
A história
Most people meet this museum from the bottom of its steps, running up all 72 of them with their arms over their heads, because that is what Rocky Balboa did in the 1976 film and visitors have copied him ever since. A bronze Rocky stands beside the stairs to prove it. What they are running toward is a building shaped like a Greek temple, opened in 1928 on a rise at the end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, its pediments picked out in blue, red and gold the way an ancient one would have been.
Inside, past the armor and the transplanted period rooms, is one of the reasons art historians come: the largest collection of Marcel Duchamp anywhere. Walter and Louise Arensberg, collectors who knew Duchamp personally, left the museum their holdings around 1950, and with them came 'Nude Descending a Staircase', the figure broken into overlapping slices of motion that scandalized New York in 1913.
In a small room off to the side sits his last work, 'Étant donnés', which you can only see by looking through two peepholes in an old wooden door. Duchamp built it in secret over 20 years and left instructions that it be assembled only after his death, which is how it reached Philadelphia in 1969.
Acervo
40 obras
As Grandes BanhistasPaul Cézanne, 1906
As Grandes BanhistasPierre-Auguste Renoir, 1884
InteriorEdgar Degas, 1868
A Clínica GrossThomas Eakins, 1875
Mulher com colar de pérolas em um camaroteMary Cassatt, 1879
No Moulin Rouge, a DançaHenri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1890
O Combate do Kearsarge e do AlabamaÉdouard Manet, 1865
Lamentação sobre Cristo mortoEl Greco, 1571
ChuvaVincent van Gogh, 1889
Os grandes bulevaresPierre-Auguste Renoir, 1875
Díptico da CrucificaçãoRogier van der Weyden, 1460
Prometeu acorrentadoPedro Paulo Rubens, 1610
O barco de Folkestone, BoulogneÉdouard Manet, 1869
Noite de carnavalHenri Rousseau, 1886
Uma Leitura de HomeroLawrence Alma-Tadema, 1885
A Última GotaJudith Leyster, 1639
Círculos em um círculoWassily Kandinsky, 1923
Crucificação com a Virgem Maria e São João EvangelistaEl Greco, 1600
Noli me tangereSandro Botticelli, 1491
Retrato do cardeal Filippo ArchintoTiciano, 1558
Retrato da senhora Cézanne com os cabelos soltosPaul Cézanne, 1885
Olhos azuis (Retrato de Madame Jeanne Hébuterne)Amedeo Modigliani, 1917
Le Bon BockÉdouard Manet, 1873
Madame Augustine Roulin com o bebêVincent van Gogh, 1888
Retrato de uma damaEl Greco, 1578