Recently, due to budget cuts that have precluded mounting large exhibitions, Phoenix Art Museum has looked more like the Phoenix Museum of Fashion and Photography.

The abundance of photography shows, made possible by PAM’s partner the Center for Creative Photography at University of Arizona have been more than welcome, as are PAM curator Denita Sewell’s fashion exhibitions—a rarity in museums, and not to be taken for granted. Today, the museum gets back in the mini-blockbuster game with the opening of Cézanne and American Modernism.

From Richard Nilsen’s review in the Republic:

Modern art. Wow. Who saw that coming?

Well, Paul Cezanne, for one. The French painter, who died in 1906, is the artist most often credited by 20th-century artists as the fountainhead of Modernism.

Who’d have thought that a schlub with little appreciable art talent – at least as it was understood at the time – and who didn’t really have a talent for anything else, would lead the way to the 20th century.

“He is the father of all of us,” Picasso said.

The direct line from Cezanne to Modernism in America is drawn in a new show at the Phoenix Art Museum, “Cezanne and American Modernism,” which includes 16 works by Cezanne and 85 works by 33 American artists, all before 1930.

Read the rest of Nilsen’s article here.