These meetings have become the bloody battleground between a City Council that supports billboards, and a public that passionately opposes them. The Art Commission has come to bear this undue responsibility, to rule on each proposal on a case-by-case basis. While Council sees East Market Street becoming the “Times Square of Philadelphia,” the path to get there has been a drip-drip of a leaky faucet, with each new proposal drawing intense criticism. But as long the law supports it, the Commission will continue to be the stage of this fight.
Read MoreAnd perhaps this last is one of the most significant points the exhibition makes: despite an international interest in the commercial vernacular and the visual impact of the media, the works in the exhibition can only be truly understood within the cultures that produced them. This leaves serious viewers with the realization that the information in many of the introductory labels is insufficient background for a real understanding of the art and how it functioned in its native territory.
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