The multitalented Brooklyn-based artist Ronnie Bass has brought his video/installation The Astronomer, Part 1: Departure From Shed, to Marginal Utility–the newest gallery to open at 319A N. 11th St. aka the Vox Building (mercifully, Marginal Utitlity turned out to be quite useful–it is on the second floor, giving a [...]
The title of this article ends an inscription in a fraktur love letter (liebesbrief) written to Barbara Muller around 1800 by a now-anonymous doter. It is preceded by, in elaborate handwriting, “The heart of mine shall be devoted to you. See, my girlfriend, you are beautiful… Your eyes are like [...]
Brian Jungen ‘Blanket No. 7' (2008) professional sports jerseys, 69 x 53½” Sender Collection. All images ©Brian Jungen
The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) consistently embeds its exhibitions' [...]
Curator and artist Marianne Bernstein last month created the Welcome House in LOVE Park, and tonight she brings you Shelter at the Painted Bride. (The m.o. is similar–invite some terrific artists to work within the constraints of a show while giving them considerable freedom to interpret those constraints.) [...]
In our first two months we’ve received contributions from over 80 local galleries & art spaces to our new Maps & Listings feature. We’re working to make this system more friendly and useful to you! Here is an update on where we’ve been with our maps, [...]
After 18 years of handing out the biggest regional prize in the arts, Pew Fellowships in the Arts has changed its m-o. Well, they’re still handing out prizes– the coveted 12 grants of $60,000. But the process is changing in 2010 in two significant ways. First, and probably most importantly, [...]
Post by Judith Stein
Sarah Amos is an artist with a consummate mastery of printmaking. In this new body of work, her third show at Cynthia Reeves Gallery in Chelsea, she pits macro against micro, playing bold, dramatic shapes against delicate forms and textures. In her handsome, large-format prints, [...]
I first came across the work of Adad Hannah at Montreal’s Museum of Contemporary Art’s inaugural triennial exhibition focusing on Quebec artists held over a year ago. Hannah’s photographs taken at the Prado Museum showed viewers (now subjects) engaged with the art in active ways: a woman leaned in [...]
This week’s Weekly has my first Friday roundup. Below is the copy with pictures.
Big news this First Friday: A new gallery, Marginal Utility , is opening in the Vox building. The six-story former factory building already houses Vox Populi , Copy , AHN/VHS , Progressive Sharing , Jeffrey Stockbridge [...]
Brazilian artist Tiago Carneiro da Cunha is working in a small studio at University of the Arts, near the end of a fall-semester artist’s residency. He is creating a new version of Mudman, one of his stock characters the appear and reappear in his work. This version, a clay figure, [...]
Jack Pierson's inevitable sculpture, The Show Must Go On, 2008, let folks know this was indeed an art fair. Private collection.
Perhaps the perfect metaphor for the contemporary [...]
Alway interested in how politics and art get along (or not), I was delighted to read a story in Saturday’s New York Times about Czech artist David Cerny, who does not play nicely with politicians. The descriptions of his often scatalogical work set me laughing, although not everyone is [...]
Beauty Master is the name of Bobby Gonzales one-man show at Exclamation Gallery. And he tells me in no uncertain terms that it’s fashion that cranks him up. He also tells me to call him Robby.
Gonzales, a Tyler BFA, has packed a lot of [...]
A close focus on what’s small and unassuming, livable and lovable is alive and well at Gallery Joe, in an exhibit, 50 very small drawings, which reopens tonight.
Hilary Brace, [...]
Marcel Duchamp’s final masterpiece Étant Donnés at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is an art historical conundrum, inviting speculation, adoration, revulsion and religious pilgrimages, sometimes all of these reactions at once. The peephole installation, which permanently resides in the Philadelphia Museum of Art is a reclining nude, legs splayed for a [...]
Hey artblog readers, artblog’s gallery map goes live tomorrow! This new free monthly listing service is a first for Philadelphia–with maps — including by neighborhood — plus Septa directions to galleries and everything you need for your First Friday rounds and for the rest of the month.
I first encountered Robert Polidori’s photography in a small exhibit of his Versailles work at the Art45 Gallery. The images were rich, sensuous, highly detailed and intelligent. The New York-based photographer produces large-scale highly realistic chromogenic prints that bring the viewer into the scene. In the intimate setting, the [...]
This week’s Weekly has my First Friday roundup. Below is the copy with pictures.
Seripop, the Montreal screenprinting duo, blows into Space 1026 with a load of 400 rock band posters, books and zines to show and sell. Seripop, founded in 2002 by Chloe Lun and Yannick Desranleau, is the [...]
Marcel Duchamp, Étant donnés (1946-66) detail of exterior
Exhibitions devoted to a single work of 20th century art are extremely rare, and Marcel Duchamp: Étant donnés at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), on view [...]
When an institution announces the receipt of a big grant for contemporary art programming we want to know more.
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Curator of Contemporary Arts Julien Robson snagged a whopping $440,000 grant from the William Penn Foundation for contemporary art programing over the next three [...]
George C. Ault, The Machine (The Engine), 1922, 0/c, Williams Collection
I’m happy that I finally caught the current exhibition, Adventures in Modern Art: The Charles K. Williams II Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; assembled by [...]
I met Lance Winn a couple of years ago at the Crane Arts Center. He was gallery sitting the MFA show there from the University of Delaware, sharing his enthusiasm for the students’ work.
Lance Winn, War Ship as seen at the [...]
Some came for the music, others for the art; but I suspect the majority of the audience came for a glimpse of the evocative decay of the Royal Theater’s once splendid interior; the theater at 1524 South St. was built in 1920 when movie houses were still palaces, but has [...]
In case you missed it during the recent CineFest (Philly Film Festival), the acclaimed documentary Herb and Dorothy will be at the Ritz at the Bourse for one week starting this Friday, June 19. The film is about Herb and Dorothy Vogel, the husband and wife collectors who [...]
Hello art conventioneers, if you’re in New York or up for a trip there, check out the X-Initiative’s No Soul for Sale Festival of Independents, a week-long confab (June 24-28), with performances, exhibitions, and whatever the 30 galleries from around the world want to present. Sounds wild.
[...] Into the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry vaults each year go carefully selected audio files — musical, cultural or aesthetic moments important to American culture and history. This year the Library added Marian Anderson’s concert at the Lincoln Memorial; the West Side Story original Broadway cast recording; John Lee [...]
Lauren Whearty, an artist based in Philadelphia, saw two exhibits at the New Museum and had two very different experiences. Here is her report . You can see her painting in the Bridgette Mayer Gallery 8th year anniversary fundraiser.
Younger Than Jesus at the New Museum has been assembled to provide [...]
Here are a couple of additional stories about the PMA, Bruce Nauman, the Golden Lion top award to Nauman, beyond the ones to which I already linked:
Today, Ripples of Venice success * about what the Bruce Nauman exhibit at the Venice Biennale, organized by the PMA, means for the [...]
From thrilling real-live bike tricks to a BMX video festival to multiple shifting exhibitions which wheel and reel, Moore College’s galleries are exploring the nexus between art and bikes and Philadelphia, in Bicycle: people + ideas in motion.
[...] Lastnight I had the pleasure of participating in the ‘Inaugural and Terminal Meeting of the North Philadelphia Puberty Survivors Support Forum’ (TNPPSSF) held at FLUXspace in North Kensington. This ‘Support Group’ doubled as a disguised gallery talk, led by John O’Donnell the Connecticut-based artist who’s' [...]
Little Berlin and Basekamp, part of my First Friday route, were both you-had-to-be-there moments, something quite different from a quiet gallery visit in the middle of the week.
Little Berlin’s exhibit, Offerings, is made of works created by small groups of four people collaborating together. The total number of participants [...]
I was trying to wrap my arms and mind around Hidden City, the arts events through June organized by Perigrine Arts, in off-the-radar, fabulous buildings around the city. The events are by a mix of international and Philadelphia artists, and the festival (I think it’s fair to call it [...]
Ivy League star power was in evidence in two recent lectures I saw by Columbia professor and BBC video star Simon Schama and Yale Professor Alexander Nemerov.
Alexander Nemerov, an art historian, spoke at PAFA about Abraham Lincoln, and his lecture was a surprise and a delight–poetry in words and [...]
Here are some pictures of work we liked in the graduating student shows. We spent some time with and interviewed some of these graduates but mostly our observations are from seeing the works in the shows. Look for some of these artists to pop up around town because we know [...]
As in every year, we have seen most of the graduating student shows at the major institutions. We’re going to distill this down to some broad impressions in this post and run a stream of photos with a comment or two in the next post.
There was low energy everywhere, almost.
[...]This week’s Weekly has my review of the summer shows at the Fabric Workshop and Museum. Below’s the copy with some pictures.
Ryan Trecartin’s video projections are the wildest thing to come to the Fabric Workshop and Museum since Virgil Marti’s black-lighted Bullies Wallpaper appeared in the men’s bathroom in [...]
News flash, publishers: Get a grip. Your books are killing us! Here’s Roberta having trouble getting a grip due to the weight of paper and binding and too many pictures. On the left and weighing in at 9 lbs is the Cezanne and Beyond catalog, published by the Philadelphia [...]
Artist Kip Deeds saw the show, “The Fine Art of Giving: Gifts of Art to the State Museum of Pennsylvania 1998-2008,” in Harrisburg when he was delivering his own work for the Art of the State exhibit. Here’s his review of the gifts’ show. Photos by Deeds– who also [...]
I had to share this online intro to Life List by Olivia Gentile. The book is a bio of a champion birdwatcher, Phoebe Snetsinger, whose obsession took her to the ends of the earth. The bird illustrations are by family friend and fabulous artist Rebecca Layton, who used [...]
The people who bring us First Person Festival are running a competition, First Person America, for artistic works describing how people are coping during the recession. They are hoping to gather videos, photos and writing from all 50 states. The project, inspired by the WPA artists who chronicled life [...]
Thanks to Rob Matthews for first alerting us to the death Monday of Philadelphia artist Tom Chimes, and to PAFA for confirming it. At the time of Chimes’ retrospective exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in 2007, he was pretty chipper and charming.
[...] Kehinde Wiley’s first name rhymes with windy.
Alec Soth’s second name rhymes with both.
Last week they were both in town to talk about their art work and to listen to their names mangled over and over.
When PAFA Curator Julien Robson introduced Wiley, he bemoaned his habit of [...]
In the latest edition of our video series Look! It’s Libby and Roberta, we take a look at Cezanne and Beyond at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Videographer David Kessler is the wizard with the camera and so much more!!!
If Leon Kelly (1901-1982) is unknown to most museum-goers and scholars who follow American art, he has only himself to blame. The PAFA-trained artist and Philadelphian, born and bred, spent the last forty years of his life in isolation.
[...] This week’s Weekly has my review of the two-person show at Sande Webster Gallery. Below is my copy with some pictures.
Painter R. L. Washington and photographer Phil Stein have their eyes on Philadelphia, and their works at Sande Webster Gallery are quiet monuments to city streets and ordinary people.
In [...]
Maira Kalman went to the Rosenbach Museum and Library, and there began her love affair with Abraham Lincoln. Check out her wonderful response to Lincoln, drawings and all, in the New York Times.
From Claire Iltis at Fleisher-Ollman:
On a local (and more downbeat note), here's a front pager from the Philadelphia Inquirer today about cutbacks at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.' [...] 
Post by Ann Northrup
Post by Cate Fallon
Post by K-Fai Steele
Breaking News from K-Fai Steele
Post by Mei-ling Hom and David McClelland
Post by Michael Andre
We're going to be at Projects Gallery this First Friday. Here's why:matthew rose, libby, roberta, stefan zebrowski-rubin, guest writer, kelani nichole, libby and roberta, andrea kirsh, k-fai steele
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