Fairmount / Art Museum : In The News

Philadelphia sisters Claire and Nikka Landau and friend Jason Tucker have established PhilaSoup as a monthly dinner bringing together dynamic educators to fund the most ambitious and innovative projects, reports NPR.

On a recent Sunday night, the trio of friends welcomed about 45 teachers and other members of the local education community to a cozy gathering at the University Barge Club, a 19th-century boathouse on the banks of the Schuylkill River. As folks walked in, they were asked to fill out name tags -- with their names and the names of their favorite children's books.

"Teachers all over Philadelphia are doing terrific projects," Claire said. "It's really exciting to gather and break bread with teachers from across the city doing exciting things."

Original source: NPR
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Van Gogh Up Close has opened at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and art lovers can get a better sense for the mind behind the artist's great works.

Cornelia Homburg, one of the curators of Van Gogh Up Close, a new show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, says she finds it "very difficult when an artist’s acts as an artist are exclusively viewed through the fact that he was a disturbed person." So the show ignores that person and instead takes a close look at how van Gogh, the systematic artist, liked to look closely at things, and how that made a crucial contribution to the history of modern art. One wall shows him paring his still lifes down to essentials.

Others have him zooming ever further -- onto a lone moth, a flowering branch -- or trying his hand at the classic undergrowth scenes called sous bois. His innovations are set into the context of the era’s photography and Japanese prints. Revisionist art history has revised the madman from sight. The works of art "are sufficient in themselves," says Joseph Rishel, Homburg’s co-curator.

Original source: The Daily Beast
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Philadelphia-inspired photographer Zoe Strauss and her series "I-95" is part of her new exhibition at the Museum of Art, reports The New York Times.

The exhibition, opening on Saturday, is billed as a mid-career retrospective, though Ms. Strauss’s career path is anything but conventional. For one thing, she conceived of "I-95" before she had gained any kind of experience as a photographer, before she had even bought a camera. Just five years into the project she received a Pew fellowship and was selected for the Whitney Biennial. Two years later came a monograph, "America," that nodded to none other than Robert Frank.

Original source: The New York Times
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Local restaurants are getting a reputation for farm fresh ingredients, according to OffManhattan.

To taste the freshest produce in the region, you can shop one of the city’s many farmers market, haul your selections back home, and crack open a cookbook. Or you can take the effortless route, and settle into one of the top farm-to-table restaurants in Philadelphia.

Uniquely positioned between ‘Jersey Fresh’ territory and Amish Country, Philly offers its chefs an impressive variety of local, seasonal ingredients from which to craft their award-winning menus. And diners will be excited to know that much of this produce makes its way from farm to plate just one day after harvesting. Yes, the peppery radishes and buttery greens in your appetizer salad may have been plucked from the dirt just hours ago.

Source: OffManhattan
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Philadelphia born author David Sirota returns home to talk about his new book, Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now, according to USA Today.

PHILADELPHIA � David Sirota is tooling around his hometown, giving what he calls "his '80s tour." He points out a billboard for the Philadelphia 76ers that boasts the basketball team's logo. One recycled from the 1980s.

He then swings by the steps in front of the city's famed art institute.

"There's '80s synergy right there," he says, nodding to the 1980 statue of boxer Rocky Balboa of Rocky fame.

Source: USA Today
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The Los Angeles Times is the latest major media outlet to question the move of the Barnes Museum from suburban Merion to Center City Philadelphia.

Is the new Barnes Museum headed for disaster? Designed to house the art collection of the Barnes Foundation, with its hundreds of Cezannes, Renoirs, Matisses, Picassos and other early modern masters, a new building is under construction in downtown Philadelphia where the collection is scheduled to move from its current home in Merion, Pa. Yet serious questions remain about the rationale for the move and the museum's long-term sustainability.

Source: Los Angeles Times
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In conjunction with the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, a new exhibit showcases paintings and sculptures by Marc Chagall, according to Luxist.

A new exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia explores the legacy of Marc Chagall and his artist compatriots. "Paris Through the Window: Marc Chagall and His Circle" runs from March 1 to July 10 and focuses on the work of Chagall and others in Paris in the early 1900s.

The museum website has a series of podcasts devoted to the exhibit which offer a comprehensive roadmap to all that is going on in a Chagall painting. For example, in the painting shown above, the artist's double-faced self-portrait in the lower right hand corner is a representation of the two sides of his spirit, looking back toward his homeland but also forward toward Paris, Cubism and a world of changing ideas and ideals.




Source: Luxist
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A forgotten masterpiece is rediscovered after languishing in the bowels of the Philadelphia Museum of Art for three decades, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Most museums keep many more works in storage than they do on display. The downside of this practice: Sometimes a masterpiece gets buried--and forgotten--in the basement.

That was the case with "Twilight on the Campagna" by George Inness, who in the late 19th century rivaled his contemporaries Winslow Homer and James McNeill Whistler in fame. Then the world almost forgot him, and "Twilight," one of Inness's major paintings, languished on a storage rack at the Philadelphia Museum of Art for three decades. Ironically, the decades of neglect of "Twilight" may have saved it from being damaged by the less sophisticated restoration techniques of the past, says Mark Mitchell, head of the Center for American Art at the Philadelphia Museum.

Original Source: Wall Street Journal
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One the oldest child mummies ever is coming from Peru for an exhibition opening June 18 at the Franklin Institute, according to Andina.

A 6,420-year-old child mummy from Peru joins an astonishing collection of mummies and related artifacts in the Mummies of the World exhibition.

Mummies of the World is the first exhibition of its kind to be showcased at The Franklin Institute, portraying both naturally and intentionally preserved mummies from around the world in a never-before-seen collection unlike anything else that has ever toured the Northeastern United States.

Mummies of the World is the largest exhibition of real mummies and related artifacts ever assembled, featuring an astounding collection of 150 artifacts and real human and animal specimens from South America, Europe, Asia, Oceania and Egypt.

Original source: Andina (Peru)
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