Quietly building steam over the last four years, the community project, Philadelphia Assembled, will burst into the world this April, with actions, workshops, performances and art, in places all across the city, and will manifest itself in a big installation at the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Perelman Building this fall. Starting with a series of conversations with regular Philadelphians, the Dutch artist, Jeanne van Heeswijk, made connections and reached out to more and more people, in what sounds like a revolutionary movement to empower people and make their lives better.
Read MoreEpic Tales from Ancient India is the thinkiest show I’ve seen here in years. It is no less than an introduction to the literature and history of India. The literature and history in the subcontinent’s various languages is concealed on the back of miniatures but this forced on me my second most favorite activity, viz., research.
Read MoreIn contrast to the typical fear associated with this day, the Daedalus Quartet embrace it wholeheartedly, using the day itself as inspiration for their sold-out concert program of mostly new works in the Penn Museum’s Chinese Rotunda (co-presented by the Penn Music Department and Bowerbird).
Read MoreWhat Kallat seeks to explore in “Covering Letter” is a near miss between two of the 20th century’s most influential minds. This juxtaposition of these two is a near-collision of worlds, east and west, right and wrong, peace and war. One had spoken and maybe one had listened. The viewer is left with this—what could have been, what could be.
Read MoreFrom the walls of color in his series that continue throughout the Breuer, to his earlier work, the oversized snapshots, the smaller pieces that take on death, black identity in America, and his deep, painfully humorous comics, Marshall is an artist who has worked and played his way into the all-important arts conversation.
Read More2016 was a standard year by many measures, with one major difference (ahem you know what that is). Regime change is coming and like most in the art community, Artblog is greeting Jan. 20 with trepidation — and resolve. We are re-committing ourselves to our core mission of diversity — to write about and celebrate the excellence of artists, who are routinely shunned by the mainstream media. The task seems more urgent now than ever.
Read MoreI give this exhibit 3 out of 3 wishes, which means it made me wish for three things. It is a nice view of designs. The designs with bright, bold colors are like dresses I have never seen before. They are a fierce combination of a lot of different colors and shapes like chicken heads on straight fabric with a stained glass design on the ruffled fabric all on one dress! I wish there were kids’ fashions in the exhibit, too. I also wish that I could see how they are sold in Africa. What do the shops look like? Who gets to wear these clothes? I wish I could! They are interesting fashions and would make the person wearing them look bold and fierce. Three wishes means it made me imagine 3 things and that is why I love to go to museums!
Read MoreAccording to curator Anthony Elms, Rodney McMillian: The Black Show is an exhibition about transformation. You might prefer to call it an exhibition about flux. It is about fictions, literally literary, with numerous instances of homage to Octavia Butler, and metaphorically historical, as McMillian himself expounded in a preceding interview. It is about mutable spaces, fluid identities, the distance between material and perception, the so-called experience of this ‘reality,’ and the staking out of that reality itself as a constantly undulating landscape.
Read MoreChipaumire announces, “Tired of fighting. Tired of running. Tired of fucking.” The hare bounding over the ropes. The Champion hurling into them, into the ground. Until he, finally, –well, no, you should see it, you should try to feel it for yourself.
Read MoreThe Colored Girls Museum contains harrowing levels of metaphoric entryways into once traumatized eyes of the black girl. This provincial ghost overcame dishonorable past. Oppressive chains and tyrannical rulers whipped flesh off back and placed choke hold on her mind, body, and soul. Now released yet not entirely freed from damaged control, she tells many stories inherently stretched through visiting artists. Their works adhere to her walls, sleep on her mantles, stand on her floors.
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