In Fall 2020, A Lifetime Retrospective Dedicated To Jasper Johns Will Be Presented Simultaneously In New York And Philadelphia
In an unprecedented collaboration, this major exhibition is jointly organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art
October 28, 2020–February 21, 2021
#JasperJohns
The most ambitious retrospective to date of the work of Jasper Johns, organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, will be presented simultaneously in New York and Philadelphia this fall. A single exhibition in two venues, this unprecedented collaboration, Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror, will be the artist’s first major museum retrospective on the East Coast in nearly a quarter century. It opens concurrently in Philadelphia and in New York on October 28, 2020. Visitors who attend the exhibition at one venue will enjoy half-price adult admission at the other when presenting their ticket. And throughout the duration of the exhibition, members of each institution will receive free admission at both venues. (Additional details will be available at whitney.org and philamuseum.org.)
Filling almost 30,000 combined square feet across the two venues, the exhibition will contain nearly 500 works. It is the most comprehensive exhibition ever devoted to Johns, creating an opportunity to highlight not only his well-known masterpieces but also many works that have never been exhibited publicly. Conceived around the principles of mirroring and doubling that have long been a focus of the artist’s work, this two-part exhibition, which follows a loose chronological order from the 1950s to the present, offers an innovative curatorial model for a monographic survey. It will chronicle Johns’s accomplishments across many mediums—including paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, working proofs, and monotypes—and highlight the complex relationships among them.
Adam D. Weinberg, the Whitney’s Alice Pratt Brown Director, commented, “We are delighted to present this unique retrospective together with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, an important occasion for both museums, which have had connections with the artist going back decades. The Whitney has been collecting and showing Johns since the 1960s and we are thrilled to honor his ninetieth birthday in 2020, which also marks the ninetieth anniversary of the Whitney’s founding. Enigmatic, poetic, rich, and profoundly influential, Johns’s work is always ripe for reexamination.”
“Given the crucial place that Jasper Johns holds in the art of our time, this collaboration enables our two museums, together, to examine the artist’s vision in all its multiplicity and depth,” added Timothy Rub, the George D. Widener Director and CEO, Philadelphia Museum of Art. “The Philadelphia Museum of Art has long dedicated a gallery to the display of Johns’s work, which, given his admiration of Cézanne and Duchamp, richly resonates with our collection. Along with our colleagues at the Whitney, we hope to introduce a new generation of visitors in our respective cities to the exceptional achievements of this artist over the course of a career that now spans nearly seven decades.”
Jasper Johns (b. Augusta, Georgia, 1930) grew up in South Carolina where he pursued an interest in art at an early age. He attended the University of South Carolina before moving to New York in 1948, and briefly attended Parsons School of Design. For two years he served in the army and was stationed in South Carolina and Japan. He returned to New York in 1953, where he met Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham, with whom he would famously collaborate. His work has been the subject of numerous retrospectives and solo shows, including Jasper Johns: A Retrospective at the Jewish Museum (1964), Jasper Johns at the Whitney (1977), Jasper Johns: Works Since 1974 at the PMA (1988–89, which traveled to the Venice Biennale, where Johns was awarded the Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement), Jasper Johns: A Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1996–97, the last comprehensive East Coast survey), and most recently Jasper Johns: ‘Something Resembling Truth’ at the Royal Academy, London, and The Broad, Los Angeles (2017–18). The innovative collaboration and structure of the Whitney and PMA’s retrospective distinguishes it from these previous shows and will account not only for the complexity and originality of Johns’s body of work at a new scale, but also will seek to test some of the conventional perceptions of it.
Since the early 1950s, Jasper Johns (b. 1930) has produced a radical and varied body of work distinguished by constant reinvention. In his twenties, Johns created his now-canonical Flag (1954–55), which challenged the dominance of Abstract Expressionism by integrating abstraction and representation through its direct, though painterly, deadpan visual power. His works have continued to pose similar paradoxes—between cognition and perception, image and object, painting and sculpture—and have explored new approaches to abstraction and figuration that have opened up perspectives for several generations of younger artists. Over the course of his career, he has tirelessly pursued an innovative body of work that includes painting, sculpture, drawing, prints, books, and the design of sets and costumes for the stage.
The exhibition is conceived as a unified whole, comprising two autonomous parts, and is co-curated by two longtime scholars who each has a close relationship with the artist: Carlos Basualdo, The Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the PMA, and Scott Rothkopf, Senior Deputy Director and Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator at the Whitney. Basualdo noted, “We attempted to create an exhibition that echoes the logic of Johns’s work, and it is structured in a mimetic relation to his practice. Galleries at each venue will serve as cognates, echoes, and inversions of their counterparts at the other, allowing viewers to witness and experience the relationships between continuity and change, fragment and whole, singularity and repetition which Johns has used throughout his career to renew and transform his work.”
Rothkopf said, “One of our primary aims was to revivify the incredible sense of daring and discovery at the heart of Johns’s art. He stunned the establishment as a young man but continues to astonish audiences with surprising new ideas as he nears ninety. Surveying the whole of his career, we see an artist propelled by curiosity, constantly challenging himself—and all of us.”
The Philadelphia Museum of Art and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Award Lawrence Abu Hamdan the Future Fields Commission in Time-Based Media
The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo announced that Lawrence Abu Hamdan has been awarded the 2022 Future Fields Commission in Time-Based Media. This is the third in an ongoing series of commissions offered jointly by the two institutions to support the creation, production, and acquisition of new work by international artists working in the expanding fields of video, film, performance, and sound. Abu Hamdan has received many accolades and a number of commissions throughout Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. This project, in particular, stands as a singular and significant opportunity that will enable the artist to further develop, refine, and expand his growing practice and the subjects with which he works.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan. Photo by Miro Kuzmanovic. Courtesy of the artist.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan (Lebanese/British, born in Amman 1985) lives and works in Beirut. His work is distinguished by the ways in which he experiments with voice and sound to create complex political narratives. In these he employs surveillance technologies and archival materials to explore the juridical implications of listening and the role of sound as a tool to silence, suppress, and resist. Combining science, journalism, a commitment to social justice, and art, Abu Hamdan’s aural investigations have served as evidence at the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and advocacy for organizations such as Amnesty International. His research has also contributed to the work of the multidisciplinary research group Forensic Architecture.
Performance still from Natq, a live audiovisual essay, 2019, by Lawrence Abu Hamdan. Courtesy of the artist.
For the Future Fields Commission, Abu Hamdan has proposed an installation, tentatively titled How to Hear Impossible Speech: Lessons from the Division of Perceptual Studies, which aims to expand our understanding of testimony and witness through narratives of reincarnation—a belief in the transmigration of the soul from one life to the next. Though distinct from the artist’s more widely known acoustic investigations, this commission will maintain a focus on ideas of resonance as Abu Hamdan charts the transmigration of speech, not through walls, but across time, bodies, and complex histories of unrest, subjugation, and colonization.
Video still from Once Removed, 2019, by Lawrence Abu Hamdan. Commissioned by Sharjah Biennial 14. Courtesy of the artist.
Abu Hamdan is developing the commission in close consultation with Amanda Sroka, the Museum’s Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, as well as Irene Calderoni, Curator at the Fondazione. The work will premiere at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in spring 2022 and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin during the following winter. It will be jointly acquired by the two institutions.
Timothy Rub, The George D. Widener Director and CEO, Philadelphia Museum of Art, stated: “Lawrence Abu Hamdan has emerged as a powerful voice in contemporary art, and in this regard, he is the perfect choice for our Future Fields Commission. We look forward to the realization of his provocative project proposal, and are delighted both to partner once again with the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, and to share the outcome of our collaborations with visitors.”
Carlos Basualdo, The Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, said, “Future Fields is an extraordinary tool to explore contemporary art exactly where it is most vital, in the works of a new generation of artists, across the globe, developing new forms of visual production. We are delighted that Lawrence Abu Hamdan has accepted to be part of the already notable roster of artists that have received the commission.”
Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, President of the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, said: “We strongly believe that institutions today have a responsibility to support and foster art practices that are imaginative, daring, and committed, and Future Fields offers us a significant international platform to fulfil this aim. Lawrence Abu Hamdan is one of the most significant and innovative figures of his generation and we look forward to working with him on this ambitious project.”
All
are welcome to kick off the holiday season with the much-anticipated
Tree Lighting against the skyline at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art on Wednesday, November 27. Enjoy free live
music, complimentary candy canes and warm beverages on the East
Terrace starting at 5:00 p.m. With the official countdown set for
5:50 p.m., 12,000 LED lights will illuminate the stately 55-foot-tall
white fir on the terrace.
The tree aglow on the museum’s East Terrace with the city skyline in the distance. Photo by Tim Tiebout, courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2019.
The
Tree Lighting once again headlines the museum’s holiday
program, which continues through the close of 2019 with events
ranging from holiday card making, caroling through the galleries, and
celebratory dining to a Feliz Navidad Fiesta and a Festival
of Lights.
“It
promises to be a spectacular Tree Lighting, and we invite everyone to
join us here at the museum, where admission—following the
countdown—will be Pay-What-You-Wish until 8:45 p.m., as it is every
Wednesday evening,” said Timothy Rub, the museum’s
George D. Widener Director and CEO, who will officiate with
the Honorable Jim Kenney, Mayor of Philadelphia. “This
event brings out so many families and friends – last year’s Tree
Lighting drew a record 3300 well-wishers—and we invite everyone to
join us for what promises to be a festive evening full of community
spirit.”
The tree aglow on the museum’s East Terrace with the city skyline in the distance. Photo by Tim Tiebout, courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2019.
Mayor
Kenney said, “This Tree Lighting ceremony has become a
Philadelphia tradition that attracts so many people to our historic
museum every year. It looks spectacular, high above the Ben Franklin
Parkway. From the look on kids’ faces, it has to be one of the
happiest occasions in our city that every Philadelphian can enjoy the
day before the iconic Thanksgiving Day Parade. I look forward to
taking part in this year’s festivities.”
“We’ve
been rehearsing our classics like Let It Snow and Jingle Bells but
also some of the lesser known Christmas songs, by Louis Armstrong and
Ella Fitzgerald,” said Chelsea Reed of Chelsea Reed
and the Fairweather Nine. “I’m so excited to share all of
these with the people of Philadelphia!”
Chelsea Reed and the Fair Weather Nine will perform on the museum’s East Terrace during the Tree Lighting Celebration, November 27, 2019. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Inside
the museum, right after the Tree Lighting, visitors will be able to
stroll through the galleries and public spaces adorned with seasonal
decorations and enjoy festive foods and beverages. “Sister
Cities Girlchoir is looking forward to performing inside the museum,”
said founder Alysia Lee. “There’s no better way to top off
Philadelphia’s Tree Lighting than to get warm and cozy in the Great
Stair Hall, where the girls will bring their unique blend of songs of
empowerment, celebration, and meditation as they perform with such
grace under the majestic gilded statue of the Roman goddess Diana.”
Sister Cities Girlchoir will perform in the museum’s Great Stair Hall during the Tree Lighting Celebration, November 27, 2019. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Down
at the street level next to Kelly Drive, the newly reopened
North Entrance, leading to the celebrated Vaulted Walkway,
is already decorated with evergreens for the holidays. Visitors may
enter there any time during museum hours and begin their holiday
shopping, too, in the new Main Store, access to which paid
admission is not required. On November 27, the Store will offer a 20
percent discount from 5 p.m. until 8:45 p.m.
(The
museum’s East Entrance remains open during public hours and the
West Entrance is now closed until fall 2020.)
A view at sundown of the tree, facing the museum’s East facade. Photo by Tim Tiebout, courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2019.
Each
year, the holiday tree provides a magnificent spectacle overlooking
the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Planning for its placement
requires exceptional coordination. The Philly-bound evergreen makes a
300-mile trip, wheeling in from Hornell, New York, on a flatbed
truck. The 7500-pound tree is craned upright upon a platform; it is
then unwrapped, branching out to a 25 foot-wide-spread. Next, it is
adorned with thousands of lights, each one at .144watts, all powered
by (2) 20amp circuits. High on the apex of the tree, a star is
placed, measuring 6 feet in diameter and containing 175 lights
itself.
Visitors and the tree aglow on the museum’s East Terrace during the Tree Lighting Celebration, 2018. Photo courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2019.
Acquiring
and installing the tree and generating the lighting would not be
possible without dedicated support. Seasonal decor is generously
provided by IBEW, Local 98, Dougherty Electric, Inc., PMC Property
Group, and the Women’s Committee of the Philadelphia Museum
of Art. Holidays at the Museum is sponsored by LF
Driscoll, with additional support from Dan Lepore & Sons
Company, The Berlin Steel Construction Company, JPC Group,
Inc., Thomas Company, Tracey Mechanical, Inc., ARC,
D.M. Sabia & Company, Inc., Colonial Electric Supply,
and Crescent Designed Metals.
Below
Is The Full Schedule Of Holiday Events At The Museum To Close Out
2019:
It looks as if it will be another banner year of thought-provoking and wide-ranging exhibitions during the coming year at The Whitney Museum of American Art. (And one should not expect any less.) Announcing the schedule for 2020 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Scott Rothkopf, Senior Deputy Director and Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator, noted: “In 2020 the Whitney will celebrate its ninetieth anniversary and fifth year downtown, so we’ve created a program that truly honors the spirit of artistic innovation both past and present. We remain focused on supporting emerging and mid-career artists, while finding fresh relevance in historical surveys from across the twentieth century. Also turning ninety, Jasper Johns closes out the year with an unprecedented retrospective that will reveal this American legend as never before to a new generation of audiences.”
On
February 17 the Museum opens Vida Americana: Mexican
Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945, a major
historical look at the transformative impact of Mexican artists on
the direction of American art from the mid-1920s until the end of
World War II. On October 28, in collaboration with thePhiladelphia Museum of Art,
a landmark retrospective of the work of Jasper Johns goes on
view simultaneously at both museums, paying tribute to the foremost
living American artist. In addition, the Whitney will devote
exhibitions to Julie Mehretu and Dawoud Bey, prominent
midcareer artists. The Mehretu exhibition, co-organized by the
Whitney with theLos Angeles
County Museum of Art, encompasses over two decades of the
artist’s work, presenting the most comprehensive overview of her
practice to date. In November, Dawoud Bey, one of the leading
photographers of his generation, will receive his first full-scale
retrospective, co-organized by the Whitney and the San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).
The Whitney Museum of American Art
The
Museum will also present Agnes Pelton: Desert
Transcendentalist—organized by the Phoenix
Art Museum—the first exhibition of work by the visionary
symbolist in nearly a quarter century; and Working Together:
The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop, an unprecedented
exhibition organized by the Virginia
Museum of Fine Arts, which chronicles the formative years of
this collective of Black photographers who lived and worked in New
York City. The year will also bring a range of focused exhibitions
dedicated to emerging and midcareer artists, including Darren
Bader, Jill Mulleady, Cauleen Smith, and Salman Toor, as
well as Dave McKenzie and My Barbarian, who continue
the Whitney’s commitment to performance and its many forms.
In
September the Museum will also unveil David Hammons’s
monumental public art installation Day’s End on Gansevoort
Peninsula, across the street from the Whitney. The debut of
this public artwork will be preceded by an exhibition entitled Around
Day’s End: Downtown New York, 1970–1986, which will
present a selection of works from the Museum’s collection related
to the seminal work that inspired Hammons’s sculpture: Gordon
Matta-Clark’s Day’s End (1975).
MAJOR
EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS
“Vida
Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945”,
February 17–May 17, 2020
The
cultural renaissance that emerged in Mexico in 1920 at the end of
that country’s revolution dramatically changed art not just in
Mexico but also in the United States. With approximately 200 works by
sixty American and Mexican artists, Vida Americana reorients
art history, acknowledging the wide-ranging and profound influence of
Mexico’s three leading muralists—José Clemente Orozco, David
Alfaro Siqueiros, and Diego Rivera—on the style, subject
matter, and ideology of art in the United States made between 1925
and 1945. By presenting the art of the Mexican muralists alongside
that of their American contemporaries, the exhibition reveals the
seismic impact of Mexican art, particularly on those looking for
inspiration and models beyond European modernism and the School of
Paris.
Works
by both well-known and underrecognized American artists will be
exhibited, including Thomas Hart Benton, Elizabeth Catlett, Aaron
Douglas, Marion Greenwood, Philip Guston, Eitarō Ishigaki, Jacob
Lawrence, Isamu Noguchi, Jackson Pollock, Ben Shahn, Thelma Johnson
Streat, Charles White, and Hale Woodruff. In addition to
Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros, other key Mexican artists in the
exhibition include Miguel Covarrubias, María Izquierdo, Frida
Kahlo, Mardonio Magaña, Alfredo Ramos Martínez, and Rufino
Tamayo.
Organized by Barbara Haskell, curator, with Marcela Guerrero, assistant curator; Sarah Humphreville, senior curatorial assistant; and Alana Hernandez, former curatorial project assistant. (See previously-posted article here.)
This mid-career survey of Julie Mehretu (b. 1970; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia), co-organized by The Whitney with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), covers over two decades of the artist’s career and presents the most comprehensive overview of her practice to date. Featuring approximately forty works on paper and more than thirty paintings dating from 1996 to today, the exhibition includes works ranging from her early focus on drawing and mapping to her more recent introduction of bold gestures, saturated color, and figuration. The exhibition will showcase her commitment to interrogating the histories of art, architecture, and past civilizations alongside themes of migration, revolution, climate change, and global capitalism in the contemporary moment. Julie Mehretu is on view at LACMA November 3, 2019–March 22, 2020, and following its presentation at the Whitney from June 26 through September 20, 2020, the exhibition will travel to the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA (October 24, 2020–January 31, 2021); and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (March 13–July 11, 2021).
Jasper
Johns (b. 1930) is arguably the most influential living American
artist. Over the past sixty-five years, he has produced a radical and
varied body of work marked by constant reinvention. In an
unprecedented collaboration, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the
Whitney will stage a retrospective of Johns’s career simultaneously
across the two museums, featuring paintings, sculptures, drawings,
and prints, many shown publicly for the first time. Inspired by the
artist’s long-standing fascination with mirroring and doubles, the
two halves of the exhibition will act as reflections of one another,
spotlighting themes, methods, and images that echo across the two
venues. A visit to one museum or the other will provide a vivid
chronological survey; a visit to both will offer an innovative and
immersive exploration of the many phases, facets, and masterworks of
Johns’s still-evolving career.
Designs for Different Futures is organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
The
role of designers in shaping how we think about the future is the
subject of a major exhibition that will premiere at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art this fall. Designs for Different Futures
(October 22, 2019–March 8, 2020) brings together some 80
works that address the challenges and opportunities that humans may
encounter in the years, decades, and centuries ahead. Organized by
the Philadelphia Museum of Art, theWalker
Art Center, Minneapolis,
and the Art Institute of Chicago,
Designs for Different Futures will be presented at the Walker
(September 12, 2020–January 3, 2021) and the Art Institute
of Chicago (February 6–May 16, 2021) following its
presentation in Philadelphia.
Among
the questions today’s designers seek to answer are: What role
can technology play in augmenting or replacing a broad range of human
activities?Can intimacy be maintained at a distance? How can
we negotiate privacy in a world in which the sharing and use of
personal information has blurred traditional boundaries? How might we
use design to help heal or transform ourselves, bodily and
psychologically? How will we feed an ever-growing population?
While
no one can precisely predict the shape of things to come, the works
in the exhibition are firmly fixed on the future, providing design
solutions for a number of speculative scenarios. In some instances,
these proposals are borne of a sense of anxiety, and in others of a
sense of excitement over the possibilities that can be created
through the use of innovative materials, new technologies, and, most
importantly, fresh ideas.
Timothy
Rub, the George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer of
the Philadelphia Museum of Art, stated: “We often think of
art museums as places that foster a dialogue between the past and the
present, but they also can and should be places that inspire us to
think about the future and to ask how artists and designers can help
us think creatively about it. We are delighted to be able to
collaborate with the Walker Art Center and the Art Institute of
Chicago on this engaging project, which will offer our visitors an
opportunity to understand not only how designers are imagining—and
responding to—different visions of the futures, but also to
understand just how profoundly forward-looking design contributes in
our own time to shaping the world that we occupy and will bequeath as
a legacy to future generations.”
“Lia: The Flushable and Biodegradable Pregnancy Test,” designed 2018 by Bethany Edwards and Anna Couturier Simpson (Courtesy of the designer). Photograph courtesy of LIA Diagnostics. Image courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2019.
Thinking
about the future has always been part of the human condition. It has
also been a perennial field of inquiry for designers and architects
whose speculations on this subject—ranging from the concrete to the
whimsical—can profoundly affect how we imagine what is to come.
Among the many forward-looking projects on view, visitors to Designs
for Different Futures will encounter lab-grown food, robotic
companions, family leave policy proposals, and textiles made of
seaweed.
“Some
of these possibilities will come to fruition, while others will
remain dreams or even threats,” said Kathryn Hiesinger,
the J. Mahlon Buck, Jr. Family Senior Curator of European Decorative
Arts after 1700, who coordinated the exhibition in Philadelphia with
former assistant curator Michelle Millar Fisher. “We’d like
visitors to join us as we present designs that consider the possible,
debate the inevitable, and weigh the alternatives. This exhibition
explores how design—understood expansively—can help us all
grapple with what might be on the horizon and allows our imaginations
to take flight.”
The
exhibition is divided into 11 thematic sections. In Resources,
visitors will encounter an inflatable pod measuring 15 feet in
diameter, part of the work Another Generosity first created in
2018 by Finnish architect Eero Lundén and designed in this
incarnation in collaboration with Ron Aasholm and Carmen
Lee. The pod slowly expands and contracts in the space,
responding to changing levels of carbon dioxide as visitors exhale
around it, and provoking questions about the ongoing effect of the
human footprint on the environment.
“Svalbard Global Seed Vault,” designed 2008 by Peter W. Søderman, Barlindhaug Consulting (Exhibition display courtesy of USDA Agricultural Research Service, National Laboratory for Genetic Resources Preservation). Photograph courtesy of Global Crop Diversity Trust. Image courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2019.“Recyclable and Rehealable Electronic Skin,” designed 2018 by Jianliang Xiao and Wei Zhang (Courtesy of the designer). Image courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2019
The
section titled Generations will explore ways in which the
choices we make today may contribute to the well-being or suffering
of those who come after us. Here, visitors will find a model of the
Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a repository that stores the
world’s largest collection of crop seeds. Located within a mountain
on a remote island near the Arctic Circle, the facility is designed
to withstand natural or human-made disasters. The Earths section
of the exhibition speculates on the challenges of extra-terrestrial
communication in Lisa Moura’s Alien Nations installation and
showcases typeface from the 2016 science-fiction film Arrival.
In
Bodies, designers grapple with choices about how our physical and
psychological selves might look, feel, and function in different
future scenarios. Featured here is one of the world’s lightest and
most advanced exoskeletons, designed to help people with mobility
challenges remain upright and active. Also notable is the CRISPR
Kit, an affordable and accessible gene-editing toolbox, which has
the potential to revolutionize biomedical research and open
opportunities for gene therapy and genetic engineering.
Intimacies
is a section that explores how technologies and online interfaces may
affect love, family, and community. Here, urban experiences of sex
and love are the focus of Andrés Jaque’s Intimate
Strangers, an audio-visual installation focusing on the gay
dating app. Through internet-enabled devices, designers explore the
possibility of digitally mediated love and sex, suggesting what
advanced digital networks hold for human sexuality.
Foods
contains projects that explore the future of the human diet.
Among them is a modular edible-insect farm, Cricket Shelter,
by Terreform ONE, which offers a ready source of protein for
impending food crises. A kitchen installation suggests how technology
and design may contribute to new modes of food production, including
an Ouroboros Steak made from human cells.
“Circumventive Organs, Electrostabilis Cardium (film still),” designed 2013 by Agi Haines (Courtesy of the designer). Image courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2019.
Additional
sections of the exhibition will focus on the future of Jobs and how
Cities will function and look 100 years from now—with
robotic baby feeders, driverless cars, and other
developments—affording a glimpse at how we might navigate living
beyond this planet. Shoes grown from sweat are among the innovations
visitors will find in a section devoted to Materials, while
Power will look at how design may affect our citizenship and
help us retain agency over such essentials as our DNA, our voices,
and our electronic communications in a future where the lines between
record-keeping, communication, and surveillance blur. Data
acknowledges and questions the different ways that information
might be collected and used, with all its inherent biases and
asymmetries, to shape different futures.
The
curatorial team is comprised of: at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art, Kathryn B.
Hiesinger, The J. Mahlon Buck, Jr. Family Senior
Curator of European Decorative Arts after 1700, and Michelle
Millar Fisher, formerly The Louis C. Madeira IV Assistant
Curator of European Decorative Arts after 1700; At the Walker
Art Center, Emmet Byrne,
Design Director and Associate Curator of Design; and at the Art
Institute of Chicago, Maite
Borjabad López-Pastor, Neville Bryan Assistant Curator of
Architecture and Design, and Zoë Ryan,
the John H. Bryan Chair and Curator of Architecture and Design.
Consulting curators are Andrew Blauvelt,
Director, Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield
Hills, Michigan, and Curator-at-Large, Museum of Arts
and Design, New York; Colin Fanning,
Independent Scholar, Bard Graduate Center,
New York; and Orkan Telhan,
Associate Professor of Fine Arts (Emerging Design Practices),
University of Pennsylvania School of Design,
Philadelphia.
Kathryn
B. Hiesinger is the J. Mahlon Buck, Jr. Family Senior Curator of
European Decorative Arts after 1700 at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art. Her work focuses on decorative arts and
design from the mid-nineteenth century to the present and includes
the exhibitions and publications Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion
(2011), Out of the Ordinary: The Architecture and Design of
Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Associates (2001),
Japanese Design: A Survey since 1950 (1994) and Design
since 1945 (1983).
Michelle
Millar Fisher is the Ronald C. and Anita L Wornick Curator of
Contemporary Decorative Arts at the Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston. She is a graduate of the University
of Glasgow, Scotland, and is currently completing her
doctorate in architectural history at the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York. She is the
co-author, with Paola Antonelli, of Items: Is Fashion
Modern? (2017).
Emmet
Byrne is the Design Director and Associate Curator of Design at
the Walker Art Center in
Minneapolis. He provides creative leadership and strategic direction
for the Walker in all areas of visual communication, branding,
publishing, while overseeing the award-winning in-house design
studio. He was one of the founders of the Task Newsletter in
2009 and is the creator of the Walker’s Intangibles platform.
Maite
Borjabad López-Pastor is the Neville Bryan Assistant Curator of
Architecture and Design at the Art Institute
of Chicago. She is an architect and curator educated at
the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and Columbia
University, New York. She is the author and curator of
Scenographies of Power: From the State of Exception to the Spaces
of Exception (2017). Her work revolves around diverse forms of
critical spatial practices, operating across architecture, art, and
performance.
Zoë
Ryan is the John H. Bryan Chair and Curator of Architecture and
Design at the Art Institute of Chicago.
She is the editor of As Seen: Exhibitions That Made Architecture
and Design History (2017) and curator of In a Cloud, in a
Wall, in a Chair: Six Modernists in Mexico at Midcentury (2019)
and the 2014 Istanbul Design Biennial, The Future is Not
What it Used to Be. Her projects explore the impact of
architecture and design on society.
Centered
on the innovative contemporary design objects, projects, and
speculations of the exhibition’s checklist, the accompanying volume
proposes design as a means through which to understand, question, and
negotiate individual and collective futures, giving provocative voice
to the most urgent issues of today. It asks readers to contemplate
the design context within broader historical, social, political, and
aesthetic spectrums. Designs for Different Futures addresses
futures near and far, exploring such issues as human-digital
interaction, climate change, political and social inequality,
resource scarcity, transportation, and infrastructure.
The
primary authors are Kathryn B. Hiesinger, Michelle Millar Fisher,
Emmet Byrne, Maite Borjabad López-Pastor, and Zoë Ryan,
with Andrew Blauvelt, Colin Fanning, Orkan Telhan, Juliana Rowen
Barton, and Maude de Schauensee. Additional contributions
include texts by V. Michael Bove Jr. and Nora Jackson,
Christina Cogdell, Marina Gorbis, Srećko Horvat, Bruno Latour,
Marisol LeBrón, Ezio Manzini, Chris Rapley, Danielle Wood, LinYee
Yuan, and Emma Yann Zhang; and interviews with Gabriella
Coleman, Formafantasma (Andrea Trimarchi and Simone
Farresin), Aimi Hamraie and Jillian Mercado, Francis
Kéré, David Kirby, Helen Kirkum, Alexandra Midal, Neri Oxman,
and Eyal Weizman.
Designs
for Different Futures will be distributed by Yale University
Press. The book was overseen by Philadelphia Museum of Art
publishing director Katie Reilly and editors Katie Brennan
and Kathleen Krattenmaker. It is designed by Ryan Gerald
Nelson, Senior Graphic Designer at the Walker Art Center, under the
direction of Walker design director Emmet Byrne.
Futures
Therapy Lab
As
part of the exhibition, visitors to the Philadelphia Museum of Art
galleries will also encounter a space for community meetups, public
programs, school visits, and self-directed activities. The Futures
Therapy Lab will weave personal connections between visitors and
the exhibition as part of a collaboration between the museum’s
Education Department and the curatorial team. Weekly programs,
many of which will occur on Pay-What-You-Wish Wednesday Nights,
will connect visitors with designers, artists, and locally based
creatives. The Futures Therapy Lab will contain a crowdsourced
Futures Library that includes everything from science-fiction
books to the exhibition catalogue. “Thinking about possible
futures is both exhilarating and anxiety-provoking,” said
Emily Schreiner, the Zoë and Dean Pappas Curator of Education,
Public Programs. “The Futures Therapy Lab is a place for
conversation, critique, and creativity in which visitors can imagine
their own hopes, fears and solutions for the future through
reflection, discussion, and art making.”
In
Philadelphia, this exhibition is generously supported by the
Annenberg Foundation Fund for Major Exhibitions, the Robert
Montgomery Scott Endowment for Exhibitions, the Kathleen C.
and John J.F. Sherrerd Fund for Exhibitions,Lisa Roberts and
David Seltzer in Honor of Collab’s 50th Anniversary, the Women’s
Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Laura and
William C. Buck Endowment for Exhibitions, the Harriet and
Ronald Lassin Fund for Special Exhibitions, the Jill and
Sheldon Bonovitz Exhibition Fund, and an anonymous donor.
Related
Programs
The
Futures Therapy Lab will host a series of weekly happenings:
Artists
in the Lab
Artists
and designers share their work through talks, demonstrations, and
workshops. Wednesday Nights, 5:00–8:45 p.m.
The
Designer is In
Talk
it out. One-on-one sessions with local designers offer new
perspectives on your everyday life. Thursdays & Saturdays,
2:00–4:00 p.m.
Sci-Fi
Sundays
Drop-in
readings that explore narratives of the future. Select Sundays,
2:00–3:00pm
This fall, the Philadelphia Museum of Art will premiere Bury Our Weapons, Not Our Bodies!, a new site-specific public performance by acclaimed Israeli-born artist Yael Bartana. Scheduled to take place on September 22, 2018 (through to January 1, 2019) at the Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, this performance will be presented as part of a solo exhibition at the Museum dedicated to the artist’s provocative film trilogy, And Europe Will Be Stunned (2007-2011). Marking its Philadelphia debut, this trilogy will be an immersive installation in the Joan Spain Gallery of the Museum’s Perelman Building.
Portrait of Yael Bartana. Photo by Birgit Kaulfuss. Image courtesy of the artist and Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2018.
Born in 1970 in Kfar Yehezkel, Israel, Yael Bartana lives and works in Berlin and Amsterdam. In her films, installations, and photographs, Bartana investigates the ideas of homeland, return, and belonging, often in ceremonies, memorials, public rituals, and actions that are intended to reaffirm and question collective identities and ideas of the nation or the state.
Image from “Zamach (Assassination),” 2011, by Yael Bartana. From the trilogy “And Europe Will Be Stunned.” (Collection of both the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; purchased by the PMA with funds contributed by Nancy M. Berman and Alan Bloch and the Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation, and the Committee on Modern and Contemporary Art; and purchased by the WAC, T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2013). Image courtesy of the artist and Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2018.
Taking the complex history of Jewish-Polish identity as its point of departure, And Europe Will Be Stunned addresses the themes of nationhood, memory, and belonging that are integral to Bartana’s work. It first debuted at the Venice Biennale in 2011, where Bartana represented Poland. Shortly thereafter, the trilogy was jointly acquired by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Employing a visual vocabulary reminiscent of Stalinist and Zionist propaganda of the early 20th century, And Europe Will be Stunned chronicles the radical program of a fictional political movement called the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (JRMiP). Created by Bartana, together with Polish activist Sławomir Sierakowski, the JRMiP advocates for the return of over three million Jews to their forgotten Polish homeland. Informed by the histories of the Israeli settlement movement, Zionism, anti-Semitism, and the Palestinian right of return, the trilogy uses the real and the imagined to speak to global complexities about identity and self-determination in an increasingly unstable world.
Still from “Mur i wieża (Wall and Tower),” 2009, by Yael Bartana. From the trilogy “And Europe Will Be Stunned.” (Collection of both the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; purchased by the PMA with funds contributed by Nancy M. Berman and Alan Bloch and the Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation, and the Committee on Modern and Contemporary Art; and purchased by the WAC, T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2013). Image courtesy of the artist and Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2018.
Beyond the walls of the Philadelphia Museum, Bartana will realize Bury Our Weapons, Not Our Bodies! as a means of extending the themes of the artist’s trilogy into the birthplace of American democracy – Philadelphia. Bartana’s performance is a call to action, aiming to make visible the systems of violence and displacement that have been perpetuated through weapons, both literal and symbolic. As the title suggests, the performance will bury these weapons, rendering them useless, as they are incorporated into a choreographed funeral—a living monument—that will include a staged procession and a collective eulogy about war and survival. The movements of the performers are inspired by those of Israeli artist and dance composer Noa Eshkol (1924-2007), specifically evoking Eshkol’s 1953 memorial assembly performed in remembrance to the Holocaust. Bringing together funerary tradition, military ritual, and personal testimony, Bartana’s new performance will deepen the artist’s investigations into the construction of memory and the aesthetics of national identity.
Still from “Mary Koszmary (Nightmares),” 2007, by Yael Bartana. From the trilogy “And Europe Will Be Stunned.” (Collection of both the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; purchased by the PMA with funds contributed by Nancy M. Berman and Alan Bloch and the Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation, and the Committee on Modern and Contemporary Art; and purchased by the WAC, T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 2013). Image courtesy of the artist and Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2018.
This fall, the Philadelphia Museum of Art will present Little Ladies: Victorian Fashion Dolls and the Feminine Ideal, (November 11, 2018 – March 3, 2019, Dorrance Special Exhibition Galleries, first floor) an exhibition starring four extraordinary dolls and their extravagant wardrobes. Known as Miss Fanchon, Miss G. Townsend, Miss French Mary, and Marie Antoinette, they were made in France in the 1860s and 1870s. The ultimate toys for privileged girls of this period, these dolls reflected the world of adult fashion, being fully equipped with miniature versions of the myriad garments, accessories, and other personal possessions of a well-to-do Victorian lady. As models of womanhood, these fashion dolls represented Victorian culture, when most believed that the aim of a girl’s life was to marry and raise children, and women were exhorted to dress well, follow the strictures of contemporary etiquette, and excel in their proper sphere of domestic and social duties.
“Miss G. Townsend” Fashion Doll, 1870s, France (Gift of Edward Starr, Jr., 1976-58-9)
“Miss French Mary” Fashion Doll, around 1875, France. Gift of Mrs. James Wilson Wister, née Elizabeth Bayard Dunn, 1970-215-1a.
The dolls, which measure between 18 to 22 inches in height and have painted bisque heads, leather bodies, and hair wigs, come with tiny accouterments that are notable for their number, detail, and variety. Miss Fanchon’s trunk, for example, contains over 150 objects, including eighteen dresses, and her gloves, which measure just over two inches tall, have all the features of full-size gloves, including gussets, points, and button closures.
Three doll dresses from Miss Fanchon’s wardrobe, late 1860s-1870s, possibly France. Gift of Gardner H. Nicholas in memory of Mrs. Gardner H. Nicholas, 1922-58-9a—c, 14a,b,3.
The dolls are furnished with dresses for every occasion, from housework to fancy social events, as well as undergarments (chemises, drawers, petticoats, corsets, hoop skirts, bustles, and even tiny dress shields), outerwear, and accessories including bonnets, hair ornaments, jewelry, fans, and footwear.
Miss Fanchon’s Gloves, late 1860s-1870s, France. Gift of Gardner H. Nicholas in memory of Mrs. Gardner H. Nicholas, 1922-58-109a,b. Doll’s Handbag, late 1860s-1870s, France. Gift of Mrs. William Hill Steeble and Martha B. Newkirk in memory of their mother, Mrs. I. Roberts Newkirk, 1977-189-4aa.
In addition to personal care items such as a toothbrushes, combs, and mirrors, two dolls are provided with clothes hangers (not yet common in full-size households), while the plethora of other objects includes tiny books, visiting cards, a photo album, sewing kit, sheet music, writing set, alarm clock, newspaper, opera glasses, and even roller skates.
Doll’s Sewing Equipment, late 1860s-1870s, France. Gift of Edward Starr, Jr., 1976-58- 9Ah1-7 and Gift of Mrs. William Hill Steeble and Martha B. Newkirk in memory of their mother, Mrs. I. Roberts Newkirk, 1977-189-4y.
This spring, the Philadelphia Museum of Art will present, “Agnes Martin: The Untroubled Mind” (Gallery 174) on view May 19-October 14, 2018, an intimately scaled installation featuring four paintings by Agnes Martin from the bequest of the late philanthropist, Daniel W. Dietrich II, a crucial supporter of the artist’s career. Three of these paintings date to the mid-1960s, and the fourth to 1985. They will be exhibited with additional works on paper and sculpture that Dietrich collected. This installation will explore the ideas that inform Martin’s minimalist art and reflect upon the enduring friendship that existed between a major artist and her patron.
Timothy Rub, The George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer, said: “Dan was a generous philanthropist and an admirer and avid collector of Martin’s work. He supported her first major mid-career retrospective in 1973 at the Institute of Contemporary Art here in Philadelphia. From that seminal moment onward, he continued to champion her work and added superb examples to his private collection. This installation provides a unique opportunity to understand the nature of Martin’s contribution to contemporary art and to understand how aspects of Dietrich’s transformative gift fit so well into our collection.”
Martin created each of the paintings that will be on view—Leaf (1965), Play II (1966), Hill (1967) and Untitled #6 (1985)— using acrylic paint and graphite. These works, each six-feet square, will be complemented in the installation by another painting in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Rose (1965), a centennial gift of the Woodward Foundation in 1975, of the same medium and size.Continue reading →
Philadelphia Museum of Art Presents a New Work by Rachel Rose, On View May 2 through August 18, 2018
Rose is the Inaugural Recipient of The Future Fields Commission in Time-Based Media Grant
The Philadelphia Museum of Art will present a new video installation by Rachel Rose, the inaugural recipient of the Future Fields Commission in Time-Based Media, which has been jointly awarded to the artist by the Museum and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. A project under development for nearly two years, this commission represents the most ambitiously scaled production in the artist’s career to date, leading to the creation of a work that will enter the collections of these two institutions. Titled Wil-o-Wisp, Rose’s work will be on view from May 2 through August 18, 2018, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It will then travel to the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Italy, where it will open in November.
Production image from Wil-o-Wisp, 2018, by Rachel Rose (Jointly owned and commissioned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Funding is made possible for the Philadelphia Museum of Art through the Contemporary Art Revolving Fund). Photo by Nancy Green, on-site at Plimoth Plantation, Massachusetts, 2017.
Timothy Rub, the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer, stated: “Seeing this project evolve since the awarding of the commission has been deeply gratifying. It demonstrates just how vital it is for institutions like ours to support emerging talent at precisely the time when such support is needed. This collaboration with our partners in Turin has also provided a wonderful opportunity to expand and strengthen our engagement with contemporary art.”
Production image from Wil-o-Wisp, 2018, by Rachel Rose (Jointly owned and commissioned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Funding is made possible for the Philadelphia Museum of Art through the Contemporary Art Revolving Fund). Photo by Nancy Green, on-site at Plimoth Plantation, Massachusetts, 2017.
In 2016, the two esteemed arts and culture organizations established the Future Fields Commission in Time-Based Media as a collaborative initiative to jointly commission and acquire new work by artists from around the world who are active in video, film, performance, and sound. The Commission supports the creation and production of a new work every two years that will be presented at both the Museum and the Fondazione. With its unique focus and its commitment to the joint acquisition of the works produced with the support of this initiative, the commission aims to give unprecedented opportunities to international artists who are exploring new territory in these experimental modes of contemporary art. Rachel Rose is the inaugural recipient.
Production image from Wil-o-Wisp, 2018, by Rachel Rose (Jointly owned and commissioned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Funding is made possible for the Philadelphia Museum of Art through the Contemporary Art Revolving Fund). Photo by Nancy Green, on-site at Plimoth Plantation, Massachusetts, 2017.
Rachel Rose has emerged as an important voice in contemporary video, widely recognized for her deft digital editing that aligns disparate visual images and historical references. This new commission has provided her with an opportunity to widen the scope of her interests by investigating narrative devices and story-telling. In Wil-o-Wisp, the artist has directed a live action video in which a woman’s fate becomes inextricably tied to moments of upheaval, suspicion, and persecution in 16th century agrarian England, a time during which the Enclosure Movement led to the privatization of land throughout the country. The video follows various vignettes of Elspeth’s life, cycling between familial moments and tragedy, the practice of magic and her persecution.
Rose strings dramatic moments together with temporal shifts, varying rhythms, an emotive score, and carefully constructed visual effects. The work reflects upon the harsh realities of English rural life during a time of a rising culture of suspicion in which women, such as Elspeth, engaging in nontraditional healing practices were often seen as threatening to an increasingly regulated society. The title of the work, Wil-o-Wisp, refers to ghostly lights that could be seen hovering at night over bogs and marshes and that, in folklore, could have the sinister effect of leading people astray. In Rose’s work, the title speaks to the characters whose paths are determined both by willful choices and the power of coincidence.
Directing a cast and crew of about thirty people, Rose shot the work at Plimoth Plantation, a living history museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts, that offered a period setting of houses in an English vernacular style and an austere winter landscape. Working with both trained and street-cast actors, as well as Plimoth Plantation guides, Rose both utilized the character of the site and added to it, creating her own imagined world within this setting. From costumes to set decorations, Rose combined period and contemporary materials.
Production image from Wil-o-Wisp, 2018, by Rachel Rose (Jointly owned and commissioned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Funding is made possible for the Philadelphia Museum of Art through the Contemporary Art Revolving Fund). Photo by Nancy Green, on-site at Plimoth Plantation, Massachusetts, 2017.
Rose’s video is characterized as much by her intensive approach to post-production as by the attention she gives to the script and on-set staging. After filming the work in Plimoth, she added components such as a narrative sung by an ethereal voice in iambic pentameter. Orchestral and electronical scores serve to gather momentum and produce an emotional effect. Animals and people generate ghostly doubles, and a bright green moss seems to take over the barren landscape. In this work, Rose also continues her use of Medieval marginalia: drawn characters that populated Medieval manuscripts are here collaged to form words announcing certain protagonists and moments within the larger narrative. These elements coalesce with the depicted dramatic events to create a world in which the circumstance of history meets the coincidence and magic of fate.
Installed as a single-channel video and approximately ten minutes in length, Wil-o-Wisp will fill a large gallery that will include an eighteen-foot widescreen. It will be framed within an environment which is currently under development by the artist.
Erica Battle, The John Alchin and Hal Marryatt Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, said: “While Rachel Rose’s carefully woven narrative is set in the past, it speaks to larger themes and concerns that are relevant to our world today. Wil-o-Wisp reflects the inescapable feeling that history is cyclical.”
Rachel Rose (American, born 1986) creates video installations that combine video, sound, and architectural elements. She has had solo exhibitions at the Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2017), the Aspen Art Museum (2016), the Museu Serralves in Porto, Lisbon (2016), the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London (2015), and the Whitney Museum of American Art (2015). She was the recipient of the Frieze Artist Award (2015), and her work is collected by prominent institutions such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; LUMA Foundation, Arles; Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris; Ishikawa Foundation; Tate, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. Rose received a BA from Yale University, New Haven, as well as an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, and an MFA from Columbia University, New York.Continue reading →
Six Galleries to Close on April 11, 2018, Reopening in Early 2019
The Philadelphia Museum of Art will soon begin the first comprehensive renovation and reinstallation of its galleries of Chinese art in many decades. This initiative will enable its staff to reimagine the presentation of this important part of the Museum’s collection and interpret it in new ways for the benefit of visitors. This represents the next step in an ongoing series of reinstallations of the Museum’s collection that began with the Rodin Museum in 2012 and continued with the renovation of its galleries of South Asian art in 2016. Beginning April 11, 2018, six galleries in the wing of the Museum devoted to Asian art will close for approximately ten months and then re-open to the public in early 2019.
Philadelphia Museum of Art logo
The Philadelphia Museum of Art houses one of the country’s earliest Chinese art collections, initially established through purchases made at the Centennial International Exhibition held in Philadelphia in 1876. Today it includes more than 7000 works in a wide range of media spanning more than 4000 years. Strengths include Tang dynasty (618–907) tomb figures, Song dynasty (960–1127) ceramics as well as Ming (1368–1644) and Qing dynasty (1644–1911) imperial art and Buddhist sculpture. The collection includes more than 500 paintings, dating from the 12th to the 20th centuries, as well as costumes and textiles, furniture, jades, lacquer wares, and cloisonné. It also features three remarkable architectural interiors: an early 15th-century coffered ceiling from an imperial Buddhist temple, a 17th century painted wood reception hall, and an 18th-century scholar’s study that provides context for the collection and an exceptional immersive experience.
Timothy Rub, The George D. Widener Director, and Chief Executive Officer, said: “This once-in-a-generation project follows the success of our new galleries of South Asian art, and is proceeding in tandem with the implementation of the next phase of our Facilities Master Plan. It will transform the experience of one of the most important, but still underappreciated parts of our collection. In addition to renovating these galleries, a step that is long overdue, this project will enable us to re-present and reinterpret our extensive holdings of Chinese art for the benefit of our visitors and will also serve as the basis for a new, purpose-built curriculum taught by our educators. These efforts will create relevance, deepen understanding, and renew our visitors’ appreciation for different cultures and artistic traditions around the world.”
A $2 million initiative, this project on the second floor of the main building will promote improved visitor engagement with Chinese art through the implementation of significant physical improvements, including new gallery furniture and the creation of better sight lines. Select windows will be enclosed, improving conditions for the display of light-sensitive textiles and paintings not previously exhibitable in these galleries, while new lighting will enhance the viewing experience. The Museum’s exhibition team is designing purpose-built casework, some equipped with internal lighting that will dramatically improve viewing clarity. These changes will allow for greater flexibility in the rotations of works of art, giving curators the opportunity to regularly refresh the installations and offering returning visitors new works to experience. The project will also benefit from a multi-year study of interpretation strategies, including the development of new learning resources and training, for teacher workshops and new school visits.
Reinstallation
The reinstallation is led by project director Dr. Hiromi Kinoshita, The Hannah L. and J. Welles Henderson Associate Curator of Chinese Art, supported by staff specialized in Exhibition Design, Education, and Publishing. Dr. Kinoshita’s interpretive plan is arranged around key themes through which four thousand years of art can be understood. It will present a new comprehensive display of Chinese art in all media, including paintings, sculpture, porcelains, ceramics, carvings, metalwork, costume and textiles, furniture, and contemporary works.Continue reading →
This fall, the Philadelphia Museum of Art will present Patricia Urquiola: Between Craft and Industry, November 19, 2017 – March 4, 2018, in the Alter Gallery 176, the first solo exhibition devoted to the work of this internationally acclaimed designer. The exhibition will showcase her versatility in creating products, interiors, and architectural spaces. On November 18, Urquiola will be honored with the Design Excellence Award by Collab, the Museum’s affiliate group for modern and contemporary design.
(Each year, Collab presents the Design Excellence Award to a design professional or manufacturer whose impact on the field is inspirational. Past recipients have included Rolf Fehlbaum, Marc Newson, Paula Scher and Seymour Chwast, Zaha Hadid, Alberto Alessi, Marcel Wanders, and Frank O. Gehry.)
Patricia Urquiola. Image by GAN, 2017.
Curious and energetic by nature, Urquiola moves with ease between product design, interior design, and architecture—whether designing handbags that convert into stools for Louis Vuitton, dinnerware for Rosenthal, or the recently opened Il Sereno Hotel on the shore of Lake Como in Italy.
Photograph of Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Barcelona, Spain. Designed by Patricia Urquiola. Designed in 2010.
Photograph of Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Barcelona, Spain. Designed by Patricia Urquiola. Designed in 2010.
Patricia Urquiola is one of the most influential designers in the world today. Born in Oviedo, Spain, and trained as an architect in Madrid, Urquiola graduated from the Politecnico di Milano, where she studied with Achille Castiglioni, one of the foremost lighting designers of the second half of the twentieth century. She opened a studio in Milan in 2001 and since that time has collaborated with dozens of manufacturers throughout the world, including Alessi, B&B Italia, Flos, Kartell, Moroso, and most recently the American firm of Haworth. In September 2015, Urquiola was appointed Art Director of the iconic Italian company Cassina. She has been the recipient of numerous accolades and awards including the Order of Isabella the Catholic, presented by King Juan Carlos I of Spain.
Platter from the Landscape Tea Service. Designed by Patricia Urquiola in 2008. Made by Rosenthal AG, Selb, Germany. Porcelain. Gift of Rosenthal AG, 2008
Urquiola’s work often fuses traditional modes of production with modern design. Her “Fjord” armchair is a rethinking of a mid-twentieth-century Nordic chair, just as the “Landscape” tea set manufactured by Rosenthal is a new spin on a traditional object. Her colorful rugs that she designed in Spain are woven in workshops in India. She brings the handmade aspect of the classic rattan chair of the Philippines to her “Crinoline” chair design.
“Chasen” Hanging Lamp. Designed by Patricia Urquiola. Made by Flos S.p.A., Brescia, Italy. Designed in 2007. Aluminum, borosilicate glass, steel. Flos USA
“Patricia Urquiola: Between Craft and Industry” “Antibodi” Chaise. Designed by Patricia Urquiola, Designed 2006. Stainless steel, PVC, polyurethane, felt. Gift of Fury Design, Inc., Philadelphia
“Urquiola is part of a new generation of designers who take a humanistic approach to their work,” said Donna Corbin, The Louis C. Madeira IV Associate Curator of European Decorative Art. “She is known for exploring the possibilities of the artisanal through new technologies, to achieve something that feels familiar and evokes a sense of comfort.”
Among her most recent work on view is “Openest,” an innovative office system that is emblematic of her interest in prioritizing comfort. It was designed for Haworth offices in Michigan and was named “Best of” in the NeoCon Competition in 2014. Also featured in the form of photographs will be a number of Urquiola’s architectural commissions, including the award-winning 2005 Ideal House project, shown at the IMM Cologne international furnishings show in Germany, and the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Barcelona, Spain.
“Serena” Table Lamp. Designed by Patricia Urquiola. Made by Flos S.p.A., Brescia, Italy. Designed in 2015. Aluminum, polycarbonate. Flos USA
Collab is a group of design professionals and enthusiasts who support modern and contemporary design at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Its members experience design year-round through exhibition previews, design-inspired field trips, special access to the Museum’s world-class design collection, lectures, and opportunities to meet and learn from design curators and visionaries.
In conjunction with the exhibition, this year’s Collab Student Design Competition will challenge students at colleges and universities to create an object inspired by Urquiola’s exhibition. The goal is to design a piece of storage furniture or another functional object that can be the focal point of a room. On Monday, November 13, a panel of judges drawn from the region’s professional design community will gather at the Museum to identify the most innovative entries. The designs will be placed on display at the Museum through November 15, and visitors can cast their votes for the People’s Choice Award. Winners will be presented at the Collab Design Excellence Award lecture on Saturday, November 18.
This exhibition is made possible by Lisa Roberts and David Seltzer, Poor Richard’s Charitable Trust, and Haworth. Additional support is provided by Collab and other generous sponsors. The Student Design Competition is generously sponsored by Publicis Health Media.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art(2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19130, 215-763-8100)announced the acquisition of five major sculptures by Cy Twombly, one of the foremost American artists of the 20th century. This generous gift of theCy Twombly Foundationwill make these works, which were initially selected for exhibition at the Museum in 2011 by the artist himself, a permanent part of the Museum’s collection.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art contains one of the country’s most important collections of Cy Twombly’s works. In 1989, the Philadelphia Museum of Art became the first public institution in the United States to devote a room to the permanent display of Twombly’s art with Fifty Days at Iliam. From April 2012 until March 2016, a selection of six sculptures, including the five works recently given to the Museum, was placed on view in the Atrium Gallery of Perelman Building.
These bronzes including Untitled, Rome, 1980; Rotalla, Zurich, 1990; Untitled, Rome, 1997; Victory, conceived 1987, cast 2005; and Anabasis (Bronze), 2011, were chosen by Twombly because they complemented his masterful Fifty Days at Iliam, 1978, a suite of 10 monumental canvases that the Museum acquired in 1989. Varied in size and shape, with richly textured surfaces, these works, although fundamentally abstract, are informed by a classical sensibility and clearly reflect the artist’s sustained engagement with the art of the ancient world. On November 19, 2016, the sculptures will be placed on view in galleries 184 and 185, alongside related loans and works by Twombly from the collection.
Timothy Rub, The George D. Widener Director and CEO, stated: “The Museum is deeply grateful to the Cy Twombly Foundation for this extraordinary gift. Like the artist’s Fifty Days at Iliam, this remarkable group of sculptures evokes the timeless themes sounded in Homer’s account of the Trojan War and offers a profound meditation on both classical history and the nature of modernity. They represent an enormously important addition to our holdings of work by this great artist, who is a key figure in the history of contemporary art. They will be united with a sixth sculpture by the artist, which is a promised gift of Keith L. and Katherine Sachs, and two important paintings from the bequest of Daniel Dietrich.”
Carlos Basualdo, the Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, said: “For more than 25 years our Museum has dedicated a gallery to the display of Twombly’s work. The generous gift of this extraordinary group of sculptures deepens even further the strong connection between Philadelphia and the work of an artist whose influence and legacy are more than ever strong and alive.”
Cy Twombly (1928–2011) was born in Lexington, Virginia. He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1947-49), Art Students League, New York (1950-51), and Black Mountain College, North Carolina (1951-52). He lived much of his later life in Rome.
Curators: Carlos Basualdo, The Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Senior Curator of Contemporary Art and Erica F. Battle, The John Alchin and Hal Marryatt Associate Curator of Contemporary Art
The Philadelphia Museum of Art will premiere an ambitious new project this fall by Bruce Nauman. Since the 1960s, Nauman’s work has questioned the very nature of what constitutes art and being an artist, probed the possibilities of the body as subject and tool for performance, and explored the relationship between language and meaning. A pioneer of performance art, durational practices, and time-based media, Nauman has established a conceptually rigorous approach across sculpture, sound, installation, film, and video that continues to inspire younger generations of artists working in these forms today.
Working in sculpture, film and video, installation, performance, and sound, Bruce Nauman is one of the most influential artists of his generation. He was born in 1941 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and studied at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of California, Davis. After graduate school, Nauman occupied a storefront studio in the space of an old grocery store in San Francisco. There, an old neon beer sign served as inspiration for Nauman’s celebrated neon, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign), 1967, which became a major acquisition by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2007. Nauman’s first solo debut in New York was at the Leo Castelli Gallery in 1968, and his first major museum survey was co-organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1972. In 1994, Nauman’s traveling retrospective and catalogue raisonné were organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, in association with the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. Following the presentation of Bruce Nauman: Topological Gardens at the official U.S. entry to the 53rd Venice Biennale, Nauman’s two new sound works produced in concert with that project, Days and Giorni, had their United States premiere at the Museum in 2009. (The artist lives in New Mexico with his wife, the artist Susan Rothenberg.)
The installation takes as its point of departure his seminal video work Walk with Contrapposto of 1968, in which the artist performed an exaggerated walk along a tall narrow corridor that he had built in order to stage the action. Nauman’s new work, which is titled Contrapposto Studies, I through VII, consists of seven large scale video projections with sound in an installation specifically scaled for two galleries in the Museum on the occasion of its premiere. In each of the projections, Nauman is seen from two viewpoints walking in contrapposto, his image rendered both in positive and negative, and at times fragmented and stacked in two horizontal strata.
Contrapposto translates as “counterpose” from the Italian and refers to a pose that first appeared in Greek classical sculpture to introduce dynamism into the representation of the figure. Nauman’s original appropriation of the pose in motion in 1968 questioned the boundaries between performance and sculpture through the relatively new medium of video. In 2016, he transforms his original gesture by exposing it to digital manipulation and recombination, which give the appearance of his body alternatively coming together and disintegrating while remaining the stable focus of the composition. The soundtrack of each projection captures the multiplicity of the artist’s movements, which are seen both forwards and backwards, compounding the relationship between the aural and the visual experience of his action. Through the combined effects of Contrapposto Studies, I through VII, Nauman dwells on the history and possibility of representation while elliptically referencing his own biography.
Timothy Rub, the George D. Widener Director and CEO, stated: “Part of what is extraordinary in Nauman’s work is his ability to choreograph with space, movement and sound. The monumental nature of this new work offers an all-encompassing experience that commands our attention and underscores the Museum’s committment to presenting the most exciting art of our time.”
Basualdo added: ”This new work by Nauman is both a video installation and an amazing sound composition. That he has used a foundational moment in the history of Western sculpture to create a rich field of interrelated references, across media as well as time, is a testimony to his status as one of the most important artists working today.”
The installation builds upon the Museum’s deep commitment to the artist. In 2009, the Museum organized a three-site exhibition of his work representing the United States in the 53rd Venice Biennale of 2009 that garnered the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. Following the premiere of Contrapposto Studies, I through VII, the Museum will dedicate one of its permanent collection galleries to a long-term presentation of select works by Nauman.
Support for this exhibition has been provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts, The Daniel W. Dietrich II Fund for Excellence in Contemporary Art, and by Isabel and Agustín Coppel
Concurrent Exhibition:The Sperone Westwater Gallery in New York, which has represented the artist since 1975, will present a complementary new work by Nauman, Contrapposto Studies, i through vii, from September 10 until October 29. Consisting of seven projections with sound, the work reverses the direction of the artist’s movements in Contrapposto Studies, I through VIIas well as the sequence of the individual projections.
What are some other words for summer fun?Tall Ships. Fireworks. Festivals. Beer gardens. Pop-up parks. Philadelphia. This summer will go down as a season of non-stop, pull-out-all-the-stops fun in the city that scored a #3 placement on The New York Times’ influential “52 Places to Go in 2015” list.
As the birthplace of America, Philadelphia knows how to shine. Fireworks blazing over the Philadelphia Museum of Art are a Fourth of July tradition during Philadelphia’s multi-day Wawa Welcome America! bash. Timed perfectly with exhilarating live music, the fireworks paint the skies over the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Credit: Photo by G. Widman for Visit Philadelphia™
Some of the summer highlights include the Tall Ships Philadelphia CamdenFestival; the launch of Indego, Philadelphia’s bike-sharing program; the eagerly awaited return of the acclaimed Spruce Street Harbor Park; and the season-long showing of Discovering the Impressionists: Paul Durand-Ruel and the New Painting at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Add in plenty of pop-up beer gardens and public art displays for an unforgettable Philly summer.
Here’s a look at what’s happening:
New Amenity: Bike Share:
West Philadelphia is one of the most easily traveled areas of the city. People can easily access the neighborhood from Center City via cabs, the Market-Frankford Line (also called “the el” for its elevated section) and one of the nation’s few remaining streetcar networks. The trolleys run from City Hall down Market Street and through University City, with lines servicing the neighborhood’s three main corridors of Lancaster, Baltimore and Woodland Avenues. West Philly also boasts some of the most bicycle-friendly streets in the city, with a network of roughly 25 miles of bike lanes. Credit: Photo by J. Fusco for Visit Philadelphia™
What has 1,200 wheels and runs on pedal power? Indego, Philadelphia’s bike-share program set to launch this spring. The long-awaited human-powered public transportation system launches with 600 bikes available at 60 kiosks in Center City and parts of North, South and West Philadelphia. The easy-to-use system allows riders to rent a bike at one location and drop it off at another. May. Various locations. rideindego.com
Special Events:
2015 marks 100 years for the S. 9th Street Italian Market Charter, but the monthly celebratory events prove that the market itself still boasts a youthful energy. Food is always at the forefront of events here, and hungry visitors can chow down at the annual S. 9th Street Italian Market Festival (May 16-17) and the Vendy Foods Awards Winners Circle Food Truck Event (June 19). Also on the docket are Multicultural Music Monthactivities (July) and thebocce and scopa tournaments(August). 9th Street between Wharton & Fitzwater Streets, (215) 278-2903, italianmarketphilly.org
Always a bustling neighborhood, the Italian Market turns it up a notch during the 9th Street Italian Market Festival in May. Live entertainment and games accompany the mouthwatering cannolis, homemade sausages, imported meats and cheeses, luscious cappuccino, specialty cookware and fresh pastas that have made the market a favorite for visitors and residents alike. Credit: Photo by R. Kennedy for Visit Philadelphia™
Standing directly across the street from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell Center at 6th and Chestnut Streets, this historic marker was erected to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the first Annual Reminder, a demonstration led by gay activists on July 4 from 1965 to 1969. Credit: Photo by K. Ciappa for Visit Philadelphia™
The 50th Anniversary of the Gay Rights Movement kicks off in June with three exhibitions, including the opening ofSpeaking Out for Equality: The Constitution, Gay Rights, and the Supreme Court at the National Constitution Center. Other exhibitions and activities celebrating LGBT culture and heritage are planned for the William Way LGBT Community Center, the Free Library of Philadelphia, The African American Museum in Philadelphia, the Opera Company of Philadelphiaand Taller Puertorriqueño, among others. The celebration’s signature events take place over Fourth of July weekend, with a reenactment of the Reminder Day demonstrations in front of Independence Hall, a wreath-laying ceremony at the historic marker that acknowledges the site of the demonstrations, panel discussions, a festival, concerts and more. June-December.Constitution Center, 525 Arch Street, (215) 409-6700,constitutioncenter.org; various locations for other happenings, reminder2015.org, lgbt50.org
When the Tall Ships Philadelphia Camden pulls into port from June 24-28, 2015, visitors can watch the colorful parade of sail that includes the Gazela (pictured here) and L’Hermione, a replica of the ship that brought General Lafayette to the aid of the fledgling United States during the Revolutionary War, along with many other vessels from around the world. Ships will be docked on both sides of the river at Penn’s Landing and along the Camden Waterfront. Also on tap: live entertainment, hands-on activities and a dazzling fireworks display. Credit: Photo courtesy of Draw Events
The billowing sails of 15 majestic vessels mark the arrival of theTall Ships Philadelphia Camden festival. Docked along both sides of the Delaware River waterfront will be elegant tall ships from France, Brazil, Canada and all around the globe. Visitors can tour the ships, including the L’Hermione, a replica of the French naval ship that brought General Lafayette to America to help fight the British. Also on tap: live entertainment, hands-on activities, games and a spectacular fireworks display to close out the largest sailing event in the United States in 2015. June 25-28. Penn’s Landing, Columbus Boulevard at Walnut Street; Camden Waterfront, tallshipsphiladelphia.com
Pop-Up Parks & Gardens:
The Delaware River Waterfront Corporation’s new Spruce Street Harbor Park offers a summer getaway right in Philly. From June 27 through August 31, visitors can enjoy festivals, concerts and movies on the Great Plaza; relax in one of the giant hammocks in the Hammock Lounge; cool off under the Mist Walk; lounge under an umbrella at the Urban Beach; and indulge in their favorite summer foods and beverages at The Oasis, a series of floating barges accented with a lily pad garden and hang-out area. Credit: Photo by M. Edlow for VISIT PHILADELPHIA™
Following a smashingly successful first season that earned “Best Urban Beach in the World” status from The Huffington Post, Spruce Street Harbor Park returns to Penn’s Landing to brighten up the summer. The hammocks, lounge chairs, oversized games, floating beer garden and twinkling lights all return, along with some new surprises. Opens May 22. Spruce Street at Columbus Boulevard, (215) 629-3200, delawareriverwaterfront.com
Back on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway for its second summer of outdoor fun, The Oval features food, musical performances, movies, mini golf and a beer garden on Wednesday through Saturday nights through August 16. The pop-up park is sandwiched between two spectacular views: the Center City skyline and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Credit: Photo by M. Fischetti for VISIT PHILADELPHIA™
Philadelphia is one of four cities from around the world and the only U.S. city to host Saint-Gobain’s never-before-seen traveling exhibit Future Sensations, a high-concept, immersive experience featuring five distinct ephemeral pavilions. Science, storytelling and art highlight the innovations, wonders and advancements that have changed the face of the world over the past few centuries and show off future innovations. Founded in 1665, Saint-Gobain celebrates 350 years as a world leader in high performance materials and solutions for sustainable building with this epic traveling exhibit, making stops in China, Brazil and France. May 30-June 6. The Oval, 24th Street & Benjamin Franklin Parkway, (215) 422-4169, theovalphl.org, futuresensations.com
BIG NAMES ON THE CALENDAR: BARBARA CHASE-RIBOUD, PHILADANCO, BERRY GORDY AND THE TIBERINO FAMILY
As the fall arts season swings into high gear, culture vultures visiting Philadelphia will find plenty of African-American exhibitions, shows and performances to pack their travel to-do lists. Autumn brings the sculptural works of internationally renowned artist and Philly native Barbara Chase-Riboud to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the multi-medium talents of two generations of the Philadelphia-based Tiberino family to the African American Museum in Philadelphia. The season’s jam-packed arts calendar rounds out with performances by the city’s internationally renowned dance troupe (Philadanco) and the 15th anniversary of an award ceremony that this year honors Berry Gordy (Marian Anderson Award). Here’s a look at the upcoming season:
EXCITING EXHIBITIONS:
Barbara Chase- Riboud, 74, with her work ‘Malcolm X #3,’ 1969
At the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Barbara Chase-Riboud: The Malcolm X Styles presents a comprehensive survey of more than 40 works by the author, sculptor and native Philadelphian. Her first solo museum show in more than 10 years, the exhibit focuses on her Malcolm X styles, which were inspired by her experiences during the Civil Rights movement. Through January 20, 2014. 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, (215) 763-8100, www.philamuseum.org
Black Bodies in Propaganda: The Art of the War Poster
The Penn Museum takes a fascinating look at war propaganda in Black Bodies in Propaganda: The Art of the War Poster. Curated by PBS History Detectives host Tukufu Zuberi, the provocative exhibit presents 33 wartime posters, mostly targeting Africans and African-Americans, from the Civil War, World Wars I and II and African independence movements. Through March 2, 2014. 3260 South Street, (215) 898-4000, www.penn.museum.org
Tides of Freedom: African Presence on the Delaware River launches the Independence Seaport Museum’s “River of Freedom” series with an exploration of the concept of freedom through the lens of the African experience along the Delaware. PBS storyteller Tukufu Zuberi narrates the journey through recently uncovered artifacts from the museum’s collection, gripping first-person accounts and interactive elements, including an ongoing social media discussion encouraged at various points of the exhibition. Through 2015. Penn’s Landing, 211 S. Columbus Boulevard, (215) 413-8655, www.phillyseaport.orgContinue reading →
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