The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage : Blog

Braindrop: David Wilson

2012-02-23T01:56:40+00:00

“Then it dawned on my one day that the step from ‘muse’ to ‘amuse’ is pretty close.” — David Wilson, founder of the Museum of Jurassic Technology, speaking at the Getty Museum in 2011 CATCH MORE BRAINDROPS >

Sprouting, budding, and digging

2012-02-22T15:32:02+00:00

Philadelphians, it hasn’t been much of a winter. The Old Man seems to have lost his bite. Maybe he needs dentures. In any case, Pew Fellows’ activity is leading us out of our caves and into the world to sense the first tender inklings of springtime. ‘Tis the season to contemplate youthful beginnings and explore the city’s lesser-known venues. On Tuesday, February 28, Lily Yeh (Pew Fellow, 1992) will give a lecture at the University of the Arts about the "Dandelion School Transformation Project," her work with children of migrant workers in Beijing. Yeh is usually out hopping the globe, so this is a notable opportunity to see her in person. Details > Dig this: There’s also a garden of Pew Fellows' poetry sprouting. Fellows CAConrad (2011) and Linh Dinh (1993) are among those reading their works on Saturday evening, March 3 at Magic Pictures, an in-home gallery in...

Laura Keim Talks Shelf Life

2012-02-21T19:43:26+00:00

For the second iteration of our ongoing Shelf Life series, curator Laura Keim created a temple to the book and its dual role as a promulgator of knowledge and beauty in literate societies. In building her temple, Keim transformed the lobby bookcase into a modern specter of a pedimented 18th-century desk-and-bookcase, with a bright pink pediment as its crown. Where a writing surface might have folded out, Keim inserted a vintage printer’s tray. As with all of the Shelf Life displays, Keim included books from the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative’s library—these books provided a vehicle for the structure of the display and informed its additional contents. In these two interview segments, Keim discusses her own relationship to books, in personal and professional capacities, and her thinking behind some of the objects she included, such as the pair of gold-colored sandals she calls the display's "feet," and an angled mirror that reflects the "cabinet...

Words to Live By: Parkett

2012-02-21T18:58:13+00:00

Parkett, a serial art publication disguised as a soft-cover book, stands apart from its siblings as a true sophisticate possessing the cool consideration and thematic depth of a major museum catalog. While more traditional publications produce disparate articles around cover stories; Parkett fashions a landscape for each of its issue’s luminaries by having multiple authors contribute articles on the same artist. What is really special about this publication is its method of engaging artists by way of their Collaborations & Editions series in which featured artists produce a new work of art expressly for debut therein. Self-described as “a small museum and a large library of contemporary art” Parkett exists as the true mise en abîme of The Philadelphia Exhibitions Library which houses an expanding 45 volume collection. Iwona Blazwick of Whitechapel Gallery describes Parkett's Collaborations and Editions: “Commissioned by Parkett, the most important artists of our time have created...

New Center Spotlight: Revisiting John Jasperse’s Groundbreaking Fort Blossom

2012-02-17T19:13:43+00:00

This month, our Center Spotlight feature is Bryn Mawr College's return to a groundbreaking work by choreographer John Jasperse: Fort Blossom, performed only once before in 2000 at New York City performance space The Kitchen. In Fort Blossom Revisited (2000/2012), to be performed from February 24–26 by Bryn Mawr's Performing Arts Series, Jasperse and his dance company will take on the challenge of contemporizing it for new audiences, pushing the limits of the previous staging. In a recent essay about this project and how it plays into the larger scope of Jasperse’s work, Suzanne Carbonneau writes, “Fort Blossom had a limited run in 2000, but its reputation was enormous: word went out that Jasperse had created a bold exploration of our creaturely natures, willing to show what hadn’t been seen before on a dance stage. How to achieve the same effect after more than a decade of cultural evolution?” This is...

Freshly signed copies

2012-02-16T20:28:11+00:00

There is a special delight when one opens a book to find the author's hand-inked signature inside. Perhaps there's even an ad-hoc dedication to the person who requested the signature. Maybe that person is you. Two Pew Fellows, Losang Samten and Zoe Strauss, have book-signing dates scheduled on February 18. Samten, 2004 Pew Fellow, Buddhist monk, and artist specializing in the ephemeral artform of sand-mandalas, will sign and present his latest book, Ancient Teachings in Modern Times: Buddhism in the 21st Century at Sundance bookstore in Reno, NV on February 18, at 1 p.m. More information > Zoe Strauss (Pew Fellow, 2005) will be giving a lecture and book signing of her new photographic essay, Zoe Strauss: Ten Years, also on February 18 at 6:30 p.m., at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center. More information > If you have a private jet, why, you could attend them both!

Braindrop: Jaroslaw Kozlowski

2012-02-15T20:35:44+00:00

"The year 1989 proved to be a particular caesura for independent galleries [in Poland]. The rapid adoption of early-capitalist economic mechanisims has caused a collapse of the majority of the alternative spaces. It is a peculiar paradox that the experience of freedom has become the reason for the end of the galleries for which freedom wa the highest value." —Jaroslaw Kozlowski, in Curating with Light Luggage (Kunstverein Munchen, 2005) CATCH MORE BRAINDROPS >

Paula Vogel “Boot Camp” Heads to NYC

2012-02-15T16:45:50+00:00

Last year, PTI helped to fund a boot camp led by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel and hosted by Philadelphia Young Playwrights. Vogel’s boot camp exercises are designed to spark the creativity of participants—including, in Philadelphia, students as well as professionals like Wilma Theater Artistic Director Blanka Zizka, 1812 Productions Artistic Director Jen Childs, and People’s Light & Theatre Company Associate Artistic Director Pete Pryor—and to generate spontaneity and ingenuity in playwriting. Last week a New York Times article covered a playwriting boot camp that Vogel led at the Second Stage Theater, the same venue where her Pulitzer Prize-winning play How I Learned to Drive is having a much-heralded revival. As she did during the PTI-sponsored boot camp in Philadelphia, Vogel pushed the New York participants to think outside of the perceived limitations of playwriting, first challenging them to come up with a scene that would be impossible to stage....

Reflections on GlobalFEST 2012

2012-02-14T14:33:36+00:00

Image of BélO, Haitian musician, from GlobalFEST 2012 website Reflections: 1. Verónica Castillo-Pérez (Executive Director of Raíces Culturales) Any time there's an opportunity to see and be with fellow colleagues outside our normal work environment it's a benefit from the get-go for all involved. From the initial invitation I could see that there were participants that had been with me on our trip to Cuba like Lenny, Sara, Daniel and Helen. Often times we get so caught up with our busy workload that it takes trips like the one to GlobalFEST that reminds me of why I do what I do. On one hand, when I see the curation of an event with little glitches in it, like an overly packed space that it was really hard to get around to see and hear all the participating artists, it makes me feel better about our own productions. It reaffirms...

Reflections on SEM/CORD November 2011: Toni Shapiro-Phim and Alex Shaw

2012-02-13T20:58:39+00:00

Jessica Schwartz’s paper on the musical activism of women of Rongalap Atoll in the Marshall Islands, presented first thing Thursday morning, served as my introduction to the conference. These women’s stories and their songs, as well as the annual ritual-like presentation of their voices, emanate dignity and determination and serve as a slap in the face to the violations inflicted upon them by the United States government. The throat, according to Schwartz, is the center of emotions for the Rongalapese. Their throats and voices—and much else in terms of their bodies—were damaged by U.S. nuclear testing in the 1950s. They were relocated multiple times; their land made too dangerous to inhabit. Every year on Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day, organized women’s groups don t-shirts with “Project 4.1” across the front ("Project 4.1" was the medical study undertaken following the radioactive fallout in the Marshall Islands), and sing in defiance of their...