Image: National Gallery, London
The Philadelphia Museum of Art has opened a slate of exhibitions that ranges from Arts and Crafts history to photography, Vincent van Gogh and a survey of the Rocky statue’s afterlife as a monument. The museum’s latest announcements place 'Workshop of the World: Arts & Crafts in Philadelphia' at the center of the programming, while also highlighting 'Americana: Photographs 1850-1950', 'Van Gogh’s Sunflowers: A Symphony in Blue and Yellow' and 'Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments'.
'Workshop of the World' is presented as part of the museum’s 150th anniversary year and is on view through October 11 in the Main Building’s Morgan, Korman, and Field Galleries 150-155. According to the museum, the exhibition looks at the creative innovations that emerged from a network of Philadelphia artists, architects and manufacturers in response to urban industrialization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It also situates the city’s Arts and Crafts activity in the wider context of the movement’s ideals, including simple design, hand craftsmanship and pre-industrial models.
The show foregrounds both well-known and less familiar names associated with Philadelphia’s artistic and industrial heritage. The museum says the exhibition features work by Samuel Yellin, Violet Oakley and Henry Chapman Mercer, and it points to craft-based communities in Bryn Athyn, New Hope and Rose Valley in Pennsylvania, as well as Arden in Delaware, as part of the story. The exhibition is described as multimedia in scope and is free with museum admission.
Running alongside it is 'Americana: Photographs 1850-1950', shown in the Main Building’s Honickman Galleries 156 and 157. The exhibition is ongoing and also free with museum admission. The museum says the display explores American life through photography during a century shaped by the Civil War, industrialization, mass immigration and two world wars, and notes that photography became increasingly accessible over that period. Drawn from the museum’s collection, the show includes daguerreotypes, tintypes, stereoviews, real photo postcards, photomontages and snapshots made by both professional and amateur photographers.
'Van Gogh’s Sunflowers: A Symphony in Blue and Yellow' is on view through October 11 in Colket Gallery 251. The exhibition brings together two sunflower paintings, one completed in August 1888 on loan from the National Gallery, London, and one completed in January 1889 from the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s collection. The museum says the pairing reveals Van Gogh’s artistic practice at the time, with attention to the artist’s use of color and brushwork to create expressive effects.
The fourth exhibition, 'Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments', is on view through August 2 in the Dorrance Galleries. Organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art with collaboration from Monument Lab, the exhibition traces more than two millennia of artists’ engagement with boxing and celebrity. The museum says the show includes ancient sculptures, 19th-century European works, images from the golden age of boxing in the United States and contemporary art, with artists including Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Glenn Ligon, Hank Willis Thomas and Lisa Brice revisiting the subject through the lenses of race, gender and celebrity.
The museum says 'Rising Up' features over 150 works by more than 50 artists and includes an accompanying publication edited by guest curator Paul Farber. The exhibition is tied to the Rocky statue near the museum steps, which the museum describes as a site that attracts millions of visitors from around the world. In the same newsletter that announced the shows, the museum also listed family storytime, art studio sessions and the Rodin Garden Bar among its summer programs.
