The Curated Object

Events: Philadelphia. CRAFT & CULTURE LECTURE SERIES: Post-War Ceramics: The Syracuse Annuals and the Search for Form Presentation by Jennifer Sorkin. The Philadelphia Art Alliance. The Curated Object

A talking point in Dr. Sorkin's lecture will be the 22nd Ceramic National exhibition in Syracuse

 

CRAFT & CULTURE LECTURE SERIES: 
Post-War Ceramics: The Syracuse Annuals and the Search for Form 
Presentation by Jennifer Sorkin, Assistant Professor at Univ. of Houston 

Thursday, March 29 – 7:00 PM  FREE ADMISSION

 

The Philadelphia Art Alliance is pleased to announce the next installment in our Spring 2012 Craft and Culture Lecture Series. On Thursday, March 29, PAA welcomes Art Historian and Assistant Professor at the University of Houston, Jennifer Sorkin, for a lecture and presentation entitled “Live Form: Craft as Participation”.  Sorkin will speak about her upcoming book release of the same name, which examines the legacy of Black Mountain College and craft pedagogy in the post-war period.  The presentation will begin at 7:00 PM and is FREE and open to the public.  Patrons are also encouraged to visit the current exhibitions on display, Sondra Sherman: Found Subjects and Andrea Donelly: Binary in the First Floor Galleries, and A Sense of Place in the Second Floor Galleries.

 

About Jennifer Sorkin:

Jennifer Sorkin currently serves as assistant professor in the art history and critical studies department of the University of Houston’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.  Previously, she participated in the Getty Research Institute’s Post-Doctoral Fellow program, where she was pursuing research on gender and the craft/art divide. Although much of her work treats the American art world of the last 50 years, Sorkin has international standing.  Dr. Sorkin received her Ph.D from Yale in 2010, and already has a significant number of published articles in journals such as Art Journal and Third Text. 

 

Sorkin’s work examines the confluence of gender and material culture within modern and contemporary art history, theory, and criticism. Her writing has appeared in the New Art Examiner, Art Journal, Frieze, Modern Painters, among others. In 2010, she co-organized Blind Spots/Puntos Ciegos: Feminisms, Cinema, and Performance for the eight edition of SITAC, the International Symposium of Contemporary Art Theory, held in Mexico City. She has been awarded fellowships from the ACLS/Luce Foundation and the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, and is a recipient of the 2004 Art Journal Award given by the College Art Association. She is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Live Form: Craft as Participation, which examines the legacy of Black Mountain College, craft pedagogy, and the history of ceramics from 1952 to 1975.

 For more information about this event or PAA, please visit o www.philartalliance.org  or call 215-545-4302

 

 

Exhibition Philadelphia. Art Into Fashion: Roberto Capucci. The Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Curated Object

  from "Art Into Fashion: Roberto Capucci" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

from "Art Into Fashion: Roberto Capucci" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

from "Art Into Fashion: Roberto Capucci" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

from "Art Into Fashion: Roberto Capucci" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

from "Art Into Fashion: Roberto Capucci" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Art Into Fashion: Roberto Capucci

March 16 - June 5, 2011

by JoAnn Greco

The room is just about pitch black, but as your eyes adjust, shocking plays of color come into focus. Dress after dress, alive in hues of neon orange and vivid turquoise, deep amethyst and the rubiest of garnet. Laid in color fields, they're profusely pleated, knife-sharp, like so much origami, and formed into sumptuous roses and abundant accordion folds.

These are the works of a "boy wonder," a post-New Look genius who took the forms populated by Christian Dior and made them his own. They are the singular objects crafted by Italian fashion designer Roberto Capucci.

At first, Capucci drew inspiration from nature, with masterful creations like "Nova Gonne" or Nine Skirts, a dress formed of  concentric circles reminiscent of the movement of water as it's disturbed by a tossed stone. Just a few years later, though, in the swinging '60s, the designer turned to materials like bamboo and straw and peebles, seeing wonderful possibilities in adorning fabric.

Some of these works are bizarre, not beautiful, and ultimately Capucci's one-of-a-kind pieces became more abstract and sculptural. Indee,d some were not even meant to be worn. By the 21st-century, this designer — now 81-years-old— was indulging in works that skewed more to the curious, almost the scientific. By removing the constraints inherent in designing for the female form (those arms, those hips, those breasts!), Capucci has given himself a pass. 

For this viewer, this endlessly imaginative artist reached his peak in the '80s and '90s. It was then, already leaning toward dress-as-sculpure- that he created his most fabulously folded and colored works. These voluptuous items are the most swoon-worthy, the most "Capucci" of the works on hand — and the most artful.

For more information please visit: The Philadelphia Museum of Art

 

Events Philadelphia. Celebrations: 50th Annual Philadelphia Antiques Show. The Curated Object

 
from the Philadelphia Antiques show 2011

 

from the Philadelphia Antiques show 2011

 

from the Philadelphia Antiques show 2011

from the Philadelphia Antiques show 2011

Philadelphia Antiques Show

April 8 - April 12, 2011 (recap)

by JoAnn Greco

This year marks the 50th presentation of the Philadelphia Antiques Show — widely recognized as the country's premier event showcasing American decorative arts and furniture. And so, naturally, the theme of "Celebration" for the annual loan exhibit is tailor-made for the occasion. 

Curated by Constance Hershey of the Frankliniana Database at Franklin & Marshall College, it brings together objects designed to observe festivities like weddings, graduations, inauguaration, parades, holidays, and, of course, anniversaries and birthdays.

Some, like a pair of carved, painted, and gilded angels blowing trumpets — which crowned a 1762 organ built for the Dutch Reformed Church in Germantowm, Pennsylvania — literally herald that celebration is in the air. Others, like a delicately adorned circa 1707 silver bowl crafted to be filled with brandy wine to celebrate a wedding and a plainer 1743 one marking the birth of Ben Franklin's daughter, more subtly announce joyous personal events. 

The frakturs of the Pennsylvania German communities offer compelling records that have proven valuable tools for historians and genealogists, notes Hershey in an essay in the Show's catalog. While some are ornately lavish in their depictions of figures and text, others are rigidly geometric and linear.

A section devoted to more public triumphs offers carved eagles and presentation plates. Stovepipe hats worn by firemen parading in Baltimore and Philadelphia are crowd-pleasers. To mark the achievements of America's most over-sized heroes, craftsmen created dazzling swords and ceremonial urns. 

When President James Monroe invivted the Marquis de Lafayette to visit the U.S., one English pottery manufacturer offered a transfer-printed earthenware bowl that showed a younger Lafayette sitting peacefully before the tomb of George Washington, bringing together both heroes in imagery. The excitement surrounding his visit was "boundless," notes Hershey. It was, she writes, "our first national celebration."

In its tying together of the treads of America's personal lives and larger trajectories, the exhibit echoes the continuing mission of those who collect and deal in Americana. The array of objects displayed in the Celebrations exhibit are just the tip of the trove found elsewhere at the show. From 18th-century highboys to Tiffany lamps to a stunning array of tattered flags, Audubon prints, quilts and samplers, the exhibitors have crafted, as always, a thorough and fascinating walk through the history of American life.

 

Exhibitions Philadelphia. The Peacock Male: Exuberance and Extremes in Masculine Dress. The Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Curated Object

Man's "Paper" Shirt,  Late  1960s.  Artist/maker  unknown,  German.  Multicolored  printed  spun‐bonded  polyester  (paper),  31  1/2  x  64  inches  (80  x  162.6  cm).  Philadelphia  Museum  of  Art,  Purchased with  funds  from  the  gift  of  Mrs.  Victor  M.  Friar,  2009.  



Herald's  Tabard,  1707‐14.  Artist/maker  unknown,  English.  Silk  satin  weave  with  silk  and  gilt fabric  appliqué;  silk  and  gilt  thread  embroidery  in  couching  and  satin  stitches  and  laid  work;  glass beads,  Center  Back  Length:  34  inches  (86.4  cm).  Philadelphia  Museum  of  Art,  Gift  of  Elizabeth Malcolm Bowman  in  memory  of  Wendell  Phillips  Bowman,  1930. 

 

Man's  Jacket, c.1950s.  Browning  King & Co. Black and white zebra‐striped  plush.  Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Louis C. Madeira,1979. 

 

Man's  Jacket  with Miró‐Inspired   Designs,  Fall/Winter  1991‐92.  Designed  by  Yohji Yamamoto, Japanese, born 1943.  Red and brown wool,  Center  Back  Length:  33  ¼  inches  (84.5  cm). Philadelphia  Museum  of  Art,  Gift  from  the  private  collection  of  John  Cale,  2000.   

 

Man's  Bondage  Suit:  Jacket  and  Trousers  with    Attached  Knee  Strap,  c.  1990. Designed  by  Vivienne  Westwood,  English,  born  1941.  Bright  orange/red   wool.  Philadelphia  Museum  of Art,  Purchased  with  the  Costume  and  Textiles  Revolving  Fund,  2000.  

Man's  Shoes,  c.  1973.  Artist/maker  unknown,  Italian.  Black  and  brown  leather,  red  suede. Philadelphia  Museum  of  Art.  Gift  of  Darrel  Sewell,  1989.   

The Peacock Male: Exuberance and Extremes in Masculine Dress

January 22 - June, 2011

By JoAnn Greco

Looking around the small gallery devoted to exhibiting a brisk survey of three centuries of male clothing, one might be tempted to murmur, "Peacock? What peacock?" True, there's a plume-laden, sparkle-burdened Mummers costume on hand, but that's cheating. More typical is another ensemble that nods to Philadelphia roots: a year 2000 or so getup created from Phillies-logoed wear. It's an ugly mashup that, like many other outfits on display here, seem to suggest that men when they try to be "peacocks" simply jumble color and pattern, not masterfully create complete looks.

Even the oldest items on display, from 18th-century Europe, are rather muted affairs, compared to what womanly counterparts might have been wearing. Richer colors and patterns do show up in the exhibit's best vitrine, one filled with top hats, linen slippers, and kerchiefs from the mid-19th-century. And a vitrine of male paraphernalia from the 1920s, '30s and '40s — spats, suspenders, collars, boater hats — suggests the elegance of Noel Coward or Fred Astaire.

Newer pieces skew animal (1950s), psychedelic (1960s), autumnal (those awful mustards and browns from 1970s leisure suits), and hip hop graphic. A few contemporary names — Yohji Yamamoto, Vivienne Westwood, and Gianni Versace — make the cut, too. 

It's all very interesting, but not beautiful. When it comes to showing off, this exhibit seems to tell us, men don't have a patch — or a bejeweled bodice — on women.

For more information please visit: The Philadelphia Museum of Art 

Exhibitions Philadelphia. Sheila Hicks: 50 Years. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. The Curated Object

Sheila Hicks, May I Have This Dance?, 2002-03, installation view. Photo: Aaron Igler/Greenhouse Media.

 

images: Aaron Igler/Greenhouse Media

 

Sheila Hicks: 50 Years

March 24 - August 7, 2011

Review by JoAnn Greco

At once ropy and smooth,  imposing and delicate, the 90 or so works on hand here — including a handful of dramatically-scaled architectural pieces — exhibit the mastery that Sheila Hicks brings to the fiber she so expertly manipulates and melds. More than anything else, these works throb with life and emotion.

Spilling from the ceiling in an outpouring of green, red and blues, the monumental May I Have This Dance  is the epitome of exuberance, while smaller wall-hangings like Demenageur (just 9" x 8") seem to exist mainly to intrigue, to help us explore the very depths of particular fabrics, whether cotton or linen, silk or wool. 

Just as she weaves these fabrics, the artist has throughout her career woven disciplines, adroitly slipping between decorative art and sculpture, photography and landscape painting, and here and there adding a dash of daring in her applications of found objects. She stretches the idea of fiber as easily as she does the material itself — everything from soba noodles to goat hair has made it in her work.

A restless world traveler, this artist soaks up influence wherever she goes: the pieces on hand bear the threads — excuse me, but weaving metaphors are so plentiful, aren't they? — of the craft as it's practiced in Mexico, Morocco, South America, Europe, India and Africa. In fact, the observations, swatches and sketches that she keeps in her travel journals occupy a fascinating section of this exhibit, which was curated by Joan Simon and Susan C. Faxon of the Addison Gallery of American Art. For the visitor, the books are just one more strand in the endlessly fascinating life of Hicks. 

For more information please visit: The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia

 

Exhibitions Philadelphia. Kickin’ Back: Design for Leisure & En Route: Dylan Beck and Diane Pepe. The Philadelphia Art Alliance. The Curated Object

Dylan Beck, Filigree Log, 2010; Porcelain, copper wash, walnut, Courtesy of the artist

S. Casey Gleason, Campfire Lite, 2010; luminaire, gypsum. Courtesy of the artist

 
Paul K. Guillow, Inc. Jet Stream, balsa wood model plane

Diane Pepe, Takeda Walk, 2007; Basswood, brass, river stones, Courtesy of the artist

 

Kickin’ Back: Design for Leisure, in collaboration with Andrew Dahlgren. In the first floor galleries, and two solo installations as part of the Art Alliance's ongoing En Route Series, with local artists Dylan Beck and Diane Pepe. 

January 25-March 25, 2011

Kickin’ Back: Design for Leisure

Kickin’ Back is a juried and invitational exhibition at the Philadelphia Art Alliance in collaboration with Andrew Dahlgren. Designers and architects from the Mid-Atlantic region were selected based upon their interpretations of the concept of leisure that either complement and/or comment upon what constitutes contemporary states of rest or play. From public spaces such as retail environments and parks, to objects that provide comfort or promote interaction in private environments, the work featured in the exhibition provokes questions about what surrounds us in our daily lives, and elaborates on how design impacts our downtime.  Participating designers include: Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Patrick Barendt, Carrot Grant, Chris Wright Cycles, Cutesy but not Cutesy, Design Circle, Inc., Fabric Horse, Friday Architects/Planners, Greenleaf Steel Rule Die Corporation, Haley Tricycles, and many more.
 
Dylan Beck - Yesterday’s Tomorrow: New works
Dylan Beck’s mixed media sculptures incorporate the use of ceramics with materials common in construction, retail and home environments. Using iconic décor such as filigrees and other ornamentals found in architecture, his primary subject is the affects of suburban sprawl on the environment. Parallel to this, Beck is also aesthetically influenced by typography, using satellite and aerial images to form the basis of his final forms. As Beck notes, “Within this domain, my interests range from concepts of land use and automobile-centered planning to the psychological effects of living in the ‘non-places’ of a hypermodern world. Hypermodernity has created places that have no relation to the natural environment in which they reside. These places include airports, shopping malls, and various housing developments among others.“ 
 
Diane Pepe - Connections: Sculptures and collages
Diane Pepe is influenced by untouched beauty of nature. Her structures, made primarily of wood and brass are combined with river stones that have been polished over time by their surroundings. Her work is a combined of what is organically beautiful as found in nature with a superimposed structure that represents a sense of order and containment. Initially influence by the people she met during a trip to Kochi, Japan, her works and installations become more widespread in their meaning. She states. “This concept has shifted to a more universal investigation of the dichotomy between the emotional/passionate side of human nature and the ordered/structured elements that we engage to control or order these emotions.” These are explored in larger works beyond the journey series in works such asTransition, Center and her most recent work Echo 12. 
 
For more information please visit: www.philartalliance.org 

Exhibitions Philadelphia. Desert Jewels: North African Jewelry and Photography. The Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Curated Object

Necklace with central pendant, Tagguemout  20th Century, Draa Valley, Morocco Silver, coral, enamel, coins, glass, copal, shell, cotton, plastic, buttons. 

Hand pendant with salamander motif, Khamsa 19th or 20th Century, MoroccoSilver, bronze 

Fibula 20th Century, Tiznit, Morocco Silver, enamel, coins, glass. 

Hand pendant with central boss, six pointed star and hand motif, Khamsa 19th or 20th Century, Morocco Silver, copper. 

Young Girl  Unknown Photographer, North Africa, ca. 1870 Original photograph on albumin paper from a collodion glass negative 

Fibula or Tabzimt Late 19th Century Aït Yenni People, Great Kabylie, Algeria Silver, coral, enamel 

Necklace Late 20th Century, Marrakech, Morocco Coral, amazonite, metal rosettes, wool 

Desert Jewels: North African Jewelry and Photography

September 4 - December 5, 2010

By JoAnn Greco

The rich array of baubles, bangles, and beads on display here may contain precious few precious stones, but their wealth (both monetarily and culturally) is undeniable. Whether enormous necklaces crafted of glass beads and shells or delicate amulets of silver and gold, these pieces carry with them the traces of Europe, Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa that came to cross in places like Morocco and Tunisia, while providing insight into the region itself.

According to curator Enid Schildkrout from New York's Museum for African Art, from whence the exhibit hails, many of the pieces could be taken apart and reassembled. Many are infused with symbolic properties, such as khamsa, the hand-shaped amulets thought to offer the wearer protection from harm. Many of the works indicate regional and group identity — for example, the bold and graphic spiked bracelets (they look like brass knuckles!) worn by Ait Yenni women in Morocco.

This visual feast is accompanied by a selection of late 19th- and early 20th-century photos which document the people and places associated with the nearly 100 necklaces. earrings, bracelets, and headpieces. Schildkrout points out that they serve to emphasize North Africa as a "cosmopolitan" center where Jews, Arabs, Berbers, and peoples from sub-Saharan Africa happily and frequently intersected. In these images, women sport magnificent jewelry, westerners explore exotic monuments, and merchants and buyers meet and exchange. Three glorious textiles — a wool and goat-hair men's cloak sporting an 'evil eye' motif, a woman's shawl, and a wedding garment embroidered with metal thread — pulled from the Philadelphia Museum of Art lend heft and texture to the room.

For more information please visit: The Philadelphia Museum of Art

Exhibitions Philadelphia. May Your Glass Be Ever Full: Drinking in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Europe (Final Weeks!). The Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Curated Object

Goblet, c. 1745, possibly with later engraving. Artist/maker unknown, English. Lead-crystal glass with wheel-engraved decoration; drawn stem, Height: 8 3/8 inches (21.3 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, The George H. Lorimer Collection, 1953. 

Monteith, 1707-8. Workshop of Gabriel Sleath, English (active London), 1674 - 1756. Silver, 8 1/4 x 11 inches (21 x 27.9 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Bequest of George D. Widener, 1972. 

Posset Cup and Cover, Late 17th - early 18th century. Artist/maker unknown, English. Lead-crystal glass. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Hampton L. Carson in the name of Anna Robeson Barr, 1925. 

Two-Handled Cup with Lid(1706-8). Workshop of David King, Irish (Dublin), active from 1690, died 1737. Made in Dublin, Ireland. Silver with engraved decoration. 13 x 13 x 7 1/2 inches (33 x 33 x 19.1 cm) The Henry P. McIlhenny Collection in memory of Frances P. McIlhenny, 1986 1986-26-230a,b

Wine Jug, c. 1720. Decorated by M. Schmidt, German (active Nurnberg), from c. 1712. Tin-enamelled earthenware; pewter, 14 7/16 x 8 1/4 inches (36.6 x 21 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Bloomfield Moore Collection, 1882. 

Wine Glass Cooler, c. 1770. Made by the Chantilly porcelain factory, Chantilly, France, c. 1730 - 1792. Soft-paste porcelain with underglaze blue decoration, 4 1/8 x 6 1/8 inches (10.5 x 15.5 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Morris Hawkes, 1942. 

May Your Glass Be Ever Full: Drinking in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Europe

through Summer 2010

By JoAnn Greco

When Hobbes went hob-nobbing and Locke locked lips with a nice port, the vessels from which they sipped were as beautiful and complex as the thoughts that spilled from their fertile minds. The Age of Enlightenment, this exhibit shows us, was indeed an era of imbibement. Drinking clubs abounded, as both great thinkers and the hoi polloi experimented with a newly wide range of available alcoholic beverages. This installation, drawn from the Museum's collection brings together objects employed in both the service and the consumption of beer, wine, champagne, and even exotic newcomers like punch.

From simple lead crystal wine glasses to gleaming white porcelain jugs to classic silver tankards, it's all here. Surprise accoutrements include a swirling silver nutmeg grater made in Birmingham, England, a lovely blue-and-white porcelain wine glass cooler from Chantilly, France, and a fabulously colorful tin-enamelled earthenware wine jug from early 18th-century German.

For more information please visit: The Philadelphia Museum of Art

Exhibitions Philadelphia. Vanitas: Contemporary Reflections. (The Last Week Folks!) The Philadelphia Art Alliance. The Curated Object

Courtesy of the Philadelphia Art Alliance

Courtesy of the Philadelphia Art Alliance

Courtesy of the Philadelphia Art Alliance

Vanitas

May 27 - Aug. 12,2010

By JoAnn Greco

Feminine grace, wiles, frippery, domesticity, imagination, and, yes, angst, have taken over the serene rooms of the Beaux Arts confines of the Art Alliance. This joint show features five female artists who work in widely diverging media and who tackle a variety of issues. But oh how nicely it all blends together.

Walking up the building's sweeping staircase leads to the galleries that are hosting Vanitas — Latin for life's transitory nature. First, there on the landing: a teaser; one piece laid out on top of the grand piano. It's a copper chafing dish that Myra Mimlitsch Gray has manipulated so it's come to resemble a. . .  grand piano.

The work sets the stage for what proves to be a surprising assemblage of the ordinary writ extraordinary. To begin, the first gallery lies ahead, beckoning with crinkly cellophane, plastic hair accessories, crystal beads and Christmas ornaments alive in candy tones and stacked into towers of fantasy. The point of Gae Savannah's "cakes" isn't hard to grasp — our focus on easy prettiness and the saccharine is shallow and transparent — but that doesn't make them any less compelling.

Gray's work takes over the next room. At first, the elegant silver platters and copper pots displayed in vitrines resemble those arrayed in any fine arts museum. Upon closer inspection, though, they drip and "melt," their classic form's in slight disarray even as their finishes remain perfect.

Continuing the fascination with the workaday stuff of life that captures each artist, Candy Depew's work interweaves paisley-adorned bone china washing bowls and floral-motifed skateboards seemingly coated in porcelain with vinyl cutouts, wall etchings and digitally printed fabrics. Diamonds, flowers, and fish prance across the walls in lively "still lifes" that pay homage to the 17th-century Dutch painting tradition in which the origins of "vanitas" lie.

The last gallery showcases the sugar-coated (literally!) world of Katherine Kaminski, a world where carefully arranged faux flowers are glazed with sugar and recurring deer imagery runs rampant. Once you've eyed the waxen cast at the center of one tableau, you'll never call someone "deer heart" again without recalling this disturbing image.

Finally, Audrey Hasen Russell's unadorned compositions of cheap "souvenir" Depression-era and milk glass bowls and cups impart dignity and beauty onto these inexpensive staples. Steeped in solid Americana — and backed with the European traditions which so many immigrants brought to the Midwest's glass factories — the pieces ask us to think about the fleeting nature of childhood and its memories.

For more information, please visit: The Philadelphia Art Alliance

Exhibitions Philadelphia. Pleasures and Pastimes in Japanese Art. The Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Curated Object

 
Shimotsuma Shoshin (Japanese, 1551 – 1616), Noh Mask, Momoyama period (1568-1615), late 16th century. Carved wood with painted decoration. 8 5/8 x 5 3/8 inches. Made in Japan. Purchased with the J. Stogdell Stokes Fund, 1970. Philadelphia Museum of Art. 

Artist Unknown, Pair of Flutes, Japanese, Edo period (1615-1868), 18th century. Made in Japan. Lacquered bamboo, cherry wood bark, ivory. Flute 1: 15 3/4 x 1 3/16 inches; Flute 2: 14 9/16 x 13/16 inches. Purchased with funds contributed by Andrea M. Baldeck, M.D. Philadelphia Museum of Art. 

Banura Shōgo (Japanese, 1901 – 1982), Writing Box. Japan, Showa period, 1930-1940. Dry lacquer (kanshitsu) base in dark green, with deep red lacquer edges, designs in gold and raised lacquers (taka-makie), interior with gold and silver scattered flakes (nashiji). 8 1/2 x 7 1/2 x 12 5/8 inches. Made in Kyoto, Japan. Gift of Jeffrey Cline and William Knospe in honor of Frederick R. McBrien III. Philadelphia Museum of Art. 

 Yokoi Kinkoku (Japanese, 1761-1832), Catching Fish under Willows in the Rain. Edo period, c. 1800. Ink and colors on silk, mounted as a hanging scroll; fitted wood box Exclusive of mount: 44 3/8 x 16 3/8 inches Made in Japan. Partial purchase with funds contributed by Maxine and Howard Lewis, and partial gift of Sondra Milne Henderson in honor of the memory of Anne d'Harnconcourt, 2009. Philadelphia Museum of Art. 

Artist/maker unknown. Dish with Design of Fish. Japanese, Edo Period (1615-1868), c. 1700. Glazed porcelain with underglaze decoration; Kutani ware; "Blue and White."7/8 x 8 1/4 inches. Made in Japan. Gift of R. G. Rincliffe, 1969, Philadelphia Museum of Art 
 

 

 Pleasures and Pastimes in Japanese Art

January 9, 2010 - Fall 2010

By JoAnn Greco

Looking for insight into a culture? — take a closer look at how it plays. And one way to do that is to examine the objects used in such pastimes. For the Japanese, who elevate everything to art and who accompany the art of making that art into a highly-detailed set of rules (i.e. the  "way" of tea, of flower arranging, of ceramics), the mono (things) associated with relaxing and hobby-making range from fishing to drinking sake. Even the higher arts — such as performing in Noh theater (the Japanese have a great tradition of staging these stalwarts in little towns with ordinary farm folk assuming the classic roles) and writing poetry (also not just for professionals) — merit consideration when examining this oft-rigid nation at ease.

The objects in this lovely exhibit, then, range from paraphernalia associated with the tea ceremony — ikebana materials, incense games, and pottery — to musical instruments and sake vessels. Also on hand is an ancient card game based on one hundred classical poems and played out in celebration of the New Year, and a host of Noh masks and costumes. A stunning 17th-century hand drum, crafted of black and gold lacquer on wood, works wonders in capturing many of the traditional elements of Japanese craft in one gleaming form. It may be small — it stands just 11 inches high — but it sure says a lot.

For more information, please visit: The Philadelphia Museum of Art

Events Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Antiques Show Loan Exhibit. "A Call to Arms: Chinese Armorial Porcelain for the British and American Markets, 1700-1850." The Curated Object

                    Image courtesy of the Philadelphia Antiques Show

                      Image courtesy of the Philadelphia Antiques Show

                                           Image courtesy of the Philadelphia Antiques Show

                                      Image courtesy of the Philadelphia Antiques Show

 
 
The Philadelphia Antiques Show

April 17 - April 20, 2010

by JoAnn Greco

Celebrating its 49th anniversary, this is the country's premier antiques show, with some 50 dealers showcasing their wares. This year's loan exhibit pays tribute to antiques dealer Elinor Gordon, a respected authority on Chinese export porcelain who participated in the first Philadelphia Antiques Show and didn't stop until her death last year. Curated by Ron Fuchs II of the Reeves Collection at Washington and Lee University, the exhibit comprises about 50 pieces, half on loan from the Reeves, half from private collections.

In the 18th century, Europeans and Americans ordered fine Chinese porcelain services such as those on display to demonstrate their wealth and societal rank. Larger pieces depicted scenes — often of Chinese ports or western cities — while plates and cups most often featured coats of arms. Typically, the gold-rimmed pieces were painted in oranges, reds, and blues.

Marriage status and lineage were noted, and major life changes — birth, coming of age, marriage, and death — often prompted the order of new services. From order to completion, such a service could take up to two years to complete — quickly necessitating the need for yet another round of ceremonial plates and bowls! One such example: a coat of arms that first signifies its owner, John Chapman, as a single man (on a plate from 1735) then changes his status as a newly-married man (a 1740 cup).

"Armorial porcelain services are some of the few remaining products which represent the start of the global economy," says Fuchs. "Each piece is a part of the puzzle in deciphering the past and how society was structured." In the period covered by the exhibit, some 6,000 such services were created for British and American households; they varied in size from a tea service with a dozen pieces to dinner services consisting of 400 pieces.

Exhibitions Philadelphia. A Purer Taste of Forms and Ornaments: Josiah Wedgwood and the Antique. The Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Curated Object

Krater vase, c. 1790. Made by the Wedgwood factory, Etruria, England, 1759 – present. Stoneware with encaustic decoration, 36 x 20 3/8 x 17 ¾ inches. Gift of Charlotte and David E. Zeitlin in honor of Susan Z. Baer, 1992.

Oil Lamp, c. 1790. Stoneware (basalt ware) with encaustic decoration. Made at the Wedgwood factory, Etruria, England, 1759–present. On loan from the Rubin Collection

Vase, c. 1790 Stoneware (basalt ware) with encaustic decoration Made at the Wedgwood factory, Etruria, England, 1759–present, On loan from the Rubin Collection

Vase and Cover, c. 1805, Stoneware (basalt ware) with encaustic decoration, Made at the Wedgwood factory, Etruria, England, 1759–present, On loan from the Rubin Collection  

Vase, c. 1805, Stoneware (basalt ware) with encaustic decoration, Made at the Wedgwood factory, Etruria, England, 1759–present, On loan from the Rubin Collection 

Pastille Burner, c. 1815, Stoneware (basalt ware) with encaustic decoration, Made at the Wedgwood factory, Etruria, England, 1759–present, Philadelphia Museum of Art: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Meyer P. Potamkin

A Purer Taste of Forms and Ornaments: Josiah Wedgwood and the Antique

October 24, 2009 - March 14, 2010

The basalt ware pieces on display here — richly hued in blacks, russets and browns — might not be what made Wedgwood a household name. For that, of course, we must thank the potter's distinctive blue matte vessels and dinner plates with their signature encaustic white figures. These 20 or so pieces instead look to the neoclassical for inspiration and as such are the right choice for an exhibit that celebrates the 250th anniversary of Josiah Wedgwood's factory, the Ivy House Works in Burslem, England. 

The factory's early years coincided with the discovery of the ancient buried cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and Wedgwood embraced not only the motifs (wheat shafts, lutes) of that time, but the forms such as oil burners and urns. The "Krater" vase, even though designed at the end of Wedgwood's life, pays homage to the red-figure vase painting of the ancient Greeks and Romans. One of the earliest manufacturers to embrace this style, Josiah was instrumental in establishing a taste for it that quickly found favor among the European aristocracy. 

For more information, please visit:The Philadelphia Museum of Art

Posted by JoAnn Greco

Exhibitions Philadelphia. Philagrafika 2010. Various Venues. The Curated Object

ARTIST: Pepón Osorio 

You’re Never Ready, 2009, 

Inkjet print on confetti, MDF support, 

Courtesy of the artist

You’re Never Ready is a bed of confetti on which the artist printed an enlarged image of an X-ray of his mother’s head which, ghost-like, seems to glow with an ethereal inner light. Using his own story as a means of acknowledging our inability to be fully prepared for the inevitable loss of loved ones, Osorio fuses a celebration of his mother’s life with a potent reminder of her mortality.

ARTIST: Betsabeé Romero 

Always finding another cage, 2010, Carved public transportation tires, prints on wire mesh, Installation view at Moore College of Art & Design, Philadelphia
Photo: Amanda Mott, Courtesy the artist

ARTIST: Francesc Ruiz 

Installation view of Francesc Ruiz, “Newsstand,” 2010, 

Wooden structure, printed magazines and newspapers, 

Installation view at Temple Gallery, Tyler School of Art, Temple University as a part of Philagrafika 2010; Philadelphia, PA 

Photo: Image courtesy of the artist.

ARTIST: Óscar Muñoz 

Installation shot of Narcisos (Narcissi) , by Óscar Muñoz (Colombian, born 1951) 

1999. Suite of nine works; charcoal powder on Plexiglas, 

Courtesy of the artist and Sicardi Gallery, 

Photo by Constance Mensh, Courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art

Philagrafika 2010

January 29 through April 11, 2010

Showcasing 300 international artists at some 80 venues, Philagrafika 2010 — the first of what's hoped to be a new triennial in Philadelphia — bills itself as the largest art festival in the United States, and the largest in the world devoted to graphic arts. Conceived by Colombian artist Jose Roca, who lived in Philadelphia a few years ago while on fellowship at the Institute of Contemporary Art, the event is devoted to exploring the dynamic, and often unexpected, role of printmaking in contemporary art. Virtually every conceivable use of print shows up: from illustration to bookmaking, from woodcut to video, from sculptor to fabric. 

The 100 works featured in "Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations [Of A Crazy World]" are some of the more traditional. Washed in lemon yellows and hyacinth lavenders, these gouaches and colored pencil drawings depict a cozy world of dogs and books, a place where the pleasures of writing, thinking, and observing are keenly felt and the pace is never rushed. Culled from a 30-year-ouevre of work for The New Yorker and from her book illustrations, once seen, they become instantly identifiable. There are Thurbersque self-portraits and Hockney-like interiors. There's a Matissean love of color and pattern, and a fondness for vignettes. Kalman's feminine vision of domesticity is further heightened here by the presence of quirky personal objects — old ironing boards, ladders, and ephemera — from her studio and home.

At the nearby Arthur Ross Gallery, also part of the University of Pennsylvania, sculptor Miler Lagos and a cadre of assistants pasted two tons of old newspapers end-to-end, before hand-rolling the resulting carpet into a cylinder that's seven-feet in diameter. Lagos gently singed the paper, then turned the cylinder on its side and viola — the whole thing looks like a cross-section of a felled tree. The work is, he says, "about reversing the printing process, and turning the paper back into a 'tree'."

These two, very diverse, exhibits are part of Philagrafika's largest segment, "Independent Projects." The core exhibition, "The Graphic Unconsciousness" features work by 35 artists from 18 countries at Moore College of Art & Design; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Print Center; and Temple Gallery, Tyler School of Art, Temple University. "Out of Print" asks five artists to create site-specific works inspired by the five historic Philadelphia institutions —the American Philosophical Society (APS) Museum; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Independence Seaport Museum; the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and the Rosenbach Museum & Library — with which they are matched. — JoAnn Greco

For more information, please visit philagrafika2010.org

Exhibition Philadelphia. Friend or Faux: Imitation and Invention from Innocent to Fraudulent. Rosenbach Museum. The Curated Object

 

Edgar Allen Poe forgery, Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849), The fall of the house of Usher: forged manuscript, [193-?], Joseph Cosey’s forged manuscript of Edgar Allen Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher. Cosey forged manuscripts of many American historical and literary figures. His productions are now collectibles in their own right, and have themselves been the subject of forgeries.

William Henry Ireland Vortigen, William Henry Ireland (1777-1835), Vortigern and Rowena: autograph manuscript, [ca. 1820].In an age that idolized the Bard of Avon, William Henry Ireland found many people ready to believe in his forgeries of Shakespeare, which range from love letters to entire manuscripts of plays.  But he overreached himself when he “discovered” this previously unknown play.

Bay Psalm Book , Bible. O.T. Psalms. English. Bay Psalm book] The whole booke of Psalmes .... Cambridge, [Mass.]: [Stephen Daye], 1640, The Rosenbach’s genuine copy of the first book printed in what is now the United States, the 1640 Bay Psalm Book, which provided forensic evidence in a notorious forgery case that included two murders.

Friend or Faux: Imitation and Invention from Innocent to Fraudulent

Nov. 11, 2009- July 11, 2010

Along with flat-out thievery, the problem of forgery is one of the most persistent plagues of the art world. Both are constant fodder for heist movies, but unlike stolen goods, fakes and copies seem tinged with glamour and sophistication. It's not nice, we might say, but we can't help but wink at its sheer audacity. The Rosenbach's latest exhibition seems attuned to that notion, going so far as to examine forgeries of forgeries (in the case of Joseph Cosey's forged manuscripts of Edgar Allen Poe novels, which have themselves become collectible).

“People often think of the word ‘copy’ as derogatory. But sometimes [they are] unique windows into history that we treasure in our collections,” says Judith M. Guston, Curator and Director of Collection. Even with less benign forgeries, she continues, art historians and viewers can learn much about the worlds in which they came to being. 

The exhibit also examines shades of such deceptions — encouraging visitors to consider if a manuscript is still "real," even if a substantial portion is missing, and to question whether works mistakenly attributed to an author are fraudulent. As befits the museum's collections, manuscripts make up most of the exhibit, but a few tricky decorative arts objects and paintings are considered, as well. One, a Bellarmine jug from Shakespearean England, is shown to not live up to a provenance legend; while another, a painting by Thomas Sully, is displayed alongside of a copy created by his daughter. In mid-March, a second rotation of objects comes out of hiding. 

Posted by JoAnn Greco

For more information, please visit rosenbach.org

Exhibitions Philadelphia. Kantha: The Embroidered Quilts of Bengal. Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Curated Object

 

Kantha (with steam transportation, ghat, mansion, and market, Undivided Bengal (Bangladesh or India, West Bengal), Late 19th- to early 20th-century, Cotton plain weave with cotton embroidery in back, buttonhole, chain, darning, outline, split, running, staggered running, stem stitch shading, eye, and dot stitches, Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection. Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Detail of border motifs, Khulna District, Undivided Bengal (Bangladesh), Second half of the 19th century, Cotton plain weave with cotton embroidery in back, buttonhole, chain, darning, satin, running, cross, eye, zig-zag variation, zig-zag Bosnia variation, seed, fishbone, fern, and stem stitch shading stitches, 66 3/8 x 45 ½ inches, Stella Kramrisch Collection, 1994. Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Detail of the corner of a kantha. Faridpur District, Undivided Bengal (Bengladesh). Second half of the 19th century, Cotton plain weave with cotton embroidery in back, chain, darning, satin, running, dot, and seed stitches. 28 ¾ x 28 ½ inches. Gift of Stella Kramrisch. Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 
   

Kantha: The Embroidered Quilts of Bengal

Through July 25, 2010

Lovingly created from the remnants of worn garments and embroidered with a variety of motifs — such as lotus blossoms and paisleys — the 46 kantha, or Bengali quilts, on display here were most often stitched in celebration of births, weddings, and other family occasions.

Created during the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century, when this vibrant domestic art flourished, by women of diverse backgrounds — rural and urban, Hindu and Muslim — the works were used to cover food and gifts, as prayer mats, as seating and, of course, blankets.  A central gallery looks at these uses and motifs, while other galleries examine the technical processes involved and the origins of the stories told by these woven threads.

The first exhibition devoted solely to this unique textile tradition ever presented outside of South Asia, the PMA show focuses on two premier collections, one assembled during the 1920s and 1930s by Dr. Stella Kramrisch (the Museum’s Curator of Indian Art from 1954 until her death in 1993), the other recently assembled by Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz, leading proponents of American self-taught art.  The Kramrisch and Bonovitz collections are intermingled in the exhibition, but the differences as well as the complementary nature of these two collections are evident. “Stella Kramrisch was fascinated by how this art shared and interpreted the ancient imagery of the larger Indic world, so many of her pieces are covered in rich Hindu narratives,” says curator Darielle Mason. “The Bonovitzes, on the other hand, were most attracted to lively and often fabulously quirky kanthas that best express the individuality of their makers,” she adds.

The museum is also running two concurrent companion exhibits: Arts of Bengal: Wives, Mothers, Goddesses and Arts of Bengal: Town, Temple, Mosque (each through July).

For more information, www.philamuseum.org/exhibtions/364.html

Posted by JoAnn Greco

Exhibitions Philadelphia. Love Letters, from Poet John Keats to Fanny Brawne. The Rosenback Museum & Library. The Curated Object

John Keats (1795-1821), autograph letter signed to Fanny Brawne, Kentish Town, 5 July 1820
tour: Love Letters

For those in the City of Brotherly Love.... a romance, quite modern.....

Love Letters, from Poet John Keats to Fanny Brawne

October 9-December 16. 2010

As part of the museum’s popular Hands-On Tours, the Rosenbach Museum & Library will present Love Letters, a peek into some of the most personal and emotional writing in the museum’s collections, including some of the most famous, and touching original love letters written by poet John Keats to his beloved, Fanny Brawne.  The first Love Letters Hands-On Tour of the fall will be held on Friday, October 9 at 3 p.m., with additional tours offered on November 13 and December 16.

Coinciding with Love Letters is the release of the highly-acclaimed motion picture Bright Star, a drama about the intense love affair between John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), the latest film from Academy Award-winning director, Jane Campion (The Piano).

Love Letters presents a rare look at the museum’s collection of love letters, from the aching yearnings of John Keats for Fanny Brawne, to the dying wishes of a Civil War soldier writing home to his family. The museum’s Hands-On Tours offer audiences an intimate and unique view of the Rosenbach by inviting visitors to examine, touch, and read directly from the collections. Objects discussed and handled in the Love Letters tour include:

• A love letter from John Keats to Fanny Brawne, written just before he died.

• A love letter from Marlene Dietrich to Mercedes de Acosta, begging her forgiveness.

• A forged loved letter from Shakespeare to Anne Hathaway.

• A love letter from Benjamin Rush to Julia Rush, outlining in a very scientific fashion the principles behind a successful marriage. 

Bright Star explores how the love letters exchanged during the romance strengthen the bond between the Keats and Brawne, while circumstances bigger than love take hold of their future together. Bright Star premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival to rave reviews. Film Critic Kenneth Turan of the Los Angels Times hailed the film as, “One of the major successes of this year’s Cannes Film Festival... Bright Star is one of the most deeply moving romantic films in memory,” while The New York Times calls it, "Romantic in every possible sense of the word." For more about the film, visit www.brightstar-movie.com or watch/embed the trailer at www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTetIodauIM. 

The Rosenbach’s Hands-On Tours are approximately one hour in length and free with museum admission. In addition to Love Letters, various Hands-On Tours exploring different subjects are provided every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday through December 2009 at 3 p.m. Tours are limited to six guests, ages 8 and up. No RSVP required. The Rosenbach Museum & Library is located at 2008-2010 Delancey Place and is open Tuesday through Sunday. Admission is $10 for adults, $8 for seniors, $5 for students, and free for children under 5. 

For more information please visit www.rosenbach.org.

EXHIBITIONS PHILADELPHIA. ON THE WINGS OF MUSIC: ART, OPERA & YOU." PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART, OTHERS. THE CURATED OBJECT

A photo of the installation of the heads at City Hall.  Photo credit:  Meredith Edlow for Greater Phila. Marketing Corp.

Photos of the 1-ton "dangos" (the Japanese word for 'rounded form') at Kimmel Center Commonwealth Plaza.  Photo by Evelyn Taylor.

Head installation at City Hall.  Photo credit:  Margot Berg for City of Philadelphia.

 Jun Kaneko (American, b. 1942), Untitled, 2007. Glazed stoneware. Courtesy of Jun Kaneko and Locks Gallery. Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Jun Kaneko (American, b. 1942), Untitled, 2007. Glazed stoneware. Courtesy of Jun Kaneko and Locks Gallery. Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Jun Kaneko (American, b. 1942), Untitled, 2007. Glazed stoneware. Courtesy of Jun Kaneko and Locks Gallery. Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Jun Kaneko (American, b. 1942), Untitled, 2007. Glazed stoneware. Courtesy of Jun Kaneko and Locks Gallery. Philadelphia Museum of Art.

On the WIngs of Music: Art, Opera & You

Through April 2010; other venues through Oct.

In a noteworthy multi-disciplinary, citywide effort tied into the Opera Company of Philadelphia's upcoming production of the Puccini classic "Madama Butterfly," 11 monumental ceramic sculptures by Jun Kaneko will be on display at four venues across town. The event celebrates the East Coast debut of this production, which features sets and costumes designed by the Japanese-born Taneko. In a further Philly connection, the costumes are crafted of custom-made fabrics from the city's homegrown Fabric Workshop and Museum.

Four of what Kaneko calls "dango" (Japanese for "rounded form") are on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Perelman Building, where they will remain until next spring to coincide with the city's hosting of the National Conference on Education For The Ceramic Arts. These subtly-patterned sculptures measure up to nine feet tall and four feet in diameter, and can weigh nearly a ton. The multiple steps involved with creating them (drawing, painting, firing and glazing) require constant and intense engagement with the artist’s hand, says the museum, and viewers, too, will be tempted to touch. 

For that, though, they can move on to the Kimmel Center, the city's main performing arts venue (the opera, however, will thrill buffs at the 152-year-old Academy of Music next door), and to City Hall, a few blocks away. At the Kimmel, five more dangos are placed in this usually too-cavernous lobby. More graphically simple and playful than those at the Museum, the pieces here nicely infuse what can be a yawning and intimidating space with interest and pizzazz.  At City Hall, two of Kaneko’s most accessible works — serenely colossal heads (modern takes on Buddhas, perhaps?) make their public debut. Finally, at The Locks Gallery (also responsible for installing the pieces at the Kimmel and at City Hall), an exhibit of the artist's more intimate work will be shown. Here, the pieces articulate Kaneko's interest in the space in and around a sculpture, and the formal relationships between elemental shapes like the sphere and plane.

Posted by JoAnn Greco 

For more information please visit: The Opera Company of Philadelphia and The Philadephia Museum of Art

EXHIBITIONS PHILADELPHIA: INTO THE OPEN, NATIONAL CONSTITUTION CENTER, SLOUGHT FOUNDATION, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. THE CURATED OBJECT.

Estudio Teddy Cruz (Installation Photograph) 60 linear mile section, 
Photo credit: Tasha Doremus/Matthew Thomas Cianfrani

The Edible Schoolyard/Yale Sustainable Food Project Model Schoolyard Garden (Installation Photograph) 
Photo credit: Tasha Doremus/Matthew Thomas Cianfrani

 

Jonathan Kirschenfeld Associates: The Floating Pool, Opening Reception, Brooklyn, July 2007.

Rebar Panhandle Bandshell Flyout. San Francisco, California, 2008.

Photo credit: Tasha Doremus/Matthew Thomas Cianfrani

 

Photo credit: Tasha Doremus/Matthew Thomas Cianfrani

Studio 804 Sustainable Prototype Arts Center Greensburg, Kansas, 2008.

Into the Open

July 15- Sept. 7, 2009

The age-old dichotomy of client-vs.-self is a keen one for architects, even if it might be more of a fictional trope than anything else (think: Howard Roark). Still, more so than for any other art, architecture exists first and foremost to serve a most solid practical need. Architects, and other built-environment designers, may gnash their teeth over that situation, but it's an undeniable fact of their careers. Except, that is, when a new breed of architects decide to take matters in their own hands, not for residential or business clients, but for civic ones. Into the Open, which represented the U.S. at last year's Venice Biennale, attempts to address the question: can architects effect social change through their work? 

The 16 projects by some of  these "citizen architects"  on view at the Constitution Center and at the University Of Pennsylvania's Slought Foundation, are a varied bunch, both in their stated goals and in their approaches. This exhibition explores the original ways that today's actors are designing the conditions from which new architectures can emerge. Architects are becoming activists, developers, facilitators of inclusive urban policies, as well as unique urban researchers. (And, literally artists, one might note as an aside, after viewing the brand new book, Installations By Architects from Princeton Architectural Press). 

Projects examined include one at  Greensburg, Kansas, very well known in urban planning circles, because it's a case where an entire town has reinvented itself, in the wake of a devestating 2007 tornado, to become the most green in the U.S., since just about every building that's been constructed in the last two years incorporates best environmental practices. On exhibit here is the work of Studio 804, a nonprofit based in Lawrence, Kansas, that worked with students to design and develop affordable, and sustainable, pre-fab buildings.

On an equally modest scale, but with a completely different look and modus operandi is the much-ballyhoo'd  Heidelberg Project, which is architectural only by accident, though it certainly is activist. It's the vision of a local Detroit artist, Tyree Guyton, who in 1986 started painting the ramshackle cottages (along Heidelberg Street) in a neighborhood plagued by drugs and poverty. Photos can't do the place justice, and although at this point it's become an unlovely mishmash of bright colors and found objects, the work-- which now encompasses just about every house on two parallel blocks-- is a bonafide media darling, and subsequently draws 275,000 visitors a year.

The story of many of the remaining projects-- a floating pool in New York City, a $20,000 pre-fab house in rural Alabama, and others-- is told similarly in the exhibits, through poster boards, photos, models and the like. It's an unsatisfying way, and always has been, to get a handle on architectural intent and spacial massing. Two more installation-like projects on the Constitution Center's lawn, however, address in a more involving way architectural issues related to immigration patterns, and to urban farming (in a project spearheaded by noted Berkeley, CA chef, Alice Waters.

For more information, please visit intotheopen.org and consitutioncenter.org

Posted by JoAnn Greco

EXHIBITIONS PHILADELPHIA. THE ART OF JAPANESE CRAFT: 1875-PRESENT. PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART. THE CURATED OBJECT.

 

Kobayashi Shōun (Japanese, active first half of 20th century), Vase with Design of Ivy, c. 1915. Bronze; with wood stand 17 x 12 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Promised gift of Frederick R. McBrien III

Tsuruta Shinsai (Wasaburō II), (Japanese, 1866 – 1942), Hibachi (from set of ten), c. 1910-1920. Lacquer on wood with gold and silver maki-e, 9 ½ x 10 ¾ inches each. Philadelphia Museum of Art; Gift of Frederick R. McBrien III

Yamada Jōun (Japanese, active early 20th century), Vase with Design of Scrolling Flowers, 1918. Bronze, with shibuichi (gold and silver inlay); 10 ½ x 9 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art; Gift of Frederick R. McBrien III

Screen with Design of Orchids, c. 1910-1930 Zelkova burl with inlay of ivory and wood; mounted as a two-panel screen, 56 x 50 1/4 inches. (Each Panel): 56 x 25 1/8 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Frederick R. McBrien III

Ōta Ryōhei (Japanese, 1913 – 1997), [Rabbit Gazing at the] Moon, c. 1940. Wood, 5 3/4 x 6 x 11 3/16 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art; Gift of Frederick R. McBrien III

Itaya Kōji (Japanese, 1925 – 2006), Golden Fox, c. 1950’s. Lacquer on wood with chinkin (incised gold), gold leaf, and raden (mother-of-pearl inlay); single-panel screen, 45 1/8 x 47 ¾ x 11 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art; Gift of Frederick R. McBrien III

Takamura Toyochika (Japanese, 1890 – 1972), Vase with Design of Grasses, c. 1952. Bronze 12 3/8 x 9 1/2 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art; Gift of Frederick R. McBrien III

Takahashi Kaishū (Isamu) (Japanese, 1905 – 2004), Pair of Carp, c. 1958. Bronze with silver inlay, bronze with inlay of shakudo (copper and gold alloy) Grey bronze carp: 4 3/4 x 16 x 4 1/8 inches; Sentoku bronze carp: 3 3/4 x 12 x 3 3/4 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Frederick R. McBrien III

Kawase Shinobu (Japanese, born 1950), Vase in the Form of a Calla Lily, 2004. Porcelain with celadon glaze, 14 5/8 x 8 5/8 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art; Gift of Frederick R. McBrien III

The Art of Japanese Craft: 1875 to the Present

December 6, 2008- October 18, 2009 

Culled from the lovely collection of a single donor, Frederick R. McBrien III, this exhibit presents a revolving showcase of some 35 works that span modern Japanese craft. The period starts just after Japan opened itself to the west and continues on to pieces from six artists who have been deemed "living national treasures." A Californian who first caught Japonisme fever when he visited Pasadena's Huntington Botanical Gardens, McBrien grew attached to the Philadelphia Museum of Art while summering in nearby Reading. Now, he says, he hopes his gift will help cement the institution as a leading collector of contemporary Japanese craft.  Almost all of the work-- which includes McBrien's first acquisition, a circa 1915 bronze vase with a relief of crimson ivy forms -- has never before been placed on public view in America. Those familiar with earlier Japanese craft will discover greater ornamentalism in these pieces since the post-Meiji era was a time when "Japanese artists in every field were trying to define their own aesthetic and cultural identity on an increasingly global stage," says Felice Fischer, the exhibit's curator. "The varying solutions artists found result in the wonderful range of motifs, styles and techniques that appear in these 70 works.” Surprises include a good amount of Art Deco- era metalwork and a sinuous porcelain vase from the 1950s, glazed in a celadon reminiscent of Korean decorative arts. Divided into several themes, including animal and geometric motifs, the exhibition's standout is a set of ten lacquered hibachi, with flowers from cherry blossoms to irises to bush clover-- traditionally associated with different periods of t he year-- lovingly etched in silver and gold.

For more information, please visit : Philadelphia Museum of Art

Posted by JoAnn Greco 

EXHIBITIONS PHILADELPHIA. RUFFS, RIBBONS, COLLARS AND CRAVATS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF NECKWEAR AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE ROSENBACH'S COLLECTION OF PORTRAIT MINIATURES. ROSENBACH MUSEUM. THE CURATED OBJECT

Clara Eugenia

Bartolome Gonzales (1554-1627)

Oil on copper

Spain, ca. 1600

1954.630.46

courtesy of the Rosenbach Museum & Library 

Lady in blue brocade dress

Unknown artist

Oil on copper

Possibly Spain, ca. 1650

1954.630.11

courtesy of the Rosenbach Museum & Library 

Unknown man (age 31)

Frans Francken

Oil on copper

Netherlands, ca. 1600

1954.630.109

courtesy of the Rosenbach Museum & Library 

Lady with lace collar

Scipioni Pulzone (before 1550-1598)

Oil on copper

Italy, ca. 1580

1954.630.177

courtesy of the Rosenbach Museum & Library 

King James I

Nicholas Hilliard (1547-1619)

Gouache on vellum or card

England, 1603-1608

1954.1611

courtesy of the Rosenbach Museum & Library

Sir Thomas Overbury

Unknown artist

Oil on copper

England, ca. 1600

1954.630.446

courtesy of the Rosenbach Museum & Library 

A lady unknown

Unknown artist

Oil on copper

England, ca. 1680

54.630.323

courtesy of the Rosenbach Museum & Library

Ruffs, Ribbons, Collars, and Cravats: A Brief History of Neckwear as Illustrated by the Rosenbach's Collection of Portrait Miniatures

March 31-May 17, 2009

Come close, no closer still. These tiny portraits-- crafted from watercolor and oil paint, applied not to canvas but to wax, ivory or copper-- as befits their medium have a very, er, specific and detailed story to tell. Believe it or not, because we see subjects from the chest up, the tale-- one of the historic development of neckwear, is indeed  compelling. Styles of neckwear both mirrored and shaped changing ideas about the male and female body; depending on whether the neck and chest were deemed to be expressive of strength, status, or sexuality, fashionable neckwear strategically emphasized or downplayed those areas. Culled from the Rosenbach's extensive collection of miniatures, these 35 pieces were painted in England and the European Continent, as well as America, from the mid-sixteenth to the early nineteenth century.

For more information, please visit : The Rosenbach Museum 

Posted by JoAnn Greco 

Exhibitions Philadelphia. Lace in Translation. The Design Center, Philadelphia. The Curated Object

Image courtesy of the Design Center, Philadelphia

Image courtesy of the Design Center, Philadelphia

Image courtesy of the Design Center, Philadelphia


Image courtesy of the Design Center, Philadelphia

Image courtesy of the Design Center

Image courtesy of the Design Center, Philadelphia

Lace in Translation, 

Sept 2009-March 2010

The Design Center has an international reputation for creating a space for exploring the sights, sounds and sensations of design. Thanks to their vision and dedication, Philadelphia has become part of the global design dialogue. Mark your calendars now and start your race for lace. --Joanne

The Design Center at Philadelphia University has received a $200,000 grant from the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative (PEI), a program of The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, to present the exhibition Lace in Translation from September 2009 through March 2010. The Design Center (TDC) has commissioned three internationally-renowned artists and designers – whose works are often inspired by traditional lace imagery – to mine its historic Quaker Lace archives for inspiration and to reconceptualize conventional notions of lace. European designers Tord Boontje and Demakersvan and Canadian artist Cal Lane will explore the intersection of luxurious hand-craftsmanship with modern, mass production techniques through new, site-specific installations. TDC is located at 4200 Henry Avenue in Philadelphia. For more information, call (215) 951-2860 or visit www.philau.edu/DesignCenter.

Installations will be located throughout the Center's grounds and galleries, on the campus of Philadelphia University. The 1950s era Hollywood-style ranch house, one of the first in Philadelphia, is situated on the edge of Fairmount Park. Tord Boontjewill create a multi-sensory gallery installation featuring furniture, lighting and laser-cut fabrics. Design studio Demakersvan will design a “lace” chain-link fence installation in TDC’s front yard, and Cal Lane will contribute an environmental installation in the enclosed back yard garden area with its covered grand piano-shaped swimming pool.

TDC’s collection includes lace samples, marketing materials and original designs from the Quaker Lace Company of Philadelphia. Lace in Translation celebrates Quaker Lace and Philadelphia’s critical contribution to American textile design by showcasing three contemporary art/design studios whose work conjures the lace-making traditions of their native countries. As lace-making machines once translated the deft fingerings of traditional lacemakers into the “complex, rapid and intricately synchronized movements of … metallic parts,” (Pat Earnshaw, Lace Machines & Machine Laces), this exhibition will push the concept of lace further still, utilizing unexpected materials and new technologies to transform interior and exterior spaces.

Lace in Translation is the first exhibition produced by The Design Center in conjunction with its new interpretive initiative, The Fabric of Philadelphia – a collaborative effort led by TDC in partnership with area museums, libraries, businesses and community members to capture and communicate the compelling story of the Philadelphia region’s textile heritage and its pinnacle as a national center for textile design and manufacturing.

For more information please visit: The Design Center, Philadelphia

Posted by Joanne Molina

Exhibitions Philadelphia. Past Present: A Retrospective Exhibition by Architect and Sculptor, Richard Cromar. The Design Center, Philadelphia. The Curated Object

Photo Courtesy of The Design Center, Philadelphia

Past Present: A Retrospective Exhibition by Architect and Sculptor, Richard Cromar
May 15-July 11, 2008

Past Present, a retrospective exhibition by architect and sculptor, William Cromar, will run Thursday May 15 thru Friday, July 11, 2008. Cromar's sculptural and graphic explorations will allow a rare glimpse into Cromar's process and conceptual development over the past decade.

These works, described by the artist as "maps" or "experiments" informing his larger installation work, pose what art critic Libby Rosof has aptly described as "questions about space and architecture and their relationship to the body."

A former architect, animator and musician, Cromar hybridizes his peculiar past into a unique body of installation art. Largely by exploring spatial psycho-perception, this work develops paradoxical manifestations of the human propensity for finding order, exploring the edge between the necessity and the futility of this fundamental impulse.

For more information please visit: The Design Center, Philadelphia

-Joanne Molina

Exhibitions/Event Philadelphia. Design Philadelphia 2008: Down to Earth: Evolving Design in the 21st Century. The Curated Object

"Philly Heart Design" show at FUEL Gallery, curated by
MIO Culture, photo credit Shan Ju Lin


The Grid" DesignPhiladelphia exhibition and
symposium (Drexel Graphic Design work shown), photo credit Shan Ju Lin

Design Philadelphia 2008, Down to Earth: Evolving Design in the 21st Century
October 16-22 2008

Inaugurated in Spring 2005, DesignPhiladelphia (DP) returns on October 16 thru 22, 2008, to run in conjunction with National Design Week. Now in its fourth year, this citywide cultural initiative recognizes this region's distinguished design history and celebrates its contemporary significance as a center for the advancement in the design disciplines. Drawing an audience of 160,000 last year, visitor numbers are expected to increase significantly in 2008. For one week, the city of Philadelphia will become an arena of design with over 50 events, including: exhibitions, lectures, gallery openings, book signings, studio tours, and workshops all taking place under the DesignPhiladelphia banner. (To review the 2007 roster of events, go to www.designphiladelphia.org.)

The focus of DP is on design with a capital "D" and showcases the disciplines of architecture, graphic design, product design, textiles, fashion, multimedia and urban design. Our mission is to enlighten the public about the breadth and depth of visionary work taking place behind closed doors, to promote student retention, and to foster business growth. Past participants include: star design firms such as Kieran Timberlake Associates, Mio Culture, and Josh Owen LLC; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the American Institute of Architects, Philadelphia Chapter; the Fabric Workshop and Museum; Ed Bacon Foundation; the Industrial Design Society of America; Freeman's Auction House; the seven area universities that offer design degrees, plus a cadre of boutiques and galleries around the city.

The selected theme for DP 2008 is Down to Earth: Evolving Design in the  21st Century, a subject matter that recognizes and gives voice to the enormity of eco-culture initiatives taking place locally, across the country and around the world. A symposium exploring this topic is planned as DesignPhiladelphia's kick-off event.

Still a young enterprise, DP continues to develop and evolve, creating new networks, stimulating growth in the creative sector, increasing the opportunities for trade, and enhancing the reputation of Philadelphia as a place for creative excellence and innovation. We welcome you to join us as a participant and/or a sponsor.

DesignPhiladelphia is directed by Hilary Jay, who is also Executive Director of The Design Center at Philadelphia University. Beth Van Why, architecture and industrial design professor, is the Project Manager. DP is administered through The Design Center at Philadelphia University.

For more information please visit: Design Philadelphia or for sponsorship opportunities please contact Beth van Why at Beth@DesignPhiladelphia.org

-Joanne Molina

Exhibitions Philadelphia. Trenton Doyle Hancock: Wow That’s Mean and Other Vegan Cuisine. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. The Curated Object

Image: Trenton Doyle Hancock, Flower Bed II, a Prelude to Damnation (detail), 2008, 9 color screen-printed wallpaper with fluorescent inks. Published in collaboration with Graphicstudio, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL; Image courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery, New York.

Trenton Doyle Hancock: Wow That’s Mean and Other Vegan Cuisine
April 25-August 3, 2008

The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) is pleased to present a site-specific installation by Trenton Doyle Hancock on view in ICA’s Ramp and Project spaces April 25-August 3, 2008. Since 1997 Trenton Doyle Hancock (b. 1974, Oklahoma City, OK) has created a body of work that has evolved into the sprawling, mythic tale of the Mounds, a gentle, human-plant hybrid, and the Vegans, an evil, tofu-worshipping mutant species of ape man who want to destroy all Mounds. Each of Hancock’s uniquely crafted exhibitions is an opportunity for him to further develop a particular chapter or incident in the narrative through his paintings, drawings, prints, wallpapers and installations.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Vegans, which Hancock first created while a graduate student at Philadelphia’s Tyler School of Art. His exhibition “Wow That’s Mean and Other Vegan Cuisine” at ICA will honor the occasion by exploring, in greater detail, their formation. The 90-foot Ramp will be hung with Hancock’s new, custom-made glow-in-the-dark wallpaper. Visitors will be bombarded by the colorful imagery on the walls depicting “The Great Mound Massacre,” the violent murder of several hundred baby mounds by their half brother and sister, ape man and woman, Brouthescam and Cromalyna. Throughout the day, the wallpaper will change appearing, in daylight hours, as more flat and subdued, but becoming significantly more vibrant and colorful, even seemingly three dimensional as night falls with only the black lights to illuminate the images.

From the Ramp, visitors will move directly into the Project Space and see work that
depicts the subsequent creation of the Vegans. Hancock has arranged a composition of paintings and drawings, both new and old, along with an assemblage of objects purchased by the artist from area thrift stores and explicated by wall drawings made on site.  In Hancock’s narrative Brouthescam and Cromalyna, are banished to the underworld for the murders and procreate producing the Vegan race. A small group of the included works will also deal with the evolution of the Vegans as a visual element based on the artist’s experiences living with staunch vegans while in graduate school.

Hancock represents one of several contemporary artists, among them Polly Apfelbaum, Kerry James Marshall, Layla Ali and Takashi Murakami, who cite comics as important source material, in terms of imagery or technique, for their work. Hancock uses the ongoing serial output, consistent with comics, as a method of production and always returns to his overarching narrative of the struggle between the Mounds and Vegans.  He even includes a super-hero character (his alter ego!) Torpedo Boy. But like Luca Buvoli, Matthew Ritchie, and Matthew Barney, Hancock’s work also incorporates an elaborate mythology that is generative involving a highly developed cast of characters that play integral roles in the plot that Hancock has captured in a variety of media.

Hancock lives and works in Houston where he was a 2002 Core Artist in Residence at the Glassell School of Art of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.  He earned his BFA from Texas A&M University, Commerce and his MFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia. He has most recently been the subject of a major exhibition, “The Wayward Thinker,” his first in Europe, which was curated by the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland and traveled to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Hancock was featured in the 2000 and 2002 Whitney Biennial exhibitions. His work has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami. He has also been featured in an episode of Art 21, a TV series about contemporary art, dealing with storytelling.   

This exhibition is organized by Assistant Curator Elyse Gonzales, and will be
accompanied by a brochure publication.

For more information please visit: The ICA Philadelphia

-Joanne Molina

Exhibitions Philadelphia. Fashioning Kimono: Art Deco and Modernism in Japan. The Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Curated Object

Woman's Kimono, 1920s-1930s (late Taisho/early Showa period), Japan (The Montgomery Collection, Lugano)

Fashioning Kimono: Art Deco and Modernism in Japan
April 26, 2008 - July 20, 2008

The Japanese kimono is celebrated worldwide for its elegant, distinctive silhouette. Though quintessentially Japanese, the kimono form has influenced fashion designers around the globe.

This exhibition features approximately 90 kimono created in the early to mid-twentieth centuries, one of the most dynamic periods in the history of Japan's national costume. It includes formal, semi-formal, and casual kimono, haori jackets, and under-kimono (juban) worn by men, women, and children. Some of these garments reflect historical continuity in designs and techniques, while many others illustrate a dramatic break with aspects of kimono tradition, as themes and designs from Western art began to predominate over historical Japanese references.

The exhibition begins by focusing on the early twentieth century, the final era of the "living" kimono, that is, when kimono still remained the dress of choice, worn daily by the majority of people in Japan; it continues through the 1940s, when Western clothes had replaced the kimono for everyday wear and the kimono assumed a largely formal and ceremonial meaning.

The outstanding garments in the exhibition, drawn from the internationally renowned Montgomery Collection of Lugano, Switzerland, have never before been exhibited in North America.

Organizer,Art Services International, Alexandria, Virginia
Curator,Kristina Haugland • Associate Curator of Costume and Textiles

For more information please visit: The Philadelphia Museum of Art
-Joanne Molina

Exhibitions Philadelphia. Rummage. The Design Center, Philadelphia. The Curated Object

"Dam"
Photo courtesy of The Design Center


"Dam"
Photo courtesy of The Design Center

Rummage
January 24- April 6, 2008

Susie Brandt Installation
A Dialogue With Historic Textile Collection

The Design Center at Philadelphia University presents Rummage, an installation by textile artist Susie Brandt. The exhibition will run from January 24 – April 9, 2008 in The Design Center’s 1950s California-style ranch house in East Falls, Philadelphia.

Brandt, given free range to pick and choose from The Design Center’s historic textile collection of over 200,000 artifacts, plays with relationships conceived between the old and the contemporary. Rummage is, at once, a conversation among Brandt’s contemporary work and the collection pieces; a retrospective of her work of the past 20-plus years; and an archeological dig that tracks Brandt’s pieces back to their textile roots. “There’s a vitality found in the historic textiles that I aim to connect to my own work,” Brandt says. “The old pieces serve as a muse, rekindling the dialogue between my work and the past.”

In one conversation, for instance, Brandt compares “Dainty” – a bedcovering comprised of a huge variety of laces fused into a single complex field of texture -– with a 1960s couture ensemble fabricated from a looped and hand-stitched lace-like braid.

Throughout the collection are piles of swatches that were used in the design, production and distribution of Philadelphia’s textile industry. Now housed in drawers and on shelves throughout the house, the sedimentation of these piles will be seized and reinterpreted as an installation in the ranch house’s pantry.

The detritus of middle American textile culture -–rickrack, cast-offs and Barbie doll clothes – all figure in to Brandt’s work. She recasts the original material to create unlikely juxtapositions that alter our expectations and perceptions for works of textile.

For the past 20 years, Baltimore-based Brandt has gathered and refashioned outmoded textile matter into contemporary fabrics that address the vital materiality of textile process and production. In the early 1980s, while studying in the Fiber Department at Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts), Brandt was introduced to The Design Center’s textile collection at what was then called Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science (now Philadelphia University). The Design Center’s textile collection houses garments, accessories, swatches and flat textiles that reflect a broad spectrum of techniques, designs, cultures and historic periods. It also documents the American textile industry and, in particular, it chronicles the history of the textile industry of Philadelphia, one of the most diverse of its kind in the nation.

Brandt earned a BFA from Philadelphia College of Art in 1984 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1987. Her works have been included in over 100 solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan. When she returned to Philadelphia in the 1990s to teach at her alma mater, Brandt introduced her own students to The Design Center’s collection, one of Philadelphia’s hidden treasures. Brandt presently serves on the faculty of the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Independent curator Julie Courtney has been working with Brandt since the artist’s graduation from PCA in 1984. She commissioned Brandt to create Glint, an outdoor installation at Merion Station as part of Points of Departure: Art on the Line in 1998.

For more information please visit: The Design Center

-Joanne Molina
 

Exhibitions Philadelphia. The Puppet Show. The Institute of Contemporary Arts, Philadelphia. The Curated Object

“The Puppet Show”
January 18-March 30, 2008
Installation view
Institute of Contemporary Art
University of Pennsylvania
Photo: Aaron Igler


“The Puppet Show”
January 18-March 30, 2008
Installation view
Institute of Contemporary Art
University of Pennsylvania
Photo: Aaron Igler

“The Puppet Show”
January 18-March 30, 2008
Installation view
Institute of Contemporary Art
University of Pennsylvania
Photo: Aaron Igler

“The Puppet Show”
January 18-March 30, 2008
Installation view
Institute of Contemporary Art
University of Pennsylvania
Photo: Aaron Igler

The Puppet Show
January 18 - March 30, 2008

The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) is pleased to present “The Puppet Show,” a group exhibition that looks at the imagery of puppets in contemporary art. International in scope, “The Puppet Show” brings together 29 artists and several generations, as reflected by works that range from a 1974 installation by Dennis Oppenheim to a new animation by the Swedish artist Nathalie Djurberg. The exhibition concentrates on sculpture, video and photography. Some of the works involve actual puppets (marionettes, shadow puppets, hand puppets) and artists performing as puppeteers. Other images evoke topics associated with puppetry (manipulation, miniaturization, agency, control). Collectively these works show puppets to be a provocative and relevant imagery—one that moves deep into social, political and psychological terrains.

The puppet show takes as a historic point of departure one of the first episodes of avante-garde art history: Alfred Jarry's 1896 play Ubu Roi that was conceived as a puppet show. Ubu's reign continues with the work of the South African artist William Kentridge in collaboration with the Handspring Puppet Company. More recently, puppets have taken hold of pop consciousness by way of films, theater, computer games and animation. On a more political note, current events and national leadership raise questions of agency that cogently relate to puppets. Together with these collective points of reference, “The Puppet Show”poses a larger cultural question: why do puppets matter now?

This exhibition contains adult content. Parents, caregivers and educators are strongly advised to preview exhibition before bringing children.

Participating artists include: Guy Ben-Ner, Nayland Blake, Louise Bourgeois, Maurizio Cattelan, Anne Chu, Nathalie Djurberg, Terence Gower, Dan Graham and Japanther, Handspring Puppet Company, Pierre Huyghe, Christian Jankowski, Mike Kelley, William Kentridge, Cindy Loehr, Annette Messager, Paul McCarthy, Matt Mullican, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Phillippe Parreno and Rirkrit Tiravanija, Laurie Simmons, Doug Skinner and Michael Smith, Kiki Smith, Survival Research Laboratory, Kara Walker and Charlie White.

For more information please contact: The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia

-Joanne Molina

Exhibitions Philadelphia. Notations/William Kentridge: Tapestries. The Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Curated Object: International Decorative Arts Exhibitions

Porter Series—Man with Bed on Back, 2006
William Kentridge (South African, b. 1955)
Mohair, silk and embroidery
123 x 90 3/4 inches
Private collection

Notations/William Kentridge:  Tapestries

December 12, 2007 - April 6, 2008

Incisively political and profoundly poetic, William Kentridge's protean artistic investigation continues in his beautiful series of tapestries begun in 2001. The tapestries stem from a series of drawings in which he conjured shadowy figures from ripped construction paper and collaged them onto the web-like background of nineteenth-century atlas maps. As the fourth and most ambitious installment of "Notations"—the Museum's ongoing series of installations that explore specific aspects of contemporary art—William Kentridge: Tapestries is the first exhibition of the artist's tapestries in the United States. The tapestries along with related works—drawings, bronze sculptures, etchings, and an artist book—will fill two galleries, plotting a course through the artistic context from which the tapestries originate. The hybrid figures that emerge in multiple mediums throughout the exhibition derive from Kentridge's longstanding interest in shadows and projections. Collaged atop atlas pages in Kentridge's Puppet Drawings, marching across the accordion-style encyclopedia in his Portage book, and materializing into bronze sculptures, the figures—often burdened with the weight of objects and the world—become refugees, migrants, and movers of possessions. Silhouetted so that porter and parcel become one, Kentridge's processional characters evoke the political and cultural volatility that characterized recent South African history while also alluding to a global condition of transit and transition. To reincarnate these figures into tapestry, Kentridge worked in close collaboration with the Johannesburg-based Stephens Tapestry Studio, mapping out cartoons from enlarged photographs of the drawings and hand-picking dyes to color the locally spun mohair. The tapestries' processional figures trek across mapped geography and into new artistic territory for Kentridge, but one in which the mechanism of drawing and the power of shadows remain central to his representations of a world in transition.

For more information visit: The Philadelphia Museum of Art
-Joanne Molina

Exhibitions Philadelphia. Colonial Philadelphia Porcelain: The Art of Bonnin and Morris. The Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Curated Object: International Decorative Arts Exhibitions

Pickle Tray, 1771-72
American China Manufactory (Bonnin and Morris), Philadelphia, American
Soft-paste porcelain with lead glaze and underglaze blue decoration
4 3/16 x 4 1/2 inches (10.6 x 11.5 cm)
Gift of Mrs. Benjamin Rush, 1950
1950-32-1

Colonial Philadelphia Porcelain: The Art of Bonnin and Morris

March 8, 2008 - June 1, 2008

This small and highly significant exhibition highlights the brilliant work that characterizes Philadelphia's first commercially produced porcelain. Modeled on English prototypes, the surviving ornamental tablewares—diminutive baskets, sauceboats, pickle dishes, and pickle stands decorated with a variety of underglaze blue painted motifs—are relics of the American China Manufactory, which was situated in the Southwark section of Philadelphia and operated between 1770 and 1772. Today, the few surviving wares documented to the colonial Philadelphia factory are known as "Bonnin and Morris" in honor of the factory's proprietors, British-born Gousse Bonnin and Philadelphian George Anthony Morris. This exhibition assembles the 19 known surviving examples of Bonnin and Morris's soft-paste porcelain for the first time.

For more information please visit The Philadelphia Museum of Art
-Joanne Molina

 

 

Exhibitions Philadelphia. Turned and Thrown: English Pottery 1660–1820 from Local Collections. The Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Curated Object

Teapot with Pierced Decoration
c. 1760–65
Staffordshire, England
Private Collection

Turned and Thrown: English Pottery 1660–1820 from Local Collections
March 29, 2008 - July 27, 2008

This exhibition of some 50 objects borrowed from local collections celebrates the pottery made in England from the end of the seventeenth century to the early decades of the nineteenth. It pays tribute to the inventiveness and ingenuity of the mostly anonymous potters who created it.

The pottery on view was made beginning in the seventeenth century in what was little more than a craft industry, but one that by the mid-eighteenth century was producing ceramics on an industrial scale and supplying markets in Europe and as far away as the New World. The materials and techniques represented in the exhibition range from tin-glazed earthenware of a type known as Delftware, named after the city in The Netherlands where it originated, to salt-glazed stoneware and cream-colored earthenware. Produced in many cases under the harshest conditions for strictly utilitarian purposes, this pottery is today valued by collectors for its idiosyncratic potting and naïve, sometimes whimsical, decoration.

Curator
Donna Corbin • Associate Curator of European Decorative Arts

For more information please visit: The Philadelphia Museum of Art
-Joanne Molina