Galleries: At Moore, do as I say

The idea of an artwork produced from instructions isn't new. Marcel Duchamp thought that up while living in Argentina in 1919, mailing his recently married sister Suzanne and her husband, Jean Crotti, written instructions from Buenos Aires to Paris telling them how to make his wedding present to them, the ominously titled Unhappy Readymade. Art-by-instruction didn't really take off, though, until the late 1950s and early 1960s, when John Cage, George Brecht, Allan Kaprow, Yoko Ono, and others began making scores, scripts, and instructions for their performances, events, and artworks.

Still, the premise behind "do it" - a sprawling traveling show organized by Independent Curators International of New York, which has taken over Moore College of Art & Design's two main galleries with works produced by Philadelphia artists from instructions written by 71 other artists, most of them internationally known - has made it one of the most original exhibitions ever.

Conceived over drinks in a Paris cafe in 1993 by the Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and the French artists Bertrand Lavier and Christian Boltanski, the idea for the exhibition that would become Obrist's "do it" show came about as the three discussed instruction works and the nature of group shows and their limited lifespans. Then the obvious struck them: Why not a global touring show of instruction-based artworks that would never end? Three years later, "do it" made its debut in Bangkok. Since then, the continually regenerating exhibition has traveled to more than 60 venues, inviting artists in each location to make works from the original instructions and produce new directives of their own.

Having not seen other versions of "do it," I can't say how Moore's iteration compares, but this is one of the most provocative, engrossing, and entertaining exhibitions I have seen there. (The Philadelphia-area participants, including local curators and city schoolchildren as well as artists, were exceptionally well chosen by Kaytie Johnson, director and chief curator of the Galleries at Moore). Among other surprises here, you are constantly reminded that many artists actually like to follow instructions - it's a challenge to the imagination.

The standouts include Beth Heinly's video interpretation of Cao Fei's 2004 instruction, Shoot It, depicting herself as a president making an inaugural address; Will Haughery and Kris Harzinksi's creepy and vivid video interpretation of Gilbert & George's 1995 Ten Commandments for Gilbert and George; Gerardine Aldamar and Sabrina Salgado's interpretation of Lygia Pape's 2002 instruction Good Blood, and Yoko Ono's 1996 Wish Piece, a tree on a pedestal that invites all to write a wish with the paper and pencil provided and hang it from the tree.

Most artists know the pain of holding down a job - the one that pays the rent, puts dinner on the table, and vastly reduces the amount of art produced - but some observant creative types have discovered the art in their jobs, as have the six photographers whose work makes up the Print Center show "Day Job."

Steven Ahlgren, who worked in finance before becoming a full-time photographer, captures the drabness and sameness of his former occupation in candid color photographs of offices in New Haven, New York City, Leesburg, Va., and Media (where he lives). The rare employee he captures looks like a trapped automaton.

Hired by a real estate company to shoot pictures of houses likely to go into foreclosure, the Philadelphia photographer Justin Audet found himself traveling to unfamiliar neighborhoods. While there, he saw an opportunity to create a new body of work of his own, straightforward images of broken-down houses that speak viscerally of poverty.

Larry Fink, well-known for his pictures of parties - not least his Oscar work for Vanity Fair - used that particular acumen in a recent commercial assignment for Banco Sabadell, emphasizing the seriousness of the bank's mission in dramatic, black-and-white, angular compositions of unsmiling CEOs.

Like Ahlgren, Chelsea Griffith looks back, in her case to her family's funeral home and her experience working there as a young person. Her images of the everyday in funeral homes are as still as death itself, as they should be.

A photographer, but also a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Pierce made ENIAC, the first electronic general-purpose computer, the subject of photographs in 2004. (Penn was deeply involved in ENIAC's creation.) His black-and-white images suggest prenatal photos of fetuses and underwater scenes from the 1954 film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Last but not least are the party photos of Bill McCullough, an Austin, Texas, artist known as a wedding photographer who has simultaneously juggled an artistic practice derived from that work. The candid behind-the-scenes pictures from his series "Technicolor Life" capture all the amusing and dull moments that never make it into the wedding albums.