Virtually explore the Philadelphia Museum of Art with us as your guide
Some background
videos + essays
Link to the Philadelphia Museum of Art's website
Giorgio de Chirico, The Soothsayer’s Recompense
The artist imbues the scene of the darkening piazza with a sense of foreboding.
Marcel Duchamp and the Viewer
Exploring how Duchamp's art challenges viewers is essential to understanding his creativity and much of the art of the last century.
Juan Gris, The Table
Which one is “true,” the one that tricks the viewer into thinking it is really there, or the one that announces itself as what it is, lines drawn on paper?
Horace Pippin, Mr. Prejudice
African Americans' ongoing fight against racism in the U.S. undermined the sense of victory in both world wars.
Hicks’s The Peaceable Kingdom as Pennsylvania parable
Living in peace—predator and prey, and Native Americans and settler colonists—but for how long?
Ben Shahn, Miners’ Wives
An explosion in a mine kills 111, Shahn captures the devastation of those left behind.
John Singleton Copley, Portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Mifflin (Sarah Morris)
On the eve of the American Revolution, a glimpse of politics in portraiture.
Diego Rivera’s Sugar Cane
A brutal history told for a modern American city, Mexican muralism in New York
An African Muslim among the founding fathers, Charles Willson Peale’s Yarrow Mamout
How a portrait of an African Muslim came to hang side-by-side with the founding fathers in one of America's earliest museums.
Saenredam, Interior of Saint Bavo, Haarlem
Perspective is the star of this painting. Saenredam expertly widens the viewpoint to create an interior panorama.
Rogier van der Weyden, The Crucifixion, with the Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist Mourning
Mary cries and falls into John’s arms. Rogier’s precise observations accentuate the emotional impact of this scene.
