Also this issue: Holiday Gift Guide -Debra Auspitz Shiny & New -Nancy Armstrong, Debra Auspitz, Deborah Bolling, Daniel Brook, Juliet Fletcher, Lori Hill, Frank Lewis, Ted Mann, Patrick Rapa and David Warner Home on the Range Discs for Your List DVDs that won't disappoint. -Sam Adams Wrappers Delight It's all about the presentation. -Juliet Fletcher Box It Up Why buy one cd when you can have a whole set? -A.D. Amorosi, Nate Chinen, Jesse Delaney and Patrick Rapa Get Game Five picks for video game gift-giving. -Frank Lewis and Chris Newborg Technically Speaking -Ted Mann, Chris Newborg and Patrick Rapa

November 21-27, 2002

cover story

Birthday Presents

The gift-giving big leagues are on display at the Art Museum.

by Debra Auspitz

“Gifts are never free.”

That might seem like a cynical sentiment. But to Danielle Rice, the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s associate director for program, it’s simply a cultural fact. Trained as an art historian, Rice has been interested in the anthropological study of gift-giving for years. She finally got a chance to put her research to use when she wrote the catalog essay for the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s current exhibition, “Gifts in Honor of the 125th Anniversary.”

The museum has spent the last five years soliciting gifts in honor of its milestone birthday (which officially occurred in 2001). The booty, impressively varied in history, geography and style, ranges from a piece of Japanese earthenware dated somewhere between 2500 and 1500 B.C. to Caroline Kimmel's custom Vera Wang wedding gown, worn in 1999 for her wedding to performing arts center namesake Sidney. The exhibit fills six galleries at the museum, and in between ancient pottery and modern glamour you'll find work from Jasper Johns, Man Ray, Dorothea Tanning, Alice Neel and Georgia O'Keeffe, and examples of everything from 17th-century Indian art to colonial furniture made in Philadelphia. But if fashion is your bag, you can gape at gowns by Emanuel Ungaro, Hubert de Givenchy, Valentino and Pierre Cardin, to name a few. It's fun to experience the interactions all in one space of art and artifacts that usually don't even share the same wing of a museum. It's as if the museum's disparate collections, usually confined to quarters, have suddenly been let out for recess.

In writing about the show, Rice saw an opportunity to put the idea of gift-giving in context, to discuss why people spend their lives and fortunes collecting art only to turn around and give it all away. On a broader level, she asks, "Why are gifts such a prevalent part of so many different cultures? Why do people go broke creating a potlatch?"

Rice studied the work of French anthropologist Marcel Mauss (1872-1950), whose essay, "The Gift," formally addressed the role of gift-giving in society for the first time. He was the first to point out, Rice says, that "we always think gifts are free. Most people don't think about the fact that gift-giving is part of cementing social ties." Rice looks at gifts as part of a social contract, and notes that they either come with a physical price (a gift in return, a favor bestowed) or a more subtle one (continued acceptance in a culture).

As for gift-giving on the scale represented by this exhibit, Rice was interested in finding out why, besides the obvious desire for fame and immortality (get your name on a building or a collection, live forever), people would be so generous. Especially in America, Rice points out, where there were no royal collections to turn into national displays, the entire museum system is largely based on gift-giving. "Talking to a collector like [Alvin Bellak, a noted collector of Indian art and generous donor], his passion for art is just this inner drive," Rice says. "It becomes a kind of all-consuming passion... and then he turns around and gives it all away. It's mind-boggling." After interviews and more research, Rice came to the conclusion that for someone like Bellak, "giving it all away is about wanting to share the passion."

So if your holiday gifts this year aren't quite as spectacular as, say, an 11-foot iridescent glass mosaic pillar designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany (pictured), have no fear. In turning over pieces of their collections to the public, the few who can afford such rarities are giving the city a gift. You can return the favor by sharing the show as your holiday gift, simply for the price of admission.

“Gifts in Honor of the 125th Anniversary,” through Dec. 8, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 26th St. and the Parkway, 215-763-8100.