months after Sept. 11, 2001, Meyerowitz, perhaps best known for his idyllic views of Cape Cod, was the only photographer allowed on the World Trade Center site. He took more than 8,000 photos documenting the devastation and cleanup, of which 50 will be shown

(610-409-3500, ursinus.edu/berman, Facebook, Twitter)

Christopher Knowles: In a Word
Sept. 16-Dec. 27, Institute of Contemporary Art
The ICA's major fall show will take a comprehensive look at a Brooklyn artist (born 1959) best known for painting and poetry, but it will also include sculpture, music, and performance. New Yorker theater critic Hilton Als is guest curator. Opening at the same time is the first solo museum exhibition of Philadelphia painter Becky Suss (born 1980). Her large canvases use the interiors of her grandparents' midcentury home to comment on her family and Cold War America.

(215-898-7108, icaphila.org, Facebook, Twitter)

Material Legacy: Masters of Fiber, Clay, and Glass
Sept. 17-Nov. 30, Philadelphia Art Alliance
This Craft NOW Philadelphia-related exhibition focuses on Adela Akers (fiber), Lewis Knauss (fiber), Judith Schaechter (glass), Warren Seelig (fiber/architecture), and Paula Winokur (porcelain). The work is diverse, accomplished, and not at all artsy craftsy.

(215-545-4302, philartalliance.org, Facebook, Twitter)

Strength and Splendor: Wrought Iron from the Musée Le Secq des Tournelles, Rouen
Sept. 19-Jan. 4, the Barnes Foundation
This show of 150 locks, keys, signs and other practical and decorative objects includes many pieces, such as a lock that incorporates a guard dog, that communicate function through form. The Barnes has also commissioned artist Ellen Harvey to create a work, "Metal Painting," that incorporates the painted profiles of all 887 iron pieces on the Barnes' walls.

(215-278-7000, barnesfoundation.org, Facebook, Twitter)

Vatican Splendor
Sept. 19-Feb. 15, Franklin Institute
Coinciding with the arrival of Pope Francis, this 200-object exhibition focuses on 2,000 years of history of the church in Rome, starting with ancient mosaics up to a bronze cast of St. John Paul II's hand. It promises to be more about artifacts than art per se, but it does have a marble relief by Michelangelo, along with a nail and a piece of scaffolding he used when painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and a cast of the Vatican "Pieta."

(215-448-1200, fi.edu, Facebook, Twitter)

Multitude, Solitude: The Photographs of Dave Heath
Sept. 19-Feb. 16, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Heath, born in Philadelphia in 1931, grew up in orphanages and foster homes. This comprehensive show of his work from the 1950s and 1960s includes individual pictures and sequences dealing with the difficulties of human contact and interaction.

(215-763-8100, philamuseum.org, Facebook, Twitter)

We Speak: Black Artists in Philadelphia, 1920s-1970s
Sept. 26-Jan. 24, Woodmere Art Museum
This show of more than 70 paintings, sculptures, and photographs documents the work of local African American artists from the rise of the New Negro Arts movement in the mid-1920s to the nation's bicentennial in 1976. Based largely on interviews with the artists, it will highlight organizations and institutions that offered opportunities and helped shape the careers of the artists.

(215-247-0476, woodmereartmuseum.org, Facebook, Twitter)

Helen Farr Sloan, 1911-2005
Sept. 26-Jan. 10, Delaware Art Museum
The museum has a large collection of the work of Ashcan School artist and onetime Inquirer illustrator John Sloan. His wife, also an artist, painted similar urban scenes but with a slightly different feel.

(302-571-9590, delart.org, Facebook, Twitter)

Fellowship in Clay: American Craft Council Fellows in Philadelphia
Oct. 10-Nov. 29, Clay Studio
This show spotlights four local ceramic artists well-known both as practitioners and educators: William Daley, Rudolf Staffel, Paula Winokur, and Robert Winokur.

(215-925-3453 or www.claystudio.org, Facebook: theclaystudio.phl, Twitter: @theclaystudio)

Audubon to Warhol: The Art of American Still Life
Oct. 27-Jan. 10, Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Art Museum's big show of the season surveys still-life painting, broadly conceived, from earliest times to the Pop era. More than 100 artists will be represented in the show, which will be installed in architectural settings that evoke the places where they were first seen.

(215-763-8100, philamuseum.org, Facebook, Twitter)

Cézanne and the Modern: Masterpieces of European Art from the Pearlman Collection.
Through Jan. 3, Princeton University Art Museum
This collection of distinguished, mostly post-impressionist paintings has been on tour for the last several years, and is returning to its permanent home in Princeton. Its high point is a selection of watercolors by Cézanne that are rarely exhibited because of their fragility.

(609-258-3788, artmuseum.princeton.edu, Facebook, Twitter)