The first German exhibition of decorative arts in the "new" style was held in the Munich Glaspalast in 1897. Critics immediately recognized the importance of this exhibition and praised the "Munich accomplishment" as the "way of the future."

The Fairmount Waterworks, 1812-1911, is an exhibition organized by Darrel Sewell of some 150 paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints of the celebrated Philadelphia architectural and engineering landmark.

This exhibition displays fans from the Museum's collection dating back to the fifteenth century to present day.

Masters of 17th-Century Dutch Landscape Painting, drawn from public and private collections in eleven countries, revealed the consummate skill of Jacob van Ruisdael, Aelbert Cuyp, Rembrandt, and other artists of Holland's "Golden Age."

The Philadelphia Museum of Art presented the only American showing of Picasso, Braque, Léger, Gris: Drawings from the Douglas Cooper Collection, a comprehensive group of works by the Cubist masters.

New Art on Paper: The Hunt Manufacturing Co. Collection was the culmination of an eight-year grant program from Hunt which allowed the Museum to acquire “adventurous and risk-taking” work on paper by contemporary artists.

The first Anselm Kiefer retrospective to tour the United States was jointly organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, followed by exhibitions in Los Angeles and New York. Mark Rosenthal, Curator of Twentieth Century Art, co-curated the exhibition with A. James Speyer and Neal Benezra of Chicago, selecting approximately 70 works, ranging from painting and sculpture to books and photography.

The group of Dutch artists active in and around the Hague from about 1870 until after the turn of the century were drawn to that small city, surrounded by woodland and close to the seashore, because it remained relatively untouched by industrialization.

Each year many outstanding works on paper enter the Museum's collection through gift and purchase. This exhibition presents works of art dating from the 15th through the 19th century that have entered the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs since 1980.

It is rare for a single gift to markedly transform a museum's collection. The receipt of the bequest of the Henry P. McIlhenny Collection, one of the finest private collections assembled in this country during this century, is such an event.

A major installation of works by Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), mounted in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the artist's birth, Apropos of Marcel Duchamp 1887/1987 reveals the depth of his creative genius.

Paul Klee in Philadelphia Collections draws from the Museum's unusually strong collection of works on paper by Paul Klee, most of which are from his fertile Bauhaus period.

Richard Misrach (born 1949), one of the bright talents of the new generation of color photographs in the United States, has been "chasing the light" in western deserts since 1982, recording fires and flooded landscapes, the land of the space shuttle, roads, train tracks, and other aspects of wilderness imprinted with the signs and artifacts of human habitation.