"Elegant innovations: American Rookwood pottery, 1880-1960: the Gerald and Virginia Gordon collection." November 15, 2003-March 21, 2004, 2001-2004

This subseries currently is closed to researchers.

This subseries consists of documentation of exhibitions organized by the museum in the last years of Anne d'Harnoncourt's tenure as its director and CEO. "'Shocking!' The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli" (Sept. 28, 2003-Jan. 4, 2004); "Manet and the Sea" (Feb. 15-May 31, 2004); "Salvador Dalí" (Feb. 16-May 30, 2005); "Andrew Wyeth: Memory and Magic" (Mar. 29-July 16, 2006); and "Tesoros/Treasures/Tesouros: The Arts in Latin America, 1492-1820" (Sept. 20-Dec. 31, 2006) are the exhibitions with the largest volume of material.

Two other shows well-documented are part of the "Other venues" sub-subseries. "Masterpieces from the Philadelphia Museum of Art: Impressionism and Modern Art" was shown in 2007 at the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art and Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art. Although this was the first time works of art from PMA were exhibited in these two major cities, it was not the first time the museum had a presence in Japan. From July through November of 1992, the first major show of nineteenth- and twentieth-century European art from the museum traveled to Sapporo, Kofu and Nagoya, Japan. Two years later, the museum provided European and American paintings and sculpture that dealt with the human figure to five other Japanese museums. Records of these earlier exhibitions are part of the first sub-subseries. For the second exhibition held outside Philadelphia, PMA served as lender, organizer and co-curator when the museum and Bruce Nauman were chosen to represent the United States in the 2009 Venice Biennale. D'Harnoncourt's records document the earliest stages of the museum's bid for this prestigious event, beginning in 2007.

Several exhibitions that opened after d'Harnoncourt's death in June 2008, are processed under the "Later exhibitions" sub-subseries.