Accumulated vision: Barry Le Va.

Philadelphia was--perhaps surprisingly--a major art destination this winter. Visitors flocked to see the Barnes Collection in its dwindling days in nearby Marion; to take in a tender show of Bronzino and Pontormo portraiture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (this just before the blockbuster Dali show went up); and to catch a moving survey of the work of Barry Le Va at the Institute of Contemporary Art. Even more surprising was the strong media interest in Le Va's exhibition: An artist who made a splash in 1968 when, less than two years out of art school, he landed the cover of our sister publication, Artforum (then and now, the most influential art magazine), Le Va has typically been associated with the anti-form era of post-Minimalist sculpture, a historical moment that doesn't usually set critics' hearts aflutter. This attention is salutary, but at the risk of looking a gift horse in the mouth, Le Va deserves to be understood on his own terms, not, as one critic had it, for laying the groundwork for Maurizio Cattelan and Urs Fischer. The catalogue for the Philadelphia show--with essays by curator Ingrid Schaffner, art historians Pamela M. Lee and Rhea Anastas, and supertheorist Paul Virilio--is a corrective to such a view, and it nicely complements Le Va's carefully calibrated, deceptively precise, and cognitively satisfying work.--ED.

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