Midweek News, $700k PCF boost, Library Company history review, Porchfest, Calder Gardens and much more

Roberta: Hi everyone, it’s Roberta.

Ryan: And this is Ryan and this is the midweek news

Roberta: on Artblog radio. And how are you?

Ryan: I am fine. A bit frazzled today. It’s, it’s like a little bit of getting going. I think the rain seems to just have this weird effect so

Roberta: horrific. It’s like, I mean, I’m moving.

Ryan: It just seems like. It’s hard to coerce everyone else into the same sort of locomotion,

Roberta: and then your house becomes a cave.

You know, it’s very cave like the rain. It’s like you don’t want to go outside. It’s all there and it’s dark in your house. You have to turn the lights on. Not a fan, not a fan.

Ryan: But yeah, otherwise it’s, it’s been good. It’s been a positive week. Good. So things are moving along though. The rain has kind of hampered, the bike practice has been canceled because of the weather.

Roberta: That’s a bummer. because I’m sure the kids miss that. Right? This is with your kids up in Kensington High.

Ryan: Yeah. They really look forward to it. It really is a nice outlet where it’s a lot of physicality without a lot of, you know, too much strain

Roberta: or too many adults saying, don’t do this, don’t do that.

Ryan: And without being like overly programmed or working towards a game necessarily, but. It’s just like a a lot of fun. Coming out riding bikes with your friends is a lot of fun. Memorial Weekend is upon us.

Roberta: Yeah. What are you doing? Anything?

Ryan: Yeah, I’m going to go visit family in Baltimore.

Roberta: Oh, nice. I love Baltimore.

I mean, I love Philly, but I like Baltimore a lot. It’s a great city.

Ryan: So we’ll get together down there and I guess they’re going to. Have a barbecue, which I don’t know what vegetarian barbecue, so Oh,

Roberta: vegetables,

Ryan: I guess.

Roberta: Corn.

Ryan: Barbecue kinda has that. It’s going to have a very specific barbecue flavor as opposed to turning on a grill or something.

Roberta: Yeah. Well, charcoal, I mean, guess,

Ryan: yeah. This weekend looking at different events that were happening, it’s pretty memorial focused and whatever. It’s kind of an interesting holiday.

Roberta: What are we memorializing exactly? Is it all the soldiers of all the wars that have. Fought?

Ryan: I think so. Yeah.

Memorializing the past. Yeah. Wars. It’s interesting that we do continue to celebrate the war. I mean, we have Veterans’ Day, which I think is an important day. And then memorializing

Roberta: the veterans,

Ryan: which is what Veterans Day is for. Is it not?

Roberta: Oh, when is Veterans Day? I’m getting confused. We got a flag day. We got

Ryan: right.

Roberta: Native American Day now. Used to be Columbus Day. Yeah. Memorial Day, labor Day and Veterans Day. When is Veterans Day? You’re not hearing historians talking here this morning. That’s sure. Yeah. The 11th of

Ryan: November. 11th

Roberta: of November is Veterans Day. Yeah. Stay

Ryan: tuned.

Roberta: I think that’s about World War ii. I think that coincides with the signing of the Peace Treaty for World War ii.

Ryan: Yeah. Well, most of the, you know, a lot of these holidays came after World War II anyway. Right? If you think about it,

Roberta: yes, it’s true.

Ryan: Memorial Day is, later holiday. So

Roberta: yes,

Ryan: I’m not sure when the first Veteran’s Day was.

Roberta: Probably after World War I, I don’t think anybody was celebrating anything after the Civil War, just celebrating it was over.

You know? Alright. So let me see. I’ve got a, a hodgepodge of interesting things that I want to call people’s attention to. First off, I got notice from the cultural fund. That city council has added $700,000 to the Philadelphia Cultural Fund budget this fiscal year. That’s unprecedented for them to get additional money like that.

It is earmarked, however, and it was earmarked for certain groups. Council members invited to apply for the funding. Congratulations to PCF and to all of these organizations. There’s something called. And there’s like a dozen of them. The Black Male Community Council, carpenters Hall. That sounds like a historic site. Fiesta Schoolyards. A lot of these I’ve never heard of Global Philadelphia. I think I’ve heard of Greater Philadelphia Health Action Inc. Heights, Philly Historic Society of Philadelphia. Kimmel Center Project. No. Name Pops. Philadelphia Orchestra. I mean. You have to wonder about this. Philly Hoops, please touch Museum Sickle Cell Association, St.

Christopher’s Hospital, and the Attic Youth Center. So congratulations to all those organizations that are going to be getting new funding or additional funding through the generosity of the city council, which added $700,000 to the PCF budget.

Ryan: Is there a breakdown of how that money is? Allocated there was.

Okay. Yeah. I’ll be curious. And I believe

Roberta: $25,000 is kind of on the low end of things up to, I don’t know what was the high end, but so it’s substantial money. Anyway, that that means there’s some movement on the budget and which has not been written about in the newspaper. No.

Ryan: And

Roberta: so they’re behind the scenes doing the wheeling and dealing, and I guess they’re coming to closure soon if this has actually been announced as a thing that has been added to the PCF budget, so.

Coming soon. Your Philadelphia budget. Yeah, to your airwaves. Great. Secondly, I want to talk about the library company. The library company is one of these founded by Benjamin Franklin in the day of Benjamin Franklin, and they have a wonderful new exhibition funded by Pew, in part called Beyond Glass Cases.

Community oriented and involved and engaged project to look at what they have in their collection and say, what are we missing? What’s not in here? What should we collect in the future? Who owns what goes in the glass cases and who put it there to begin with? So it’s a really very worthwhile thing for them to look at as a collecting institution of historical documents.

They’re having a focus group on June 14th that you are all invited to. There’s an RSVP. Not tickets required, but they would like to let you know if you’re coming. So we’ll put that link into the, into the post. The moderator for this focus group is Eric March, one of our good friends from the NICE program at WHYY.

Eric is a community engagement expert. He’s. Phenomenal at getting people to talk and talk together. So it would be a wonderful place to come and talk about this important issue of whose history is it, who’s collecting it, how can we access it, and how can we do better? Also, and this is interesting, they have a hotline.

A phone hotline where if you want to give them anonymous feedback, you can just call up the hotline and you can record your statement for them no questions asked and you just, you know, say what’s on your mind. So I, I thought that was really a wonderful outreach, sort of, that they were doing to the community.

And I hope people go to the focus group. I think I will go to the focus group. I would like to be there. Okay. Another thing. You’ve probably heard, if you look at Artblog at all, you know that Cindy Stockton Moore, one of our writers, just wrote a very nice appreciation of Brendan Fernandez and his work.

Brendan is a multidisciplinary artist. He current, he was in residence at the Fabric Workshop and Museum. He uses dance and movement in his pieces as well as he creates sculptural objects. He in his residency, created some costumes and he’s he’s got dancers, movements, people who are going to perform some dances, and they’ve just announced the tickets are available.

They’re free, and it’s for the weekend of June 6th, seventh, and eighth. Put in a link to Cindy’s post so you can read it. His subject matter is migratory Nomadic Populations, which is very topical for today. So it should be really good. And there’s some nice photos of works that he’s done in the past that you can see in Cindy’s post.

Something that you may or may not be familiar with is the Calder Gardens is opening September 21st, so that’s a big thing We’ll put in links to the site. They already said you can subscribe to their newsletter and their mailing list. And become a member. So if you’re excited about that, and this is going to be a horticulture forward museum.

So I think hanging gardens and hanging sculpture and inside, outside architecture, I think it, it sounds, and it looks like it’s good. The last thing I want to mention is something I saw in The Guardian this morning. And they were talking in The Guardian. There was a piece about the Khan Film Festival, which is on right now.

There’s been a lot of stories about good movies coming out, and this is a movie that is also a video game and they’re working with the Royal Shakespearean Company. To rest restage something. They’re calling Lili, LILI, and it’s basically Macbeth. The story of leading that Beth. And it’s a game kind of thing.

So you participate in it, you go in, I don’t know how it works exactly, but it reminded me that on video now there’s another game video togetherness in the last of us. It’s called Last of US, Which was a game to begin with, and then they, I don’t know who did it, I think it’s on HBO, turned it into this multi-season series.

Ryan: Interesting

Roberta: Following the game.

Ryan: Yeah. Interesting.

Roberta: Yeah, so I thought this was a very unusual use of Shakespeare and one of these spokespeople said, well, if Shakespeare were alive today, he’d be writing for games.

Ryan: Okay. What

Roberta: do you think of that, Ryan?

Ryan: I think people like to quote anybody you what they want for their own purposes.

It’s like Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King was, has been used on any political position you could possibly think of. I’m sure the Klan has used him repeatedly for their interests to, you know, to say that he supports their activities. So, I mean, he could use it for whatever you want. Would they come back?

No, I, they’re far more independent thinking than they like to get. Credit for,

Roberta: Anyway, that, that wraps it up for me.

Ryan: Great. One opportunity that came that I, that I noticed was that we, we’ve talked about it before, but there was a call for artists to provide art at City Hall is the Creative Philadelphia Council member the LGBT portraits, they want to have Ruland, Ruland is doing this.

And so. Her offices is still accepting calls or or submissions until May 25th, so you have a few more days to get yours in. We talked about that before, but I thought I would mention it again.

Roberta: And it’s LGBTQ-themed art.

Ryan: It is. Okay. Sounds great. Yeah, I think so too. This will be all on display in the council member members fifth floor office, and hopefully it will spill out and.

Vibe, other vibes.

Roberta: Okay. Yeah. Between Pride Week. So this is not part of the Art and City Hall, it’s not in the glass cases?

Ryan: Correct.

Roberta: It’s just going to be in Rolando’s offices. Okay. Yeah,

Ryan: so we’ll, we’ll see what other out outlets she has planned for that. But you know, it’s an, it is an interesting thing. Anyway, I wanted to mention that, because that’s this week.

So if it’s on your radar, so my three things coming up, obviously it’s Memorial Day. Memorial Weekend. So many people are traveling, so be cautious, aware of that. And then a lot of the historical focused museums and institutes are going to be open. Many of them are going to be free this weekend. Like the Constitution Center will be free this weekend.

So if that is of your alley, take a look at that, but focus more on things that are, that I’m interested in this weekend. But the following is Porch Fest. So it’s the West Philly Porch Fest that’s running from noon to 6:00 PM Some will linger past that, so find yourself a nice porch. Comfy shoes.

Hopefully it doesn’t rain. And that should be on. There’s also the Arts League is doing an ice cream, free ice cream fundraiser. So you buy yourself the mug or the cup, whatever. The bowl. The bowl, and then you get the free ice cream. So something, something nice to consider too, if it’s a beautiful day for that May 31st.

Roberta: May 31st. Okay. Saturday,

Ryan: Saturday, May 31st from noon to six. Yeah. You

Roberta: could take a stroll around West Philly.

Ryan: Yeah. And listen to all the music. And you know, the, the genres vary from folk to I. Last year I saw a noise group. Playing like across the street. Oh, it was interesting. Interesting.

Clash or

Roberta: I hope they played alternatively and didn’t try to play over each other. They didn’t play over

Ryan: each other, but it, it was wild. Great

Roberta: call and response.

Ryan: Could have been. That’d have been interesting. Yeah, that would’ve been interesting. Something else that I popped up that I thought was interesting and maybe particularly appropriate as us, I’m thinking maybe I say this a lot, but Roman University Art Gallery and Museum.

Is in partnership with the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and they are presenting artists as activists coming up the first week of June. And these are it’s a show that has a. That is juried. So there are quite a few different feature artists that have been juried. I think the, the jurors are interesting.

It’s Dr. Brittany Webb from PFA, who we’ve, who we’ve interviewed a couple times and talked to about a couple different works that they brought in. And then DJ Duckett. Who is the curator? Director at African American Museum in Philadelphia.

Roberta: Power jurors.

Ryan: Yeah. Really interesting. So, so I think because the jus so I think this show could just be a whatever show, but based on those jurors.

I think the work is going to be really interesting. This is coming up on the opening reception is June 7th from four to 7:00 PM the show is free to attend. The opening reception is free to attend, but it’s an RSVP. Let them know you’re coming sort of deal again, and we’ll have links to that as well in the show notes.

And then my theater pick of the week is End Links. And End Links is running for just a few more weeks, and then it’s ending. I don’t know if that’s

Roberta: that was bad. Yeah, I

Ryan: know. I’ll, I’ll work on it. This is a show at Hedge Row Theater. It is a Barrymore recommended show. It started, it opened on the 14th.

It runs through the 1st of June and hedge row is in Rose Valley, so now out towards Valley Forge area. That’s a, it should be an interesting tro. I’ll have the links in that, if you want to see more about that. Those are my three picks of the week, plus a reminder of the opportunity plus Memorial Day stuff.

So there’ll be quite a few different things and events happening this long weekend.

Roberta: So let me just talk briefly for a minute or two about upcoming posts on Artblog. Just to remind you, we are closing. Don’t be sad. But we are keeping the archive open not with new content after a certain date in June, but coming in now, we’ve got a lot of good content and I don’t know if you’ve been following it or not, but we have our first piece of historical fiction by Clayton Campbell.

That’s a really nice yarn to read. We have an interview with partners and sons. Gina and Tom and the people who are part of their team, done by Ali Knowles, who is our socialist grocery. Artist and Ali put in a really lovely last. Socialist grocery, I don’t know if you saw it or not, of Sebastian sitting on a stool.

Ryan: Unmasked. Yeah. It felt provocative.

Roberta: I hadn’t noticed that. You are right.

Ryan: Yeah.

Roberta: Sebastian has always been masked, but Sebastian was totally alone. Totally alone and so didn’t need to protect themselves. Yeah. Good catch. We have a, a short feature q and a with the people’s budget office.

Debe Bachman coming up soon by Bridget O’Brien and a few other things. So Megan

Ryan: Bridges the dance piece,

Roberta: Megan Bridges dance piece. Just came up. Chloe Marie, a dance piece that sounded really marvelous. Cindy Stockton Moore wrote about Brendan Fernandez, which was wonderful. Janice Glasper wrote a personal essay. And illustrated it with one of her own drawings.

Ryan: Which was nice. That was a nice touch.

Roberta: And Ollie Knowles, too, is illustrating her partners and sons interview with a drawing of her own. I love that. We had the last piece of Nosebleed come in, Derek Jones. We love comics. Yeah.

We’re, we’re such a great skill. We’re going to miss everybody and a few more things that were pitched and they’re not in yet, but they’re, they better come in soon. If you’re listening to meet people, get your stories in and we’ll get them published next week.

Ryan: And we are forwarding links to other people who are continuing their work and how to get in touch with them to continue to follow them beyond Artblog as well.

Yes. So links to Patreon or other Instagrams or whatever they’ve got connected to their

Roberta: absolutely pieces.

Ryan: So

Roberta: yeah. So we gotta keep people together.

Ryan: That’s right. Yeah. They’re still producing great work even after Artblog.

Roberta: Completely. Yes. No Artblog is just a piece of it. I’m real happy that it is a piece of the art community here.

But the art community existed before our blog came along. It exists after Artblog. It’s going to be there. It’s there. People are making art and getting together, doing it together. I. It’s a good thing.

Ryan: Indeed.

Roberta: All right, well is that it? Are we wrapping up? Yeah,

Ryan: I don’t have anything specifically left on mine.

Roberta: Okay. Well I hope the rain stops for all of you who are not rain fans like I am. Not a rain fan. So stay warm and dry. Enjoy the rest of your week and thank you for listening. It’s Roberta. Saying bye.

Ryan: And this is Ryan and this has been Artblog’s, midweek News. Thanks for listening, everyone, and we’ll talk to you next week.

Bye-bye.