Art
American Artists' Fraught Responses to the First World War
From critical to patriotic and everything in between, a vast exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts displays the full range of US artists' reactions to World War I.
Philadelphia
Art
The Challenge of Making US Museums Multilingual
Which languages should institutions prioritize? Should choices be based on current patrons or on visitors they'd like to reach?
Art
Painting a Fuller, More Complicated History of Mexican Modern Art
An exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Arts explores the many strands of Mexican modern art, shedding light on artists and movements beyond the best-known muralists.
Art
How Dutch Wax Fabrics Became a Mainstay of African Fashion
The Philadelphia Museum of Art examines the past and present of Vlisco fabrics, a symbol of our hyperconnected, postcolonial material world.
Art
Machines Triggered by the Ghost of Thomas Eakins
Artist Fernando Orellana is summoning the ghost of Thomas Eakins to Philadelphia through art machines and nude models.
Art
Ann Hamilton Pays Tribute to Philadelphia's Frayed Textile Industry
PHILADELPHIA — Started around 1907, Municipal Pier 9 was built as part of a comprehensive plan to upgrade the Delaware River as a shipping channel.
Art
Traces of the Past in Images of Today's Busy African Metropolises
PHILADELPHIA — In Akinbode Akinbiyi’s photograph, the pyramids of Giza, built over 4,500 years ago, are captured through a mess of fencing, with the tight rows of rigid iron rods obscuring the ancient wonders.
Art
In the Shadow of the DNC, Art About Politics vs. Political Art
PHILADELPHIA — It should come as no surprise that there are many ways one can experience art.
Art
Creating a Skeletal Symmetry from a 19th-Century Collection of Imperfect Skulls
Robbers, prostitutes, and fallen tightrope walkers: the craniums in the Hyrtl Skull Collection in the Mütter Museum at College of Physicians of Philadelphia are fractured remains of imperfect lives.
News
Mural in Abandoned Philly Building Becomes Wall Art for Future Condo
Real estate developers whitewashing or tearing down walls covered in graffiti is a familiar narrative, but it appears we may have reached such an advanced stage in the cooptation of street art that those days will soon be at an end.
Art
Ceramic Vases that Contain All the Beauty and Ugliness of US History
PHILADELPHIA — Of all the astonishing things Roberto Lugo has done in his career — from creating a DIY potter’s wheel and mixing his own clay from dirt in an urban scrapyard, to creating a new genre of hip-hop-inflected political porcelain — the most radical might be that he is head over heels in lo
Art
The Indefatigable Curiosity of Norman Lewis
PHILADELPHIA — While teaching at Jefferson School of the Social Sciences in New York around 1949, Norman Lewis began to draft an artist’s treatise in which he laid out his teaching theories, and, more intriguingly, his ideas about the role an artist should play in society.