November 2006 Archive

Gallery Joe

Ink Blot Drawing, 12/26/1996Ink on paper21 7/8 x 16 ½ inchesimage provided by Gallery Joe What is Bruce Conner doing in an exhibit with Jacob El Hanani and Mark Lombardi? I ask myself, as I walk into Gallery Joe. Conner, who is in his 70s, is a trickster of an artist, a guy who likes to play games of all sorts with the art world–like refusing to sign his pieces and then telling his gallerist to forge the signature. He’s the guy whose “Bombhead,” an exploding head above a military jacket, was in the Big Nothing at the ICA. According ... More » »

Gross grosses and Gross buttons

The grosses: The Philadelphia Inquirer reported this morning on that the fundraising effort for the Gross Clinic reached 1/3 of its goal!!! whoohoo The buttons: I also got this email from artist Patrick Connors: You can show your support for the efforts to keep Eakins “The Gross Clinic” here in Philadelphia by purchasing a button for $2.00. The buttons read “Keep Gross in Philadelphia,” and the proceeds will be donated to the Eakins Fund listed below. Buttons will be available starting Sunday from Charles Cushing, Stanley Bielen, or myself. If you cannot attend Sunday and wish to purchase a button ... More » »

First Friday preview: Moveable feasts

The Gilbert Building aflame in Purified by Fire, Matthew Suib’s video installation there last month. The lights are going dim soon at the Gilbert Building, home of the Fabric Workshop, Vox Populi, and more. And Nexus has been forced to vacate its long-time Old City space. In the spirit of partying while Rome burns, these places are offering First Friday parties, to mark final shows and optimistic beginnings. Here’s the scoop: A Fab Farewell They’re going to need a hell of a big U-Haul to move all the art that’s part of the Fabric Workshop and Museum collection. Never mind; ... More » »

More support for Gross Clinic–a gallery pitches in!

Cerulean Arts is donating 5 percent of December sales to to save “The Gross Clinic.” The tiny gallery, in case you missed Roberta’s post, recently opened with an impressive first show. Here’s what galleriests Michael Kowbuz and Tina Rocha wrote us: We’ve been following the controversy over the sale of Eakins’ The Gross Clinic along with the rest of Philadelphia for the last few weeks. Although we’re a small gallery & have just opened, we feel obligated to do something. We have such strong ties to PAFA (Mike is Director of Continuing Education, faculty member & MFA graduate & I ... More » »

Weekly Update – Inter_Logical Landscapes at Drexel

Hi there, I’m back. This week’s Weekly has my review of Drexel University’s Inter_Logic. Below is the copy with pictures and here’s the link to the art page. Never Mind the Pollocks“Inter_Logic” asks: Where’s Waldo today? “Inter_Logic” at Drexel’s Pearlstein Gallery is an ambitious group show questioning the meaning of landscape today. Since many of us get our landscape served up photographically and digitally enhanced, “how green is my valley” takes on new meaning. Lee Arnold Alpinia, a rock-candy mountain-scape that’s more threatening than it looks. The six artists in this exhibit—three local, two from New York and one from ... More » »

Next Eakins event–act now!

Email from Patrick Connors Once again, thanks to everyone for coming out and supporting the Philadelphia regional arts community efforts to keep Eakins’ “The Gross Clinic” here in Philadelphia. To this end we are dedicated to making the general public aware of the magnitude of this masterpiece and how crucial that it remains here. Philadelphia continues to be a city with a long and noble tradition in being “an artist’s town.”Let’s meet next week, Sunday 3rd December, at The Philadelphia Art Museum at the base of the stairs across from the Eakins Oval at 11 AM-Noon. Afterwards, go visit the ... More » »

Gross Clinic: A plea for money

A mass email from Sandy Smith Hello again, everyone: I’m sure that all of you who live in the Philadelphia area, and even many of you who live outside it, have by now heard about the secretly arranged sale of Thomas Eakins’ painting “The Gross Clinic,” arguably the greatest American painting of the 19th century, to the Walton family’s planned tourist magnet museum in Bentonville, Ark., by its current owner, Thomas Jefferson University. The terms of the sale give local institutions 45 days — until Dec. 11 [sic. it's Dec. 26] — to match the agreed-upon sale price of $68 ... More » »

Exhibits offer bilingual treasures for the eye–and palate

Post by Andrea Kirsh First, Tesoros at the Art Museum Asiel Timor Dei, Artist/maker unknown (Bolivian), c. 1680. Oil on canvas, 160.5 x 110.5 cm. Museo Nacional De Arte La Paz, Bolivia. (Museum publicity shot) Tesoros, the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s survey of the merging of Spanish and indigenous visual traditions in the art of colonial Latin America is big and splashy and expensive (free for museum members but $20 for others, $17 for seniors and students; on Phillyfunguide.org you can find half-price tickets for selected times). Paintings of archangels carrying muskets (the seventeenth-century equivalent of semiautomatics) are only some ... More » »

Negro Leagues memorial–sculpture, mural, and green space

Philadelphia Stars Memorial Park, landscape designed by Synterra, Ltd. While we’re on the subject of murals and public art and taste, the Negro Leagues baseball monument, which includes a sculpture, a mural and a pair of green plazas has been catching my eye each time I drive by 44th and Parkside on my way to points north of West Philadelphia. The monument, which went up this past year, is where the Philadelphia Stars ballpark used to be, at 44th and Parkside. The Stars played there from 1933 to 1952. A list of all the Negro League teams of the time ... More » »

Mural Arts Program redux

Book Review by Andrea Kirsh Cover of More Philadelphia Murals and the Stories They Tell The Philadelphia Mural Arts Program (MAP) has come out with a second, fully-illustrated book: More Philadelphia Murals and the Stories They Tell ( by Jane Golden et al, published by Temple University Press; available here ). The program is justly proud of its more than two decades of work which has covered more than 2600 walls in Philadelphia. Its success reflects a clarity of purpose highly unusual among public art programs. It began under the auspices of an anti-graffiti program when Jane Golden, the artist ... More » »