Impressionism and Avant-Garde: Philadelphia Museum Collection at Palazzo Reale

The exhibition 'Impressionismo e Avanguardie' at Palazzo Reale in Milan presents 50 works from the Philadelphia Museum of Art's collection, which totals 240,000 pieces. The show is organized into nine thematic and chronological sections that trace both the evolution of European art from Impressionism to Surrealism and the formation of the museum's holdings. Key figures in the collection's history include Mary Cassatt, who connected Impressionism to the United States; her brother Alexander Cassatt, who purchased works by Manet, Monet, Degas, and Pissarro, ten of which were sold to the museum in 1921; Samuel Stockton White III; Albert Eugene Gallatin, who created the first public collection of modern art in the US and donated it to the Philadelphia Museum in 1943; Louise and Walter Arensberg, who built their collection with advice from Marcel Duchamp; and Louis Stern, who bequeathed 300 works in 1963. Notable works on view include Cassatt's 'Woman with a Pearl Necklace in a Loge' (1879), Berthe Morisot's 'Portrait of a Little Girl' (1894), four Monets from an 1874 view of Amsterdam to an 1895 'Japanese Bridge', Cézanne's geometric compositions, van Gogh's 'Portrait of Madame Augustine Roulin and Little Marcelle' (1888), four Picassos, works by Juan Gris and Albert Gleizes, Dalí's 'Agnostic Symbol' (1932), Tanguy's 'The Parallels' (1929), Miró's 'Nude' (1926), and Brancusi's 'The Kiss' (1916). The museum was founded in 1876 following the first Universal Exposition.