Philly Press Lunch: Rishel Rises to the Occasion

Philadelphia Museum senior curator Joseph Rishel meets the press in NYC

Yesterday's Philadelphia Museum press lunch in New York was notable both for who wasn't there---Gail Harrity, interim CEO and Alice Beamesderfer, interim head of curatorial affairs (whose appointments were announced Friday by the museum here) and also for who was---Joe Rishel, husband of the museum's late director Anne d'Harnoncourt, and the museum's senior curator of European painting before 1900.

Joe presented a lively account of his upcoming Cézanne and Beyond blockbuster (which goes way beyond Rishel's pre-1900 purview to encompass Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Brice Marden and Jeff Wall). It is, he said, "one of the most ambitious shows I've ever been involved in...not hierarchical, not chronological," but demonstrating dialogues among artists for whom Cézanne was "the big rock in the pond, reverberating."

In his presentation and in conversation with me before the formal program, Joe was in his usual ebullient form---witty, erudite and pumping me for ideas about which shows he might enjoy in New York before the retirement party later that day for the Museum of Modern Art's curator John Elderfield.

He responded enthusiastically to my suggestions of the Jewish Museum's Action/Abstraction show and the Metropolitan Museum's sublime (in the usual sense and the Wordsworthian sense) Turner retrospective. The Met show had occasioned a mad press dash 15 blocks down Fifth Avenue, because its media preview overlapped with the Philly lunch. Rishel had already seen the Turner (which features a major Philadelphia loan, "The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons") at Washington's National Gallery, but said that he loves comparing how the same show is installed in different venues. (Turner opens to the public a week from today.)

When I previously suggested on CultureGrrl that the Philadelphia Museum appoint Rishel as its interim director, signaling continuity, a distinguished colleague of his from another museum e-mailed me to say that "Joe is working feverishly on a wonderful exhibition about Cézanne's influence in the 20th century and beyond....I bet he will be just as happy to see somebody else take on the mantle of acting director!"

Indeed, the one time when Joe's eyes clouded slightly during our chat was when he said this to me about his work on that show:

It's been a lifesaver.