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Charles Sheeler, Michener Art MuseumBobbi Arnst (click photos for large images)

James A. Michener Art Museum Will Present Groundbreaking Exhibition

Charles Sheeler: Fashion, Photography,
and Sculptural Form 

Multimedia retrospective to display never-before-seen photographs from a modernist icon created during his five-year tenure at Condé Nast

DOYLESTOWN, PA – In March 2017, the James A. Michener Art Museum will present Charles Sheeler: Fashion, Photography, and Sculptural Form, a groundbreaking exhibition that features never-before-seen photographs by Charles Sheeler, one of America’s most celebrated modernists. Inspired by Sheeler’s portrait and fashion work for Condé Nast from 1926 to 1931, the multimedia show will feature a significant display of these newly discovered photographs as well as paintings and other photographs created by Sheeler, 1920s fashion ensembles, and Sheeler-designed textiles. Evoking the exuberance, glamour, and promise of the Jazz Age, the exhibition will be on view from March 18 through July 9, 2017.

Charles Sheeler, Michener Art MuseumAldous Huxley

A Philadelphia native, former Doylestown resident, and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts alumnus, Charles Sheeler is one of the founding figures of American modernism. In 1910, Sheeler and fellow artist Morton Schamberg searched for a place to retreat from Philadelphia to sketch. They found a creative and inspirational escape in Doylestown, making their home at the historic Worthington House on Mercer Avenue. It was here, a mile and a half from where the Michener Art Museum now stands, that Sheeler began to explore photography in earnest.

Charles Sheeler, Michener Art MuseumIna Clare as Betsy Ross

Sheeler’s fashion and portrait photography for Condé Nast, however, has been almost universally dismissed as purely commercial, a painter’s “day job,” and nothing more. In reality, this commercial work was instrumental in shaping his aesthetic vision. Trained in an impressionist approach to landscape painting, Sheeler experimented early in his career with compositions inspired by European modernism before developing a linear, hard-edged style now known as Precisionism. While working in this mode, he produced powerful and compelling images of the Machine Age: skyscrapers, factories, and power plants, images that established his reputation as a leading figure in American art. Charles Sheeler: Fashion, Photography, and Sculptural Form will show that his dramatic viewpoints, rhythmic patterning, and abstract compositions were influenced by his work at Condé Nast.

Charles Sheeler, Michener Art MuseumMadame Lasse

“This exhibition will show how Sheeler’s modernist vision was refined over the course of his time at Condé Nast,” said Kirsten M. Jensen, Ph.D., the Gerry & Marguerite Lenfest Chief Curator at the Michener Art Museum and curator of the exhibition. “It was while there he fine-tuned his particular style-objective, distant, and rigorously formal-that he then applied to all of his subsequent work.

The core of the exhibition is 85 portraits and fashion photographs from this period, on loan from the Condé Nast archives. Models adorned in jewels and couture gowns, literary giants of the era, and Broadway actors and Ziegfeld Follies dancers: the subject matter is as sensational as the Jazz Age itself. The exhibition also features select prints from Sheeler’s famous Doylestown House series as well as his photographs of modern sculpture and early portraiture, the film Manhatta (a collaboration with Paul Strand), period costumes on loan from the collections of the Museum of the City of New York and Drexel University’s Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection, and paintings and photographs on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Columbus Museum of Art, Yale University Art Gallery, Princeton University Art Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and other major institutions.

Charles Sheeler, Michener Art MuseumHelen Menken

“The James A. Michener Art Museum is an especially relevant venue for Charles Sheeler: Fashion, Photography, and Sculptural Form considering Sheeler’s strong ties to the region,” said Lisa Tremper Hanover, director and CEO of the Michener Art Museum. “We’re thrilled to present this unknown body of work in Doylestown, where Sheeler made his first important photographs.”

Complementing the exhibit will be programming that includes lectures, curator talks, a Scholars Day, a film series, musical performances, and a New York-based symposium. For the full schedule, visit the exhibition website at CharlesSheeler.org.

Advance tickets and group tours for Charles Sheeler: Photography, Fashion, and Sculptural Form are available at MichenerArtMuseum.org or by calling 215.340.9800.

A member reception will be held on the evening of March 17, 2017, the day before the exhibition opens for public view. To become a Michener Art Museum member and receive an invitation, visit MichenerArtMuseum.org or call 215.340.9800 x110.

Major support for Charles Sheeler: Fashion, Photography, and Sculptural Form has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with further support from The Coby Foundation, Ltd., Visit Bucks County, an anonymous donor, and the Bucks County Foundation.

Additional funding has been provided by Bonnie J. O’Boyle and Virginia W. Sigety, Independent cabi Stylist.

In-kind support is generously provided by Condé Nast Editions.

About the James A. Michener Art Museum

The James A. Michener Art Museum collects, preserves, interprets and exhibits American art, and promotes the work of nationally and internationally known Delaware Valley artists of all eras and creative disciplines. The museum presents exhibitions that explore a variety of artistic expressions and offers diverse educational programs that develop a lifelong involvement in the arts. Throughout the year, the Michener Art Museum hosts a wide range of programs open to the public, including lectures, artists conversations, gallery talks, artist studio tours, dance performances, jazz performances, family-themed activities, and other events. The museum also offers diverse selection of art classes for children and adults, which include instruction in drawing, painting, sculpting, and printmaking as well as programs for the public, schools, and teachers designed to support arts education. The James A. Michener Art Museum is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.

The James A. Michener Art Museum is located at 138 South Pine St., Doylestown, PA. The Museum is open Tuesday through Friday, 10:00 am – 4:30 pm; Saturday, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm; and Sunday, noon – 5:00 pm. For more information, visit MichenerArtMuseum.org or call 215.340.9800.

Twitter: @MichenerArt

Facebook: MichenerArtMuseum

Instagram: michenerart

Thank you to Christine Triantos, James A. Michener Art Museum, Associate Director, Marketing and Communications for the content of this post.

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Star

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David Bowie, Queer Star, Jimmi Schrode

Queer Star, David Bowie and Gender Anarchy

by Jimmi Shrode

At the age of 10, I had discovered David Bowie in the pages of 16 Magazine. The wholesome safe pop idols; David Cassidy, The Osmonds and The Jackson 5 were giving way to the Glam Rockers; Lou Reed, Alice Cooper and David Bowie. Bowie was the ring leader with a shocking vermillion rooster cut and tight satin pants. With shocking blue eyeshadow highlighting his mismatched eyes and lipstick, he lead the way for the Sexual Revolution by way of Gender Anarchy and Queerness.

As David Jones, young Bowie couldn’t get arrested with a string of forgettable Anthony Newley meets The Beatles songs that were too twee. Later he would don a maxi dress and sing folkish rock songs, some notice but not quite. The novelty of ‘Space Oddity‘ coincided with America’s Moon Landing brought minor fame, introducing us to Major Tom, an astronaut lost forever in the stars. It was Ziggy Stardust, a rock and roll messiah who came just in time for the end of the world to lead us to Mars, the world of Sexual Chaos. David had announced he was Gay despite being in a marriage with Angie Bowie and son Zowie (now filmmaker Duncan Jones). Bowie was launched into the stratosphere.

David Bowie, Queer Star, Jimmi Schrode

Bowie became godlike and seduced the teens of Britain and America. A clever ruse in an age where news traveled slowly. Bowie arrived on the shores of America with an entourage, claiming great status abroad in Europe. The record executives bought it all. Global success at last. Bowie’s androgyny smashed into the world of suburbia here in the USA and abroad. Queerness was on sale in a record shop near you. Boys dressed in make up and mom’s cast-offs, skinny jeans and experimented with each other leaving lipstick traces. Girls swooned for this Queer Elvis. Adults were dismayed. What was dirty and whispered about in secret was now wrapped up in Japanese Modernist Fashion and Kabuki via the LSD dreams of Timothy Leary, strutting under the spotlights for all the world to see.

Bowie rediscovered Lou Reed, Andy Warhol’s Superstar and leader of the Velvet Underground. The Velvet Underground had inspired Bowie when the Exploding Plastic Inevitable made it to the UK. The psychedelic multimedia show of music, lights and art inspired David Jones. Ever the avid student; he absorbed it and made it his own. His alchemy would extend into the music world and reinvent others as it had himself.

Iggy Pop, the sweaty, muscular singer with a proto-punk band The Stooges, was now clad in tight Lurex pants and had black eyeliner, mascara and lipstick. Bowie took Iggy into the studio and allegedly into his bedroom. Bowie’s aesthetic wiped off onto Lou Reed who now dressed in makeup and leather. Reed had taken a walk onto the Wild Side.

As he retired the glitter and paint in favor of Soul Boy clothes, the label of Queerness became an albatross. While good for breaking through indifference into Rock and Roll, rock was still a boy’s club. Even though some of them adopted Bowie’s fey ways, they were still hetero-normative. Bowie, addicted to cocaine and becoming increasingly paranoid retreated further away from Ziggy Stardust. With slicked back blonde hair, classic 30’s suits and a cigarette, he became the nihilistic Thin White Duke. Then Bowie made the famous Hitler Salute in Victoria Station, casting up shadows of fascism. It was apropos. Fascism had destroyed the Weimar Era Drag for the sturm und drang of masculinity.

David Bowie, Queer Star, Jimmi Schrode

As a chameleon, Bowie further reinvented himself and in the 1980’s had a renaissance into New Wave Music. Still, the shadow of homosexuality clung to him. Disavowing and ignoring it, yet, always present. Some Gay People felt betrayed that their idol who led them out of the closet had returned to the closet. It was a fearsome time when Reagan and Thatcher conservatism and AIDS ravaged Gay Liberation.

David Bowie always endured and was relevant in every decade nonetheless. The 90’s saw collaborations with Trent Reznor and Dr. Dre. In the Aughts; Bowie became the crooner he had been with his smash album Heathen. Then he dropped out of sight after a heart attack only to reemerge in time for his final curtain calls with his albums The Next Day and Blackstar. Blackstar saw the artist use his own impending death to craft his final statement, dying soon after.

David Bowie, Queer Star, Jimmi Schrode

To me and many others; Bowie’s act of Sexual Rebellion had forever changed us, bringing a deeper understanding of gender, sexuality and self-expression. Bowie’s image as Ziggy Stardust remains cemented in our psyche. Often copied and rebranded, a white faced Bowie with a bold red and blue lighting bolt in the center of his face crowned with orange hair is how we remember him most; the Queer Bowie. Our Queer Star.

Written by Jimmi Shrode

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Sound

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Andrea Hornick: Unbounded HistoriesAndrea Hornick in Room 23. © 2016 The Barnes Foundation

SITE-SPECIFIC SOUND INSTALLATION UNLOCKS NEW WAYS OF
EXPERIENCING BARNES COLLECTION

Andrea Hornick: Unbounded Histories marks first sound installation
in the Barnes Collection

Philadelphia, PA, December 2016 – The Barnes Foundation presents Unbounded Histories, a new site-specific project by Philadelphia artist Andrea Hornick and the first “sound intervention” in the Collection Gallery.

From January 6 through February 19, 2017, visitors can listen to several dozen original poems written in response to specific works, including Seurat’s Models and Van Gogh’s The Postman, while they explore the Barnes collection (the recording can be streamed on any web-enabled phone). Filled with mysterious, dream-like imagery, Hornick’s poems spring from what she describes as a shamanistic practice: working directly in the collection, the artist puts herself in a trance-like state letting the art lead her toward the stories and images that the mind normally keeps buried. The resulting juxtaposition of sound and sight aims to encourage visitors to consider works in the Barnes collection in a new way—as portals to the unconscious as well as historical objects. To complement the audio portion, video footage showing Hornick’s creative practice will be screened in the collection’s classrooms. Information about the project, including the URL, and headphones will be available outside the collection gallery for the duration of the project.

Unbounded Histories is made possible with support from the William Penn Foundation.

“We wanted to try something new in the Collection Gallery,” says Dr. Martha Lucy, Barnes deputy director for education & public programs and curator, who is curating this project. “Sound art allows us to put living artists in dialogue with the collection without making any changes to the physical space.”

Hornick sees the piece as “a collaboration with the renegade Dr. Barnes.” Her strange, deeply personal poems reframe traditional narratives of art history. “The piece plays with authority and authorship,” Hornick says. “Through a meditative practice in connection with art history, I upend expected interpretations, inviting creative, personal connections to the collection.” Hornick will do a brief performance at the Barnes on January 6as part of First Friday.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Andrea Hornick received a BA from Oberlin College, and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her painting practice extends into text-based sound, performance, and installation. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and extensively in New York and Los Angeles. Her most recent solo exhibition, Journeys, at Savery Gallery in Philadelphia, took place in March 2016. Hornick is included in several group museum exhibitions in fall 2016 and winter 2017, including Natural Philosophy at Martin Art Gallery, Muhlenberg College, and Due South at The Delaware Contemporary. The catalogue Andrea Hornick. Recent Work: 1460-1865 was published for her exhibition at David Krut Projects, New York, in 2009, and Andrea Hornick: works from 1779–1798 was published in 1999 for an installation and performance of the same name. Hornick currently teaches in the Fine Art Department at the University of Pennsylvania, including a graduate seminar entitled Museum as Site: Critique, Intervention, and Production and undergraduate courses in drawing and painting. Hornick has also taught at Barnard College, Oberlin College, and Auckland University, and been a museum teacher at The Jewish Museum, The Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, The Morgan Library, and The Museum of Natural History. She was a visiting artist at Oberlin College and the University of California at Davis. Hornick divides her time between New York City and Philadelphia.

ABOUT THE BARNES FOUNDATION
The Barnes Foundation (barnesfoundation.org) was established by Dr. Albert C. Barnes in 1922 to “promote the advancement of education and the appreciation of the fine arts and horticulture.” The Barnes holds one of the finest collections of post-impressionist and early modern paintings, with extensive works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Henri Rousseau, Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, and Giorgio de Chirico; old master paintings; important examples of African sculpture; Native American ceramics, jewelry and textiles; American paintings and decorative arts; and antiquities from the Mediterranean region and Asia. The Barnes Foundation’s Art and Aesthetics programs engage diverse audiences. These programs, held at the Philadelphia campus, online, and in Philadelphia communities, advance the mission through progressive, experimental, and interdisciplinary teaching and learning. 

The Barnes Arboretum, at the Merion campus, contains more than 2,000 varieties of trees and woody plants, many of them rare. Founded in the 1880s by Joseph Lapsley Wilson and expanded under the direction of Mrs. Laura L. Barnes, the collection includes a fern-leaf beech (Fagus sylvatica ‘Laciniata’), a dove tree (Davidia involucrata), a monkey-puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana), and a redwood (Sequoia sempervirens). Other important plant collections include lilacs, peonies, Stewartias and magnolias. The Horticulture school at the Barnes Foundation in Merion has offered a comprehensive three-year certificate course in the botanical sciences, horticulture, garden aesthetics, and design since its establishment in 1940 by Mrs. Barnes.

Thank you to Deirdre Maher, Director of Communications, The Barnes Foundation, for the content of this post. 215.278.7160, press@barnesfoundation.org

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Innovation

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Keith & Kathy Sachs, Howard HodgkinHoward Hogkin, Portrait of Keith and Kathy Sachs, 1988 – 1991, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Penn Announces Sachs Program for Arts Innovation

University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann and Provost Vincent Price have announced the creation of the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation.

Founded with a commitment of $15 million from alumni Keith L. Sachs and Katherine Sachs, this transformative gift – the largest gift ever made across the arts at Penn – will establish the Sachs Arts Innovation Hub and closely link arts education to the Penn Compact 2020’s goal of advancing innovation across the University.

“Creativity is the very soul of innovation, and what is art but creativity made manifest?” Gutmann said. “Keith and Kathy are among the undisputed patron saints of the arts at Penn, and their latest extraordinary generosity will transform how we understand, teach and break new ground in the arts. The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation promises to empower a new wave of artistic and ingenious creation at Penn.”

The new Sachs Arts Innovation Hub, to be located in the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, will aim to visibly energize the arts and arts innovation at Penn. It will integrate research, teaching and practice, working collaboratively with faculty, students, arts and culture leaders and the Provost’s Arts Advisory Council, while building on the highly successful initiatives of the three-year Art and Culture Initiative sponsored by the provost and the School of Arts & Sciences.

“This tremendous gift comes at an especially exciting time for the arts at Penn,” Price said. “It allows us to integrate and amplify the wide range of activity already underway in our world-leading arts institutions and academic departments – and in a city bursting with unrivaled arts opportunities – creating a whole decidedly greater than the sum of its parts. The longtime leadership of Keith and Kathy Sachs across the ICA, Penn Design and the School of Arts & Sciences has set the stage for this new era, and we are all indebted to their generosity and vision.”

Led by an executive director, to be appointed through a national search, the Sachs Program will expand sustainable curricular innovation in the arts across the University, including grants to develop courses, workshops, master classes and other learning opportunities; encourage hands-on artistic production and public art spaces; foster cross-campus collaborations, especially between arts centers and academic programs; appoint artists in residence and other new faculty members; and build community and new audiences for the arts at Penn.

The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation culminates more than a decade of support for the arts at Penn from Keith and Katherine Sachs. These major gifts, which have transformed the landscape of arts education on campus, include the Sachs Guest Curator Program at the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Sachs Professorship in Contemporary Art in the Department of History of Art in the School of Arts & Sciences and the Fine Arts Program Fund and Visiting Professorship in the Department of Fine Arts in the School of Design. The Sachs’ vision has been to expand arts programs across the University by integrating the ICA, the Department of Fine Arts and the Department of History of Art and bringing outstanding artists to teach on campus.

“We believe strongly that the arts are essential to the core mission of education,” Keith Sachs said. “The very best students seek out a university with a vital arts program. At the same time, the arts are central to advancing key Penn values, such as diversity, innovation and integrating knowledge.”

“We are especially pleased,” Katherine Sachs said, “that our gifts to the arts create synergies and new ideas across campus. These connections foster the creativity and imagination that our students need to become the leaders of an ever-changing world.”

Keith Sachs is former CEO of Saxco International, member and former chair of the School of Design Board of Overseers and a trustee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He is a longtime leader of the Class of 1967 Gift Committee, which he is chairing during its 50th-reunion year. Katherine Sachs, an adjunct curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art for many years, is an emeritus member of the University Board of Trustees, a member of the University’s Design Review Committee and a member of the ICA Board of Overseers, which she formerly chaired.

Thank you to Penn News Service for the content of this post.

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Secret

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Rock n Roll Musical, PhiladelphiaHanna Hamilton is a filmmaker and artist from Philadelphia Pa. Her films have been shown around the city including PhilaMOCA: Philadelphia Mausoleum of Contemporary Art, The Philadelphia’s Women’s Film Festival and The Philadelphia Independent Film Festival.

Hanna Hamilton directed music videos that have appeared in Vice’s Noisey, Filter Magazine and Stereogum.

“I’m excited to be launching a indiegogo for my first feature film very soon. The project will be shot entirely in Philadelphia with an all local crew. The film itself will be a feature length Rock ’N’ Roll musical featuring 50’s inspired rock n roll music and entirely custom built sets to give it a 70’s feel with all practical effects. The hope is to create Philadelphia’s own cult musical like Baltimore’s Hairspray or Britain’s Rocky Horror Picture Show or De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise.” – Hanna Hamilton

The indiegogo video includes members of local Philly bands including Sheer Mag, Amanda X, Void Vision, Cabbage, Vanillalord and more!!!

“The internet has a virus and the bug is rock n roll! Sally and her band Secret Lover are the only rockers left in a dystopian vaporwave hellscape. They’re trying to rip, rock and shake it up but once you’re caught in the web things get sticky.” – Secret Lover

Secret Lover: A Rock ‘N’ Roll Musical Indiegogo is on!

“This film will use the music of the band, Secret Lover, to take us on a journey to a sexy, rockin and absurdly comedic universe. Inspired by 50’s rock ’n’ roll with a vaporware aesthetic, it is our hope to create Philadelphia’s own campy cult musical like Baltimore’s hairspray, Britain’s Rocky Horror Picture show or DePalma’s Phantom of the Paradise.” – Secret Lover

Like Secret Lover, a Rock ‘N’ Roll Musical on facebook

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