“Léger: Modern Art and the Metropolis” is, in focus and scope, an ambitious enterprise and, as such, often exhilarating. Anyone fascinated by the trajectory of, and crosscurrents within, early Modernism will count this exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art as a “must see.” Be aware, however, that it isn’t a typical monographic overview. Only a third or so of the pieces on display are by Léger. The majority of items—drawings, paintings, sculptures, architectural maquettes, theater designs, films, and posters—are by his friends, colleagues, and contemporaries. You’d be hard-pressed to come up with a more impressive Who’s Who of the Avant-Garde: among those included are Piet Mondrian, El Lissitzky, Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay-Terk, Pablo Picasso, Le Corbusier, Francis Picabia, and lesser lights like Amédée Ozenfant, Theo van Doesburg, Gino Severini, Georges Vantongerloo, and Marcel Duchamp. By the time viewers reach the end of this sprawling exhibition, they can be forgiven for wondering if its emphasis has been misplaced. “Modern Art and the Metropolis, with Special Guest Fernand Léger” is more like it.

Make that “With Special Guest Painting, The City.” Here is where the exhibition is brazenly Philly-centric. Anna Vallye, the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow in Modern and Contemporary Art and exhibition organizer, is on a mission. She wants to posit The City (1919), a cornerstone of the museum’s collection and already an iconic painting, as a cultural game-changer on par with Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon(1907). The Léger picture, after all, “capture[s] the