July 22, 2010
Planet Earth Live
On Thursday, July 29th at 8:30pm the Philadelphia Orchestra will be offering a very special season finale performance at the Mann Center that promises to enchant both aurally and visually: they will be performing selected pieces from BBC’s multiple award-winning television series Planet Earth. The performed score will be accompanied by a large-screen projection of the corresponding scenes from the program.
British composer George Fenton, who received an Emmy Award for his original score of the hit documentary series, will be conducting the Orchestra himself as the audience marvels at the beautiful cinematography.
From the darkest caves to the heights of the Himalayan mountains, into the depths of the ocean and the densest, wildest jungles, the audience will be spell-bound by flourishing landscapes and mysterious animal life as Fenton’s compositions sonically capture the ceaseless flow and pulse of being in the world.
Planet Earth Live: The Philadelphia Orchestra
Thursday, July 29, 8:30pm
Tickets: $10-$55
The Mann Center for the Performing Arts
5201 Parkside Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19131
(215) 878-0400
www.manncenter.org
July 21, 2010
The Philadelphia Zoo, Photo by B. Krist for GPTMC
Enough time has elapsed so that everyone should have recovered by now from Philly Beer Week and be ready for the second annual Summer Ale Festival. On Saturday, July 24th from 6:30-10pm, the Philadelphia Zoo will once again host an evening of outstanding local and regional craft beers that have put Philadelphia on the map as a destination for beer-lovers across the globe.
Nineteen breweries will be in attendance – including Triumph, Victory (who will be serving Summer Love Ale!), Lancaster, Weyerbacher, and Philadelphia Brewing Co. – and food will be available from The Belgian Café, Dos Segundos, Bar Ferdinand, Brassetts Ice Cream, and 11 other local food distributors and restaurants.
In addition to enjoying these premier local brews and foods and spending time with the animals, you’ll be supporting a good cause. Funds raised from the event will be used for the Zoo’s Creatures of Habit initiative, which is designed to raise awareness about the Zoo’s conservation efforts concerning endangered species and habitats and how all of us can get involved.
Tickets are only available in advance, not at the door, so be sure to plan ahead of time. Here are your options:
* $80 VIP Tickets: Included early entrance at 6pm and a special VIP tent from 7-7:30pm
* $55 General Admission Tickets
* $25 Designated Driver Ticket: includes (2) tickets for non-alcoholic beverages (lemonade or ice tea) and access to restaurant sampling stations
Philadelphia Zoo
3400 W. Girard Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19104
(215) 243-1100
www.philadelphiazoo.org
July 19, 2010
Sun Ra Arkestra, Photo: Mark Lazarski
At 6PM on Saturday, July 24th, University City District and The Rotunda are hosting a free, outdoor performance by the Sun Ra Arkestra that will take place on 40th Street between Walnut and Locust, directly behind the Walnut Street Free Library.
These pioneers of experimental music have called Philadelphia home since 1968, and for over 50 years have combined their Afro-Futurist ideas with traditional jazz music to create a unique sound that merges bebop, swing, ragtime, free jazz, and astral electronic instrumentation.
After Sun Ra’s death, Marshall Allen – who recently celebrated his 86th birthday! – became the Arkestra’s maestro in 1995 and they have continued to make creative music that is every bit as sonically spectacular and ahead of its time as it was 50 years ago.
If you’ve never seen a Sun Ra Arkestra performance, or missed last year’s excellent Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn & Chicago’s Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-1968 exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art, now is the time to witness one of Philly’s legendary music groups for yourself!
A performance by the Scorch Fire Show will combine flames and movement arts prior to the music and Rita’s Water Ice will be freely available to keep things cool.
Sun Ra Arkestra & Scorch
Saturday, July 24, 6PM
40th & Walnut/Locust Streets (behind Walnut Street Free Library)
July 15, 2010
Screenshot from Jake Armstrong’s The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9
Tomorrow, July 16th, University City’s International House is bringing some of the best films from 2009’s Ottawa International Animation Festival to Philadelphia. The evening will consist of 15 shorts created by the most imaginative and original artists working in animated film today.
From Melissa Graziano’s Love on the Line – which explores how frustrated lovers communicated via telegraph in a pre-internet age – to Eric Dyer’s The Bellow’s March – a 5 minute short inspired by the Sisyphean cycle of creation and destruction – these films promise to deliver humor, profundity, and everything in between.
Best of the Ottawa International Animation Festival
July 16th, 7PM
$8 General Admission / $6 Students / $5 Members
International House
3701 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104
(215) 387-5125
www.ihousephilly.org
July 7, 2010
Piper Brett, Large Bow, 2009. Powder coated sheet steel. 42 x 72 x 72 inches.
On Friday, July 9th, Vox Populi’s 6th annual exhibition of emerging national and international artists, VOX VI, will be opening and running until August 1. From a pool of 425 applicants, 33 have been selected for the exhibition. Among this small group are 12 of the best contemporary Philadelphia-based artists, including Lauren Dombrowiak, Jordan Griska, Dustin Metz, and Piper Brett.
The exhibits will cover a broad range of the media spectrum, including photographs, paintings, sculptures, drawings, installations, videos, animation, and ceramics. Also featured in Vox Populi’s Video Lounge will be Jennifer Campbell’s Point No Point, an exploration into the absurd and profound relationships between the human body and the natural world.
* Exhibition Dates: July 9 – August 1, 2010
* Reception: Friday, July 9 from 6 – 11pm
* Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Sunday 12 – 6pm
* Gallery Talk: With artists and jurors, Sunday, July 18 at 3pm
Vox Populi
319 North 11th Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107
(215) 238-1236
www.voxpopuligallery.org
July 7, 2010
Top left, clockwise: Carolina Herrera, 1978; Pia Zadora, 1983; Pia Miller, 1985; Martha Graham, 1979.
Andy Warhol is undeniably one of the most influential North American contemporary artists. As a pioneer of the pop art movement, Warhol’s work blurred the lines between the high-minded traditional conception of art and the banality of popular culture.
Warhol is mostly known for his paintings, namely of American consumer iconography such as Campbell’s Soup Cans and Coca-Cola bottles, and celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Elizabeth Taylor. Though, as a relentless mover and shaker in the thriving New York City art, club, and disco scenes of the 1960s and 1970s, Warhol always had a camera in hand to document his numerous encounters with icons and scenesters.
Now through September 12th, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is one of 183 chosen arts institutions to exhibit a collection of Warhol’s Polaroids and photographic prints.
This special collection includes images of artists, actors and actresses, celebrities and musicians, models and fashion designers, and various fellow travelers who moved within the glamorous social circles that so deeply inspired Warhol’s art.
Andy Warhol Polaroids and B/W Prints
Now through September 12, 2010
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
118-128 N. Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102
(215) 972-7600
www.pafa.org
June 29, 2010
Christy Rupp, Pigeon Flock with Rats, 1980, Image courtesy PAFA
One thing that is evident from Megumi Sasaki’s 2008 documentary film Herb and Dorothy, which won a 2009 Philadelphia Cinefest Audience Award, is that Herb and Dorothy Vogel have a sincere and insatiable passion for art. Beginning in the early 1960s, these self-taught artists and art aficionados began collecting Minimalist and Conceptual Art with money set aside from their day jobs as a US Postal Worker and librarian, respectively.
Among their collection are works by Pablo Picasso, Richard Tuttle, Lynda Beglis, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, and many others. In order to make space in their crowded one bedroom Manhattan apartment, and to share their collection with the public, in 1992 the Vogels gave over 2,000 pieces in their collection as a gift to the National Gallery in Washington, DC.
Since then, the Vogels have restocked their collection, acquiring 4,000 more pieces. As a result, a new national exhibition is underway where the Vogels will provide one museum in each of the 50 states 50 new pieces to be displayed to the public.
In Philadelphia, The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works For Fifty States opened at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts last Friday, June 26th. The exhibit, includes works by some of the most celebrated Contemporary artists, and will be in Philadelphia until September 12th, 2010.
The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works For Fifty States
Friday, June 26 – Sunday, September 12, 2010
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
118-128 N. Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102
(215) 972-7600
www.pafa.org
