Street Art Voting Link –

Grand Horizons by Bess Wohl Feb 7 – 23 2025 – The Stagecrafters

Free, As One: Black Worldmaking in the Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers
On view February 6, 2025 – May 23, 2025

Solar Flair: Black In Action – February 7 @ 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm – Multiverse
8026 Germantown Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19118

Roberta: Hi everyone, it’s Roberta.

Ryan: And this is Ryan, and this is the Midweek News

Roberta: On Artblog Radio. So, good morning, Ryan.

Ryan: Good morning, Roberta. How are you feeling today?

Roberta: Like I’ve had a cold for the last month and a half. That’s the winter. I think it does a number on your sinuses. I’m not really pleased, but you just buy stock in Puffs or Kleenex, whichever company you prefer and it’ll be fine.

Ryan: Yeah. And I supplement like vitamin D and vitamin C and other things and still it’s…the winters are difficult times.

Roberta: Speaking of vitamins. Do we go down this path for just a brief moment?

Ryan: Sure.

Roberta: I’ve been taking one maintenance hormone I guess it is, or supplement for like 30 years and someone mentioned to me who is also taking it that, I should just say it’s Synthroid for a thyroid condition. So it’s nothing really horrible and it’s small dosage. And this person said to me, ‘Oh, you know, you’re not supposed to have your vitamins until four hours after you take your Synthroid.’ And I said, ‘What? You’re kidding. It sounded like an old wives tale to me. And then I went home and I looked at the bottle, the Synthroid bottle, and sure enough. In the very tiny print on the bottle, it says, do not take your vitamins or mineral supplements until four hours after taking Synthroid!

Ryan: Yeah. My mother takes that too actually. And her doctor said specifically things like iron and calcium. For up uptake.

Roberta: Yeah. Okay. Well, the things you learn! People communicating with you. It was really wonderful to get this information from a person and then verify it.

Ryan: Yeah, it is interesting. I feel like there was something else I learned. Oh, a friend. A friend who is in her mid-thirties, so, like grown up well enough to know better, was, was surprised to learn what pickles are made of. And I thought that’s such a funny thing to learn what pickles are made of. It’s like, are you surprised? What raisins are made of? I mean, maybe, I guess we don’t really talk about it. We just think they’re their own stand-alone vegetable or fruit or whatever.

They’re not related to anything else.

Roberta: I don’t know. I mean, you look at a pickle, it looks like a cucumber. How can you not figure out that it’s made from a cucumber?

Ryan: Well, I mean like baby carrots, you think that there’s some sort of subset variety.

Roberta: Oh, a lot of smart people thought that when baby carrots first came on the scene and had to be told that no, it’s not baby carrots, it’s a misnomer, it’s carrots that have been whittled down to the shape of a baby carrot because they’re probably the dregs of the carrot crop.

Ryan: Right? Yeah. It’s not, it’s not an intelligence question at all. It’s not presumptively smart,

Roberta: Yeah.

Ryan: It’s just one of those things in our world that are strange and funny. Yeah.

Roberta: Well, you make up stories. I don’t know about other people, but I certainly make up stories about the world and you embrace them because you’ve made them up.

And it’s only when someone tells you otherwise and you look it up that you see that your story is a bunch of hooey, but it worked for you for many years, so you just keep on embracing it.

Ryan: Yeah. And such a small thing too. You probably don’t think a lot of it, so no, that’s true. Move right along.

Roberta: I see that your friend spends a lot of time thinking about pickles, right?

Ryan: Yeah. It’s not one of those regular things that you’re thinking about or scrutinizing considering, so it’s not an area that you need to expand in.

Roberta: Yeah, true. So I’m reading a new book, Ryan.

Ryan: What’s that called?

Roberta: Bewilderment (2021) by Richard Powers. He wrote The Overstory, (2018) which is a climate (cli-fi), climate fiction, apocalyptic climate fiction book, which was very popular.

And this, I think post dates that earlier book. The story revolves around a family with a child who’s very bright but on the spectrum, like has behavioral issues, and ultimately, about the single parent who’s raising him after the devastating loss of the other parent. And it’s a ride. It took me a while to get into the back and forth between the father and the very disruptive son, but the son goes through some sort of experimental neurological training, digital neuroscience, (not sure it’s science or a science fiction). It’s kind of science fiction-y where the boy trains his brain with someone else’s neural responses to stimuli. The training is on a computer and maybe hooked up to MRI machine, and there are readouts on a computer. The idea is to make his brain comport with the brain of his mother, whose seratonin levewls were off the charts. She was a joyful person and that was captured in the experimental neuro-data, and her son’s therapy seeks to have him match her levels of positive emotion.

It’s a therapy that helps him, but it’s experimental. And so the father is very worried. He takes his son to the therapy session not knowing what’s going to happen. As a result is he turning his child into some sort of robot? But the child turns out to be a wonderful character, and I would recommend this book.

It’s a good one. It’s fiction, but it is obviously set in contemporary times. Well, not obviously, but it is set in contemporary times, I think during the first Trump administration, because there’s a lot of stuff that takes place that involves science cuts. Funding cutbacks and Christian nationalism on the rise and all that sort of thing, and a despotic president never named. Right. We get the picture. The book is set in Madison, WI. ’cause the father is an academic, an astrobiologist at the University of Wisconsin.

Ryan: Astrobiology. That’s interesting.

Roberta: Yes. He’s in search of life on other planets. So this went really well with my just finishing the reading of the Three-Body Problem Trilogy.

Ryan: Oh yeah? You’re keeping it sci-fi, huh?

Roberta: Yes, I’m keeping it sci-fi.

Ryan: The Overstory book won the Pulitzer, looks like Bewilderment was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Roberta: Bewilderment. It’s a 2021 book. Anyway, I’m almost done. The author must be a man of a certain age because the other book, The Overstory, is not as contemporary. It’s a number of years old.

Ryan: I guess he’s won two Pulitzer Prizes (actually one, for The Overstory, but many other books of his have won prestigious award. He himself is a MacArthur Fellow).

Roberta: Wow.

Ryan: Yeah. Wow. Indeed.

Roberta: I have 1, 2, 3 things today, so we’ll see if we can keep it to that. First one is, an activist call from Carmen Febo San Miguel, the former executive director of Taller Puertorriqueño. Apparently, there is a Senate Bill Number 273 that is going to transfer the responsibility of Puerto Puerto Rico’s cultural and historic assets out of the institute for Cultural Heritage (ICP) to the Department of Economic Development and Commerce.

Now if this sounds bad to you, it’s because it’s bad. You know, arts and cultures should be managed by arts and culture organizations, not by economic development or commerce. Sounds one step away from cutting it, right? Just cutting it out.

So there is a link to a form that you can. (Sign the letter here – https://form.jotform.com/250296704167157) Sign on to the letter that you’re in agreement that this Senate Bill 273 is bad and should be voted down. The Cultural Institute in Puerto Rico was founded in 1955 and has been central to preserving Puerto Rican heritage through the arts, historic preservation, language, archeology, and more so it would be undermining Puerto Rico’s cultural identity. It’s an urgent matter. So I pass this along. I signed the letter. It seemed to me a no-brainer to just go ahead and sign on to support.

Second, we were contacted by Michelle Lyu, who is a writer and photographer living in Philadelphia and a member of the Saturday Free School for Philosophy and Black Liberation.

Do you know of that? I was unfamiliar with it, but she said to me, they have published an article about Alfie Pollett. Alfie Pollett is a master of the Philly Sound. And so that is in the most recent issue of Avant-Garde, which is their Philadelphia-based journal published by the Free School. This issue of the journal is dedicated to the revolutionary James Baldwin. So I pass this along, we’ll have a link to this. The article looks really fantastic. And congratulations to the Saturday Free School for doing all this good work.

Then lastly, I want to talk about the survey news. There’s always a lot of asking you to be on surveys and survey results being produced.

I know that GPCA Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance has a call for you to participate in a (correction: has released a new survey database about arts and culture in Philadelphia. Councilwoman Rue Landau did a survey open to the arts community last fall after the University of the Arts closed and crashed. And her office has just released the results. There were 354 people who responded, which is a rather small turnout. But we’ll put the link to the results. There’s an article by Peter Crimmins on WHYY today. The results point out that artists are worried. I think the basic thrust of any survey that’s taking the pulse of the arts community in Philadelphia is going to find that people are worried, artists are worried, they’re worried about food prices, housing prices, studio, you know, jobs, et cetera. What is not to worry about?

It’s all there to worry about because the times are very, very precarious right now. Finally, there’s a Drexel University Master’s student. I love it when the students write in. Her name is Josie Sepel, and she would like your input on her survey. She’s working as a grad student at Drexel University’s Urban Strategy Program.

She’s focused on arts-based workforce developments and opportunities for young people. If you’re an artist, if you have experience with the job market, if you’re going into the job market as a young person, she would love to have your input on her survey. So go survey crazy and answer all of them, or pick and choose what you’d like to participate in.

I think it’s important. One of the important things about survey data is that they keep the arts on the front page when the results are released. Whatever the results are, they’re going to be covered. And so you can take survey data with a grain of salt or not. It’s just a good thing that these surveys are being done and that’s what I think.

That’s it for me. Ryan, over to you.

Ryan: Yeah, great list. Also for news, I wanted to say that there’s still the USA Today Reader’s Choice Awards to help name the best city for street art in the country. They have a link to vote for that. And so we’ll put that in the notes that’s open through February 17th, your vote in it for that. (See link in the list at the top)

And obviously, Philadelphia has been nominated among 20 other cities in the country.

Roberta: Who else is in competition with us

Ryan: on the leaderboard here? Cincinnati was high. Jackson, Tennessee, which I’m not sure where Jackson, Tennessee is. Detroit, Michigan, St. Petersburg, Florida, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Interesting group.

Roberta: Not places that come to mind as big on street art.

Ryan: No. Cincinnati I’ve heard, but I’ve, I’ve only been there once for a conference. Didn’t spend any time really looking at murals, but apparently they have like 300 murals in the city, which is quite a bit for that size of town.

Roberta: I think they have a good arts program there. There’s art schools that are very well respected and there’s the contemporary art museum there. There’s, I think there’s a lot of art in Cincinnati,

Ryan: But I, I just didn’t really think of it as the street art community. Miami’s on the list. I’ve seen plenty of street art in Miami.

One city that I saw a lot of street art and a lot of interactive stuff was San Antonio. One time I went there, it was like a graffiti artist tagging competition. So they each got their own panel and they did it in this cool little neighborhood, you just kind of walked around, see people at work, and then they compared it at the end of the day and they hung them up and different businesses were involved in that.

It was really interesting. I’d love to see that in Philly. It would be a lot of fun. Things like that were really cool, but they, they’re not in the top 20. I’m not sure they were even nominated.

So let’s get into my top three. So obviously Lunar New Year was last week, and now we’re getting into February and it is Black History Month. So there’s a couple on my list in that vein. There’s a couple that I’ve mentioned as well previously. So I won’t repeat those necessarily. Also, this is first Friday as well, so keep that in mind.

So there’ll be a lot of of those events open. A bunch of galleries have their listings up on ArtblogConnect. So if you want to see specific openings for this Friday, have a look at that. There are ongoing shows that opened late in January as well. That will again be open for our first Friday, but won’t necessarily be their opening openings.

So take a look. There are a couple shows that I wanted to point out specifically, and there’s a couple that are up in the Germantown neighborhood, my neighborhood, which I think is interesting. But one show that I wanted to mention was Free as One: Black World Making in the Pennsylvania Abolition Society Papers. (see link at the top)

This is a show that opens on the sixth (of February). It highlights themes of Black self-determination and leadership from the 1770s onwards in abolition movements. I think that will be a really interesting show. It kind of made me think about when I was at the Native American museum in, in D.C., and you know, you get into this perspective like you know certain things and then you’re like, ‘Oh man, I know, like a sliver of everything there is to know about it.’

Free as One is at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, but I think it could be really interesting with a lot of documents worth seeing that is running from February 6th through May 23rd. So it’s going to be ongoing. Another show I wanted to mention is Solar Flare Black in Action. At Multiverse Hub in on Germantown Ave, that is an Action Hero display.

That is, original action figures. That’ll be on display at Multiverse. They’re also going to do a live podcast recording. Looks like a lot of fun. That’s on February 7th from 6 to 7:30 PM. It’s free, but the the space is kind of small, so if you want to go check in with them, see if there’s RSVP for that.

I’ll put links in there for that. That’s already up on Connect as well. If you want to see that. That’s Solar Flare, Black in Action, February 7th at the Multiverse. Then my theater pick is up at Stage Crafters as well. So it’s like the same neighborhood as Multiverse. So I guess these are all like Mount Airy, Chestnut Hill things.

Stage Crafters is putting on Grand Horizons by Bess Wohl. That is a play that basically is about a couple who have been together for 50 years and just said they want to have a divorce after 50 years. So it’s, you know, it’s a bit Neil Simon in that way. If you are interested, it has a supporting cast.

It was nominated for Tony’s. There’s a great write up in the New York Times by Jesse Green about that, who I also want to mention. Jesse Green was also part of the Free Library Author Events. They did an interview with Jesse Green, which was a lot of fun. I’m glad they’re back to doing author series, even if they are virtual. (Note: Not all author events are virtual. Some are live in the Free Library Montgomery Auditorium)

So yeah, those are my three picks for the week. Again, that’s Grand Horizons by Bess Wohl. That’s at Stage Crafters, and that is running February 7th through the 23rd.

Roberta: So did you see Jesse Green? Were you there?

Ryan: Yeah. It was a virtual conversation with him. Yeah, it was really good.

Roberta: Explain who he is.

Ryan: He writes for the New York Times. He’s their chief theater critic. He’s been doing that for quite some time. I enjoy what he says and I like the way that he comes about thinking about theater and thinking about how to…particularly the way he gives a negative review.

I wouldn’t say he gives it sensitively or whatever, but I feel like he does aim to blame. Well, so he says, I think in the interview he said that it’s almost never the actor’s fault, that it’s almost always the writers, directors, producers, whoever’s putting it on, and it’s just the actors are going along with whatever they’ve been told that needs to be done.

They’re giving it the best they can. I think that’s, I think that’s a fair thing to say. That’s kind of my experience too, because that’s one thing when I think about theater and I see a show that’s fine, but it that has so many flaws. You, you’re kind of distracted and you lose the points.

Or, it’s interesting when a show is okay, but so much of the production value is so high that it brings it up on so many levels, even if the acting is so so, the show could be really well done because of all the things that surround it. So it is interesting in that way that it’s not necessarily make or break with the acting, but quite certainly the production crew matters significantly in theater.

Roberta: Sure.

Ryan: How do you write the critique? Is often that thing.

Roberta: It’s complicated. You have movement and voice.

Ryan: Yeah.

Roberta: Words, the decorations, the background, the props. The lighting. It’s a very complex art.

Ryan: It is, and you want to, you want to be honest about what you’re experiencing with the show, but you also don’t really want to destroy someone at the same time.

Because these are, these are living, breathing humans. They’re artists. They’re going to be particularly oversensitive about certain things. But at the same time. You, you see it, how you see it as well. And your experience is yours. So it’s, it’s interesting to hear his commentary and he said, the one thing I don’t want to be is boring, which I totally get.

Don’t want to be boring.

Roberta: Absolutely. I don’t think people go to reviews to be bored. .

Ryan: No,

Roberta: I. They go to learn something and they go to be entertained. I think a good review should entertain you.

Ryan: Yeah, I think so. I think so too. And he has some comments too about reading critics that he didn’t necessarily agree with and talking about how he would read different reviewers and get different opinions and he wouldn’t necessarily agree with what they were talking about or how they approach the world.

He was talking about John Simon, who he described as blatantly misogynistic and racist, homophobic. And this is from a gay Jewish man. So you can take that and understand where he is coming from. And so you have this person who is openly misogynistic, racist, homophobic, but is an excellent writer.

Right? So you don’t necessarily try to separate the two. But the way that Jesse Greene describes it is he uses critics like John Simon to triangulate his own views and perspective, which I appreciated because you can look at someone’s writing and say, ‘Oh, well, I don’t subscribe to these types of things, but this writing is very good and engaging, and I’m not bored in any way, and I can get a sense of the work itself.’

He described it as a triangulation. He could identify where he sat in the art and in the work. So itnhelped him figure out his own taste. Interesting. I thought that was really good.

Roberta: I never read other people’s reviews before I’m writing about something. I just don’t want to read them. I might read them afterwards. But I never go there beforehand.

Ryan: Sure. I’m regularly looking to improve my reviews and so much of them feel like news as opposed to a review. I think kinda like you and I have talked about where people are more interested in interviewing, everything’s an interview as opposed to a criticism or a review like really getting into the muck of it and I think I’d rather, I’m inclined towards getting into the muck of it, but being and doing it in a really solid way that helps people get the most out of it as well. And, and maybe even benefit, I’d love it to be beneficial to whoever worked on the whatever I’m reviewing in the first place. So that’s my goal.

And to not be boring could be interesting.

Roberta: Right. Yeah.

Ryan: I’m going to see a show, some shows this week. There’s, there’s so many things going on. I mean, I give you three, but ArtblogConnect’s got 50 for the next two weeks, so there’s so many things to do. There’s so many things to see.

Thinking of Shakespeare, I was thinking about how much Shakespeare have I seen this year So far? So far none. And, but it’s only February. But Villanova has one. They have King Lear happening. So I was like, ‘Oh, do I start my year off with Lear?’ I don’t know. maybe, maybe could be interesting. Anyway, that’s on Connect.

Take a look if you want. King Lear at Villanova.

Roberta: Oh, there’s a lot of good theater in this town.

Ryan: Yeah, there is a lot of good theater and hopefully UArts’s demise and those kind of things don’t throw things off that way. I am hopeful that people continue to go see theater and continue to support their local art.

And you’ll see me out there and you can tell me what a great job or a terrible job or something in between. So. Come find me. I’m around.

Roberta: Today, we’re speaking to a class. I guess we could mention that — at Moore College. They’re students of Chenoa Baker in her, I think, critical writing class, and they’re going to be doing some writing and Artblog will be selecting some of their works to put on the blog, so you can look forward to some of those student writings coming along in the next month or so.

We’re looking forward to working with the students. We’ve done this historically with Moore college in the past and with other interns and students from other schools. It’s sort of what we do is help young people who, as we say, are the arts writers of the future. To sort of get in a groove, get some experience writing about art.

Ryan: Yeah. Looking forward to that.

Roberta: Me too. I guess we could also go through what’s coming up on Artblog content-wise. Other content we have, we’ve mentioned this before. Lane Spiedel will be writing about Carl Cheng at the ICA. Looking forward to that. Pete Sparber has been interviewing a lot of the arts leaders in the alternative community for a lengthy interview coming up. He is trying to take the pulse of the art community, talking to the leadership and seeing what they think. Logan Crier is beginning a series of podcast interviews and other interviews this year. Those will be really wonderful. UV Lucas is the first one coming up soon that’s in process.

Logan recently wrote about Anne Minich at Commonweal. Oh, Matthew Rose, our Paris correspondent, wrote a really wonderful piece about the color gold. You know, who loves gold better than any other color, gold in art, and what does a golden age mean? And have we really ever had a golden age? And if so, is this a golden age? It’s a yarn and he backs it up with all kinds of historical information.

It’s a good read. I can’t wait to get it up. You’ll enjoy it.

Ryan: That sounds fun. And also, it’s the first of the month, so the comics are coming up too. So our comic followers stay tuned for those. Those are coming shortly.

Roberta: Yep. Thanks everybody for listening. This is Roberta signing off. See you next time.

Ryan: And this is Ryan and this has been Artblog’s, Midweek News.

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

Roberta: Bye-Bye.