MISS DOCENT: Glass flowers, dog bones and mixing messages and media
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Impressive permanent collections may have put our area museums on the map, but it's the rotating exhibits that keep visitors coming back. Every Thursday, Abigail Minor updates you on the newest and most browse-worthy. This week: Glass flowers, dog bones and mixing messages and media.
Impressive permanent collections may have put our area museums on the map, but it's the rotating exhibits that keep visitors coming back. Every Thursday, Abigail Minor updates you on the newest and most browse-worthy. This week: Glass flowers, dog bones and mixing messages and media.
Photo: Ronnie Hughes
Liberty in Bloom
Combining the Liberty Museum’s concept of a delicate freedom with the Philadelphia International Flower Show, "Liberty in Bloom," opening this Sunday, presents a collection with the same aesthetic balance and color of Mother Nature without all the pollen. Light ricochets off the smoothly formed flower sculptures and jewelry by local glass artists such as Bernard Katz, Jonathan Mandell and Anna Boothe, which are available for both viewing and purchase. Free admission through March 31 with a Philadelphia International Flower Show ticket stub, and artist Deborah DiMarco leads a free “flameworking” technique demonstration March 8.
Demonstration Thu., March 8, 5:30-8 p.m., through April 29, $2-$7, National Liberty Museum, 321 Chestnut St., 215-925-2800, libertymuseum.org.
Photo: Kari Marton-Rollins
Message & Medium
Gaby Heit’s exhibit "Message & Medium" interprets the famous Marshall McLuhan quote “the medium is the message” with pieces that explore how a choice of canvas can convey a message of its own —like Allan Espiritu’s work, stating “It gets sweeter and sweeter the more that I know” in a dizzying variety of fonts and colors. Artists like Madeleine Barnes, Nicole Donnelly and Boots Levinson push the boundaries in which we tend to confine art.
Opening reception Thu., March 1, 7-10 p.m., free. Through March 12, Philadelphia Mausoleum of Contemporary Art, 531 N. 12 St., 267-519-9651, philamoca.org.
Photo: Rosamond Purcell
Everything Under the Sun
It’s difficult to keep a tangled pile of rib, jaw, and pelvic Eskimo dog bones from Greenland looking multi-dimensional within a flat surface, but Boston photographer Rosamond Purcell takes on the challenge in the exhibit "Everything Under the Sun," opening Saturday. Purcell sorted through the Academy of Natural Science’s 18 million specimens and, with assistance, lugged her selections up to the roof for three weeklong sessions of shooting. Purcell’s use of the perfect amount of sunlight is evident in 20 photographs of all the fluorescent-blue ratfish, bright but immobile Australian birds and stiff, floating amphibians you could want.
Through May 20, $10-$12, The Academy of Natural Sciences, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, 215-299-1000, ansp.org.
Have a museum exhibit you'd like featured in an upcoming Miss Docent? Email the author at abigail@citypaper.net.
