Midweek News, Philadelphia Cultural Fund gets more money, Blue World Gallery, Arts League Arts Bloom, Woodmere, Germantown Poetry line, Revival Performance, Peter Pan and more

Roberta: Hi everyone, it’s Roberta.

Ryan: And this is Ryan and this is the midweek news

Roberta: On Artblog Radio. So shall we just start with that, my excitement?

Ryan: Sure. Yeah. That’s good.

Roberta: Yeah. The, maybe you know about this already. It was in the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday, apparently, but it didn’t show up in my digital edition that I looked at this morning. (Here it is: https://share.inquirer.com/PbFmNi)

The William Penn Foundation has donated $8 million — $8 million — to the Philadelphia Cultural Fund. Now this is groundbreaking. The Cultural Fund has never, ever gotten money except from the city. Not that there was a prohibition against getting money from elsewhere, but they never did it before. (The PCF is a separate non-profit organization and not a department of the City government.)

So PCF reached out and William Penn said, yes, and this is going to support over four years. It will support for around 200 organizations with operating money. In addition to what the PCF gets from the city — in 2024, they got 3.6 million. The city simply doesn’t raise the amount they give to the Cultural Fund, it’s like squeezing money out of a dry rag.

You just can’t get any money out of City Council for Arts. Sorry, City Council (and the Mayor). That is the truth. We’re speaking truth here. Anyway this news is very exciting. And the Cultural Fund said that this is for groups with budgets of $1.5 million and less so small budget organizations, not the museums, the little guys, like Artblog. Let’s hope. All right. And operating funds. Gabriela Sanchez, the director of the Cultural Fund said they will be going after other non-city funds in the future as well.

Ryan: Great.

Roberta: So this is really great news, everybody. The grants from the new William Penn money will not be rolling out until 2026.

Ryan: Okay.

Roberta: I guess PCF needs to prepare for how they hand out the funds. It’s a lifeline for organizations. We’re still not completely recovered, if ever, from the pandemic, the downturn in the economy hurt the Art sector so deeply. Ticket sales for the theater and dance and music groups and art galleries closing and museums, gosh, in death spiral, some of them. That is what I’m excited about this morning and I think it bodes well for the future in Philadelphia for the arts, which is always very vulnerable and always in need of more money.

So, yay. Thank you. William Penn.

Ryan: Yeah, that’s great.

Roberta: Thank you. PCF — Good job hunting for money. Okay. Moving along. There is a new gallery opening, speaking of galleries. And it is virtual, a virtual gallery, huh. And it’s called Blue World Gallery.

It’s a project. I got the information from Austin Mayer, but the project is with a group of people including Kaja Silverman. Kaja is a well-known philosopher, writer, educator, photography critic, and public thinker. This is a project that she’s spearheading. I know about it because I was on a mailing list, so I got the information, which is great.

They’re having a virtual opening that you’re invited to everybody. It’s going to be a zoom. Virtual gathering of people and showing the works. (This Zoom event happened Wed. Nov. 20.) And one of the artists in the show is Eileen Neff, who I happen to know. Eileen is a friend and she’s showing work. She’s a photographer, art educator. She’s taught at University of the Arts, RIP, university of the Arts, P-A-R-I-P-P-A. She’s now at Tyler and elsewhere, and she’s, she’s great. She’s a little engine that keeps on chugging and doing her art. And her art is very mystical, magical. It’s about our quirky reality. (Listen to a 2016 Artblog Radio podcast with Eileen Neff.)

It’s wonderful work. Anyway, she’s showing from her series Diorama in 2017. She heard about the Academy of Natural Sciences, was going to open up some of its diorama glass cases and clean them out. It was time they hadn’t been cleaned since 1930 when they were installed, and so there’s a big, huge story that goes with this.

But she got permission to go in and be the photographer of this. Kind of documentary photographer of them taking out the taxidermied animals and you know, dusting it off. And there was all kinds of, apparently the taxidermy was done with arsenic back then, so there was poison gas inside the diorama that had to be remediated by building some sort of hazmat wall around it so that they could all work carefully and not get, you know, poisoned. So lots and lots of stories. Eileen Neff is a great storyteller. She’s also a writer, wonderful writer. Wrote for Art Forum for many, many years; and a good raconteur of stories. So I heard a lot of this yesterday when I did a studio visit with her. It was marvelous. Nice. Yeah, it was lovely. And thank you, Eileen for sharing with us. ‘m going to go to Blue World Gallery virtual opening tomorrow night at 7:00 PM and can’t wait to see it. And it reminds me that a while ago when Clayton Campbell started writing for us. I was made aware of a digital art blog, and I can’t remember the name of it exactly, (Digital Arts Blog — and there was also a biennial — The Wrong Biennale) where you would go in and create an avatar and your avatar would advance towards the art and then walk to the next piece and you could turn around, go back, whatever, go to the next room.It was very second world-like or second…

Ryan: Life

Roberta: Yes! Second Life. I’m not sure what Blue World Gallery is going to be like, but I’m glad to hear about it. The only other online gallery — virtual gallery — that we’ve had was Chimaera, which Angela McQuillan began a number of years ago. Chimaera is now a bricks and mortar gallery. Does not really do the online gallery anymore, but it’s a reminder that the internet is there for us. And so any way you can get your art is not a bad thing.

And you don’t have to pay rent. If you’re the gallerist.

Ryan: Yeah, there’s that

Roberta: Speaking of paying rent, there was an opportunity announced by the Arts League in West Philly called Art Bloom. They are offering their space free for meetings on Sundays. So we’ll put the link in. I don’t know what the follow-up is, so we’ll figure that out and put some information in about that too when we have it.

Because really, a free meeting space in West Philly, that’s golden. That’s really a very generous offer. Thank you Arts League for doing that.

And finally, one other thing I wanted to mention is Woodmere Art Museum, which we all call Woodmere anyway, has now officially become Woodmere. They branded themself with their nickname, which is really their name, but it’s very nice.

The PR material says the name change shows they’re a cultural hub. They’re not just a museum. They’ve let go of the word museum. I want to say they also let go of the word art, but I can’t believe they’re letting go of art. Nor are they letting go of the museum. But they have become a cultural hub with several buildings. You know, they bought a second building.

It’s not open yet, but it’s going to be arts education. Which is really great. So that is a museum on the up and up not a downward spiral in any way, shape or form. Okay, Woodmere! We’re with you all the way. And that’s it for me today. What do you have, Ryan?

Ryan: Well, the Blue World Gallery as you mentioned, is already on Artblog Connect, publicly up there.

The event they put on Connect for Nov. 20 listed BlueWorldgallery.org/zoom as the address. We’ll put a link into the show notes as well. Yeah, I was curious. I had seen that notice and I meant to talk to you about how do you feel about digital museums and galleries.

Roberta: I think it’s great. I mean, come one, come all. Not everybody can go to a museum or gallery. Some museums are not particularly accessible. If you are someone in need of not climbing stairs, not standing on your feet on a concrete floor for any length of time, a virtual gallery fills needs for those — and for the rest of us.

It allows you quickly to see things and become familiar with them. If there’s an event (like a talk), that’s a good thing in a virtual space. We’re all used to Zoom now, so it’s not like a big crisis to have to set up a Zoom account. Everyone’s got one. And so I do think it makes the art more accessible.

Ryan: I think photography is a great medium to choose, you know, to display online in a virtual gallery like this as well.

Roberta: That’s a good point. I think it is, it’s a natural. If anything, photography and the internet have created a visually more literate society than ever before. I mean, we’re visual beings and we are visually more literate than we used to be.

We see things because of all the way we’ve been taught — sort of by osmosis — to see photographs and — for good or for bad — you just see a whole lot more of the composition in the flat spaces produced by photographs, which do flatten space. But that makes you think about the construction of image and things like that.

So yeah, virtual space is a good space for photography. I totally think so.

Ryan: And I, I also noticed that creative Capital has a Philadelphia Stories fiction contest coming up and the deadline’s December 1st. So, first place is a $1,000 cash award and there are three $250 runner up cash awards.

That’s through Creative Capital. I also noticed that they also have an opportunityone in Joshua Tree, CA, as an artist residency. That looked really fun.

Roberta: Wow. That’s idiosyncratic.

Ryan: Yeah.

Roberta: Philadelphia and Joshua Tree really do not go together.

Ryan: No. They are separate things, but I just noticed them down the line. I thought, ‘Oh, that sounds really interesting.’

I’m not quite sure. There was a little bit of a rabbit hole for me to go down to find those two things.

Roberta: Oh, well that’s a great opportunity.

Ryan: It is.

Roberta: Everybody should write a Philadelphia story. Yeah. I used to write the Philadelphia Story for Artnet (under Walter Robinson’s editorship) before it became the current artnet.

That was fun. It was a roundup of what was going on in the art galleries and museums in Philly.

Ryan: Yeah. And the Philadelphia Stories from Creative Capital ends up in print as well as in a downloadable pdf.

Roberta: Fabulous. Yeah. Is this the first year they’ve done this or is this something that’s been going on and I just never heard of it.

Ryan: I’m not sure how long it’s been around, but anyway, we’ll have a, we’ll have links to that too, if that sounds interesting to you. (The project, “Philadelphia Stories” has been around since 2004. More info here.)

Roberta: Sounds very interesting. Get your pens and your pencils ready and start writing Philadelphia stories.

Ryan: And speaking of pens and pencils, getting ready coming up on the 1st of December is the Healing Verse Germantown poetry workshop, so the Healing Verse hotline is now live. The phone number is

1-855-poemrx2

which is interesting. We’ll put that in the show notes too. So right now is the first week of of the live phone call line. For the poetry phone line, call that in and get yourself a poem for the week. (NOTE: Artblog contributor Janyce Denise Glasper read her healing verse poem on the phone line in 2023.)

Yeah, the Healing Verse Poetry Workshop on Dec. 1, is at Ubuntu Fine Arts,  5423 Germantown Avenue up in my neighborhood.

Roberta: Is that a gallery or a community art center kind of place?

Ryan: Yeah, exactly. They have kind of both in that new building. Basically it’s right next to Uncle Bobbie’s. So grab your coffee, then head over to art or vice versa.

Yeah, so the Blue World Gallery looked interesting. I was kind of curious. It’s nice. It’s interesting to hear you have some connection to that too. So, yeah. So coming up on my list is the fact that we’re already getting into Thanksgiving. I feel like November has just really moved fast.

The fastest month for me. So obviously, this Sunday is my birthday, and I’m registered at Tiffany’s, so you should all indulge.

And this is the preview weekend at Christmas Village at LOVE Park. So all of that is moving, is shifting, and things are taking shape there. They are doing a full day run on November 23rd. And 24th …

Roberta: You mean “run” as in it’ll be open, not like as in running a marathon.

Ryan: Yeah. I’m not sure quite why they call it a preview exactly. Maybe they’re expecting some shakeups? I know I saw the Christmas tree going up the other day, which is always a fun thing when they close down sections of City Hall to get that up.

Christmas Village will be open from 12 to 9 on Saturday and 12 to 8 on Sunday, and then they also have Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve hours as well.

Roberta: Are they really doing this on Marathon weekend?

Ryan: Maybe that’s why it’s a preview.

Roberta: Geez, Louise. That’s just… Don’t even dream of bringing a car into Center City.  Just don’t do it.

Ryan: Don’t do it. Yeah. Take the train. Ride a bike. Rent a bike.Take a nice long walk —

Roberta: Bring a sleeping bag if you’re going on septa.

Ryan: Bundle up just in case. because it could snow? rain? you never know. Things are in holiday swing. Things are in the mood. I think everyone’s coming off their chocolate highs and now…ready for something new?

Roberta: Yes. And don’t forget the portal in Love Park. They moved it from where it was to another place, but it’s still in Love Park. So go check out whatever’s going on in the portal.

Ryan: Yeah, the portal is a just funny thing. I’m surprised it’s survived at all in Philadelphia. We have a tendency to be rather harsh on things of that nature, and there seems to be a very brief lifespan for those types of things. For example, I remember when that robot came through — it was doing a peace walk from along the northeast and was making it fine around the world and then got to Philly and got trashed, broken into thousands of pieces.

Anyway, we’re excellent ambassadors to the universe.

Roberta: Yes. Well, it’s a particular vibe here, shall we say…But there’s something about the portal that is like a television.

Ryan: Yeah.

Roberta: People stop. You just stop and you stare, and then you figure out what’s going on, and then you get silly and you do something.

But knock on wood, it’s going to be good through Christmas.

Ryan: Yeah, it’s, it’s an interesting art piece. It’s a fun idea. It would be fun to see more of them too, that would just like pop up in different sides of the planet.

Roberta: They are. I mean, they’re in Poland and Dublin and one other place, I can’t remember, is it.

Lithuania maybe. So they are, they’re, they are pretty universal.

Ryan: I’d love to see something in Africa or Asia. I mean, that’s just two continents.

Roberta: Yes, that’s true.  It is rather Euro and North America-specific. Northern Hemisphere.

Ryan, we should talk about something that we will be doing tomorrow. The Franklin Institute. They are having a media preview that we’re going to go to because they are bringing back the human heart that you can interact with and walk through. Hopefully it’s a new one. I think they probably had to take out the old one, and it was so lo long ago that they took it down, that they created a new one. (WRONG! It’s been re-painted and otherwise restored and is now part of a rechristened exhibit, “Body Odyssey.” So, the heart is now surrounded by interactive media that allow you to connect your heart beat to the big heart, all with flashing red neon lights, and do other body related interactive things.)

The exhibit teaches you about the human hearts. And also there’s something new with the Baldwin locomotive. It’s not going to move anymore. Does anybody remember? Raise your hand if you remember that. You could actually get on the Baldwin locomotive and it would move like 10 feet. (Actually it was only moving 4 ft. according to an FI collections person) And then it would move back. But I don’t think it does that anymore. It’s stationary and I don’t think anybody gets on it anymore (WRONG! You can still walk up the steps and enter the engineer’s space), but there’s an atrium or a balcony around it that you can look down on it. (ALSO WRONG. There is no balcony. But they have taken away part of the floor beneath the train and you can now see the understructure that was built in 1930 to hold up the engine.)

It’s this incredible moment to experience, up close, an old steam engine inside a museum. (History of Baldwin 60000, the engine in the FI)

You think, ‘How did they do that? How did they get it in there?’ And ‘Why did they do that?’ And I think Baldwin has a Philadelphia connection. I think it was an engine that was built here. (TRUE) Anyway, that’s tomorrow. We’re going to check out the Franklin Institute because that is culture, right? Science, culture, ar — it’s all together. It’s one big family of human activities that doesn’t involve violence. So we’re all in favor of it.

Ryan: We are indeed. So. Well, let me get into my three things.

Roberta: You already did two things.

Ryan: Well. One was an opportunity, the other, the healing verse is a reminder, so it counts as a previous week ping

Roberta: Got it. It’s a carryover.

Ryan: Okay. The shows that I want to to shout out this week are November 23rd, is Revival! Performance and Curator Talk with Joyce Chung and Maori Karmael Holmes. This is at Asian Arts Initiative. It’s from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM They’re at 1219 Vine.

It looks to be an interesting conversation that now becomes a performance which was connected to an exhibit. So it’s kind of a meld, it’s kind of growing. So it was an audio and visual exhibit, and now it’s become a performance that’s talking about culture of shared black spiritual experience, which seems really powerful and interesting, so I’m curious what the performance section is going to be. That’s coming up on November 23rd, 6:00- 8:00 PM at Asian Arts Initiative. And then I have a couple plays that I want to shout out. So once we get into the holiday season, they kind of get fun and interesting in sometimes predictable ways, like it’s Nutcracker season, so there’s 27,000 Nutcracker versions happening. So get ready if you have to attend those. I so far only have tickets to one. That’s good. Let’s keep those limited. I know how it ends. It’s fine. But coming up, starting on November 22nd is The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa FastHorse. It looks to be fun and interesting. It’s running from November 22nd through December 8th at Stage Crafters at 8130 Germantown Avenue. That looks to be really an interesting show. Whenever I read the premise of certain shows, I kind of get in my head what it’s going to be.

But so far this year I’ve been pleasantly surprised that they’ve exceeded my expectations, which, as some people say, that’s the difficult thing to do, but so far it’s worked and so that’s something I would like to see as well. It’s supposed to be fun and funny and clever. A bit ironic. So the premise is that it’s the perfect Thanksgiving play and it’s a bunch of clueless, well-meaning educators trying to tell the history of Thanksgiving.

But they lack any proper representation of people that may have feelings other than their own. And this is written by Larissa FastHorse, so that could be interesting.

Then my final pick is, Arden Theatre Company is putting on Peter Pan. Arden puts on amazing shows, specifically many of their youth-focused and oriented shows are imaginative and playful and world bending and explorative in a lot of different ways, and they just have so much fun with it. You can see it. Everyone on stage is having a good time being there, and you will too. It’s just kind of the, the vibe and the energy that Arden puts out, and the way that their creative process happens. I have never been disappointed at an Arden show.

Roberta: And this is Peter Pan. Are they going to have Peter Pan flying?

Ryan: Oh, I would imagine. Yeah.

Roberta: Wonderful.

Ryan: So yeah, if you’ve read the book, the book is kind of wild. We read the book this year with my kids. I’m like, ‘Hey, have we ever actually read Peter Pan? Or are we just like listening to Walt Disney preach to us about what Peter Pan is?’

But we went back and read it and I thought, ‘Oh, this is weird.’ I’ve forgotten how strange it is. Anyway, so this is Arden Theater. This is in Old City, 40 North 2nd at the main theater. This is running from November 27th through January 19th. So plenty of time to see that, and that is going to be their big winter show.

Roberta: I have to mention that I met someone from the Arden Theater Company, a person in the development department named Jessica Abel. Lovely person, young person, very much into community and she had a joy to her that I thought was real and it coincides with what you just said about the Arden’s affect being playful and joyful.

Ryan: That’s great. That’s generally the vibe I’ve gotten from them and that’s been my experience as well. I’ve seen a dozen shows there probably more and I’m never disappointed.

Roberta: So what are you doing for Thanksgiving, Ryan? Wait, are we done with news? I’m sorry, I jumped right in there.

Ryan: No, I’m done with mine. Those are my, those are my three plus my two bonus that don’t count as bonus. It’s like my mother says, calories don’t count on your birthday. These are my events that don’t count today.

Roberta: That’s a good saying. Sure.

Ryan: I don’t count calories. Well, that’s not true.

Sometimes I do, but it’s usually for other reasons, but certainly not at my birthday. No,

Roberta: never, never.

Ryan: So I’m making four pies — pecan, sweet potato, apple, and this berry mash that I know my son likes.

Roberta: Wow.

Ryan: And everything’s gotta be gluten free because my daughter doesn’t do gluten.

Roberta: Okay.

Ryan: I don’t go crazy on the lattice or overthink it too much, but it’s really about having some level of crust that doesn’t feel gluten-free, right?

Roberta: Egg wash i? Put egg wash on it. That might help.

Ryan: You want it to have some texture and not crispy, crunchy.

Roberta: Does that…that must take you a whole day, if not longer.

Ryan: Usually it’s the crust that takes the longest, obviously.

So once you get the crust done and it’s four, so one takes time and four will take just slightly longer than one. I make my mix and keep going. Usually I do it in two batches.Uhhuh, because I don’t have enough bowls to make four in one big bowl.

Roberta: Right. Well you couldn’t put four in the oven at the same time anyway.

I don’t think that would work very well. But you can get two in the oven at the same time.

Ryan: That’s what we do.What about yourself?

Roberta: Well had Max and Kim, my son and daughter-in-law over for dinner on Sunday night and before they left it dawned on us we ought to talk about Thanksgiving and we hadn’t talked about it before.

And it went like this,

“What do you want to do? I don’t know. What do you want to do?

Well, I guess we could do something. Okay, let’s do something.

It could be at our house. It could be at your house.”

We’re very loosey goosey about it. We’ll get together. We’ll have a gathering. We’ll have to coordinate it with our daughter and her husband who live close by.

And see if we can get all six of us together. But that sounds great. Yeah. Not sure. I usually make pumpkin pies. That’s my contribution.

Ryan: But yeah, it’s usually a fun time. You know, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because I do love the getting together. We enjoy the dog show. We’ve gone to the dog show a few times.

Roberta: Oh, the one in Oaks? Max and Kim went to it and they loved it. And after the election, this particular election, it was just what they needed.

Ryan: Oh really? Yeah.

Roberta: The almost silliness of it and and, and beauty. I mean, those animals are beautiful.

Ryan: Have you ever seen the movie Best In Show? Love that movie.

Roberta:  Yes. I love all his movies (Christopher Guest).

Ryan: Yes, they’re great. So we, we’ve seen that many times and thought, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be great if we went this year?’ So several years ago we went for the first time and we walked in and it’s as if these people are literally embodying that movie.

And so I had like take pictures like, this person is just like from the movie and this person is just like in this movie. It was quite an experience. These people love their animals. Yes. Or their dogs specifically

Roberta: to the nth degree. Yeah, and how it got to be in Oaks, Pennsylvania. I’m not sure, but nice that it’s local.

Well, for me, I like going to the marathon. My, my son races in the half marathon. He’s done a marathon, but he prefers the half marathons for obvious reasons. And I love to be with the crowd of people who are rooting for their people. And rooting for just other people in general. And it just is a feel good time.

So I like to go. I highly recommend going to support everybody who’s running in the marathon. But don’t bring your car. Just take septa.

Ryan: Yes. Oh my goodness. You’re going to have to park so far away. You might as well just walk from home… ‘I live in Media, but I’m driving in.’ Yeah, no. Just walk. Except it’s a five hour walk.

But that’s what parking will take (to get out after the marathon). But I’m sure there’s some garages.

Roberta: They’ll be all occupied by the runners. Right. You know, the runners get there first, they get the parking spots.

Ryan: Yeah. You’d have to park next to Penn campus and walk in.

Roberta: Well, that’s not a bad walk. That’s a great walk in fact.

Ryan: Along the bridge it would be pretty.

Roberta: Yes.

Shall we sign off, Ryan?

Ryan: Sounds good.

Roberta: Okay. Bye everybody. Thanks for listening.  It’s Roberta.

Ryan: Thanks everybody. This is Ryan and this has been Artblog’s, midweek News. We’ll see you next time.