Spring Arts - From Japan to Paris, with time in the garden

Whenever the Philadelphia Museum of Art presents a show about Japan, attention must be paid.

Under curator Felice Fischer, the Art Museum has made a practice of borrowing outstanding works and presenting them with unsurpassed seriousness and flair. The upcoming exhibition on the art of the Kano School, which dominated Japanese art for centuries, may be the most important.

The museum follows this in late spring with an Impressionist show concentrating on an influential dealer, while the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Michener Art Museum in Doylestown mount seasonally appropriate companion shows on artists and gardens.

The Barnes Foundation will feature a show of artists' installations intended to cast a light on the installation of the Barnes, while the Berman Museum at Ursinus College is likewise self-conscious with a show that deals with museum practices. And anyone who sees the two Horace Pippin works in the Art Museum's current show of African American art will want to get to the major retrospective of the artist's work at the Brandywine River Museum.

 Ink and Gold: Art of the Kano. Composed of loans from many of Japan's leading collections, the Art Museum's show will trace a tradition that began in 15th-century Kyoto and endured for four centuries. Because the works are fragile and susceptible to light, they will be rotated three times, so enthusiasts can return during the show's run and see different works. (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Feb. 16 to May 10. 215-763-8100 or www.philamuseum.org.)

Horace Pippin: The Way I See It. The West Chester-based artist was an outsider with some influential supporters, among them N.C. Wyeth and Albert Barnes. The retrospective, the first in more than 20 years, will include about 60 works. (Brandywine River Museum of Art, April 25 to July 19. 610-388-2700, or www.brandywinemuseum.org.)

The Artist's Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement, 1887-1920. Using paintings, sculpture, stained glass and other artifacts, the exhibition connects the growing popularity of gardening with the middle class around the turn of the 20th century to the arts of the era. (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Feb. 13 to May 24. 215-972-7600 or www.pafa.org.)

The Artist in the Garden. Starting where PAFA's leaves off, this show tells the story of artists and gardens from the 1920s until today, including many local examples. (Michener Art Museum, Feb. 7 to Aug. 9. 215-340-9800, or www.michenermuseum.org.)

Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New Painting. This show promises a new angle on a familiar subject, French impressionism. It will include a recreation of part of the celebrated art dealer's Paris apartment, complete with Renoir paintings and furniture and sculpture by Rodin. (Philadelphia Museum of Art, June 24 to Sept. 13. 215-763-8100 or www.philamuseum.org.)

Barbara Kasten: Stages. The centerpiece show of the Institute of Contemporary Art's spring season is a five-decade retrospective of an artist who often combines photography with sculpture and other media, sometimes in the same work. (Institute of Contemporary Art, Feb. 4 to Aug. 16. 215-573-9975 or www.icaphila.org.)

Mark Dion, Judy Pfaff, Fred Wilson: The Order of Things. One of the most memorable, if occasionally exasperating, aspects of the Barnes is the way the works are installed. Three installation artists have been commissioned to respond to the way Barnes showed his collection, in the interest of illuminating and perhaps questioning his choices. (Barnes Foundation, May 16 to Aug. 3. 215-278-7000 or www.barnesfoundation.org.)

Museum Studies. A dozen prominent contemporary artists "explore the essential and often mundane aspects of the museum's functionality: the day-to-day practices that generally remain out-of-sight or unacknowledged." (Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College, Jan. 27 to April 3. 610-409-3500, www.ursinus.edu/berman.)

William Baziotes: Surrealist Watercolors. An abstract expressionist with surrealist tendencies whose goal was to haunt the viewer. (Allentown Art Museum, May 13-Aug. 23, 610-432-4333 or www.allentownartmuseum.org.)

Frank Bramblett: No Intention. Retrospective of a local artist and teacher who explores materials such as graphite, sand, marble dust and titanium and explores the way they behave and interact. (Woodmere Art Museum, March 7 to June 21. 215-247-0476 or www.woodmereartmuseum.org.)

The City Lost and Found: Capturing New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, 1960-1980. An ambitious show of photography, architecture, art, and urban planning organized by Princeton and the Art Institute of Chicago looks at what happened, and what was supposed to happen, in America's three largest cities during a tumultuous era. (Princeton University Art Museum, Feb. 21 to June 7. 609-258-3788 or http://artmuseum.princeton.edu.)

Dream Streets: Art in Wilmington, 1970-1990. Artistic creativity, and some squalor, during two decades in Delaware's largest city. (Delaware Art Museum, June 27 to Sept. 27. 302-351-8558 or www.delarts.org.)

Jesse Albrecht and Jessica Putnam-Phillips. Two potters who have served in the military and expressed their thoughts in clay. For Albrecht, the military is a crock, while Putnam-Phillips creates plates that show women at war. (Clay Studio, Feb. 6 to March 6. 215-925 -3453 or www.claystudio.org.)