Midweek News, Philadelphia Cultural Fund get 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 inquiry yesterday, apparently, but it didn’t show up in the, my digital edition that I looked at this morning.

So where, where it is? I don’t know. 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 I. Not that there was a prohibition against getting money from elsewhere, but they never did it before.

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

You just can’t get any money out of City Council for Arts. Sorry, city Council. That is the truth. We’re speaking truth here. It’s 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. Artblog.

Let’s hope. All right. And operating funds. They, Gabriela, 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 out there and infusion of funds, the, the grants will not be from William Penn will not be rolling out until 2026.

Ryan: Okay.

Roberta: So, not this year or this upcoming year, but 2026. I guess they’re going to prepare for how they do it. And so this is something that people will be really looking forward to. Organizations. It’s a lifeline. Everybody knows that it’s, we’re still not completely recovered, if ever, from the pandemic.

You know, the downturn in the economy hurt. Art sector so deeply, you know, ticket sales and all of that for the theater and dance and music groups and, you know, art galleries closing and museums, gosh, in death spiral, some of them. That, that is what I’m excited about this morning and I think it, 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 what? What a great thing. So that Good job hunting for

Ryan: money.

Roberta: Yeah. Totally successful. Okay. Moving along. There is a new gallery opening, opening, speaking of galleries. And it is virtual. It’s going to be a virtual gallery, huh. And it’s called Blue World Gallery, and it’s photography based.

It’s the project. I got the information from Austin Mayor, but the project of the virtual photo show or gallery is Kaja Silverman’s. Kaja is a well-known philosopher writer. Photography critic, and, you know, public thinker. This is a project that she’s doing. 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. Blue world gallery.com/zoom or something. It’s going to be a zoom. Virtual gathering of people and showing the works. 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 reality versus. What is real, you know all about that.

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.

Thank you Eileen for sharing us. Sharing all of this with us. So I’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 this digital art gallery, and I can’t remember the name of it exactly, but there’s something, we’ll, we’ll dig out the the information about it.

So where you would go in and create an avatar and your avatar would sort of advance towards the art and then walk to the next piece and you could, you know, turn around, go back, whatever, go to the next room. But it was very second. Worlds like or second.

Ryan: Life

Roberta: called Second Life. Second Life. I’m not sure what this is going to be like, but I’m glad to hear about it.

Yeah. The only other online gallery that we’ve had, virtual gallery was Cmera, which Angela McQuillan began a number of years ago. Cmera is now a bricks and mortar place. Does not really do the online gallery anymore, but it’s, 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.

Ryan: Yeah, there’s that

Roberta: if you’re the gallerist. Speaking of paying rent, there was an opportunity announced by the Arts League in West Philly called Arts Bloom, LOOM. 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.

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

It says they’re a cultural hub. They’re not just a museum. They’ve let go of the words 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, as I believe. Which is really great. So there’s 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 Connect publicly up there.

The events listed blue World gallery.org/zoom is the address. We’ll put a link into the show notes as well. And if you want to look at what they put in there that’s available for you right now. Yeah, I’d be curious. I was curious. I had, I had seen that I meant to talk to you about how do you feel about digital museums and galleries.

Roberta: Yeah. I think it’s great. I mean, come one come all. Not everybody can go. Some museums are not particularly accessible. You know, if you are someone in need of not climbing stairs. Not standing on your feet on a concrete floor for 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 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’s, 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 are visually, 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 really taught, sort of by osmosis to see photographs and. If for good or for bad you just see a, a whole lot more of the flat space, the photographic spaces of flat space. But you think then about construction of image and things like that.

So I, I think yeah, it’s a good, it’s good use of. Space for photography online? I totally think so.

Ryan: And I, I also noticed that creative Capital has a Philadelphia stories fiction contest coming up at the deadlines December 1st. So first place is a thousand dollars cash award and there are three $250 runner up cash awards.

That’s through ca Creative Capital. I also noticed that they also have one in, joshua Tree as a residency. That looked really fun.

Roberta: Wow. That’s, yeah, that syncratic.

Ryan: Yeah.

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

Ryan: No. They are separate in the thing, but I just noticed them down the line. I’m like, oh, that sounds really interesting.

I’m not quite sure. There’s a little bit of a rabbit hole for me 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 before it became the current artnet. And did a lot more art writing.

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

Ryan: Yeah. And that one ends up in, in print as well as part of their winter, spring 2025 Philadelphia stories.

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.

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 has a poetry workshop, so that phone number is now live. It’s 1 8 5 5 poem RX two, which is interesting. We’ll put RX I think like prescription, so like. 8, 5, 5 poem prescription too. So 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.

Yeah, the event on the first, is that Ubuntu Fine Arts? 54. 23 Germantown Avenue up in my neighborhood.

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

Ryan: Yeah, exactly. Cool. Yeah, they have kind of both. Right? In that new building, it’s right. Basically it’s right next to Uncle. Uncle Bobby’s. So grab your coffee, then head over to art or vice versa.

Yeah, so the Blue World Gallery looked interesting. I I was kind of curious. It’s nice. It’s, it’s interesting to hear you have some connections to that too. So, yeah. So come up on my list is we’re already getting into. Next week is getting towards 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 is the preview weekend at Christmas Village. So all of that is moving, is shifting and things are ex are taking shape there. So they are doing a full day run on November 23rd. And 24th Saturday week run.

Roberta: As in it, as in, it’ll be open, not like a, a marathon run.

Ryan: Yeah. So I I, I’m not sure quite why they call it a preview exactly if that there’s, they’re expecting some shakeups. I know I saw the 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 nine on Saturday and 12 to eight 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 just don’t even dream of bringing a car into Center City.

No. Just, just don’t do it.

Ryan: Don’t do it. Yeah. Take the train. Ride a bike. Rent a bike. Bring, take a nice long walk sleeping bag. If you’re going on

Roberta: septa, bring your sleeping bag

Ryan: bundle up just in case. because it could, 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, 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. It we have a tendency to be rather harsh on things like the of that nature and to have a limited.

Or a very brief lifespan for those types of events. Like I remember when, when that what was that robot came through like he was doing a peace walk from along the northeast and. It was making it fine around the world and then got to Phil in, got trashed, broke, broken into thousands of pieces. Oh, wow.

Anyway, we’re excellent ambassadors to the universe.

Roberta: Yes, yes. Well, it’s a particular vibe here, shall we say. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don’t know. There’s something about the portal that is like a television.

Ryan: Yeah. And

Roberta: so 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: That would be kind of

Ryan: Interesting.

Roberta: they are. That’s, 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. That is true. It is rather Euro and North America. Northern Hemisphere. We should talk about something that we may 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 the old one, and it was so lo long ago that they took it down, that they created a new one.

And it’s all interactive and it teaches you about the human hearts. And also there’s some new thing they’ve done with the Baldwin locomotive where you can’t, 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.

And then it would go back. But I don’t think it does that anymore. It’s stationary and I don’t think anybody gets on it anymore, but there’s an atrium or a balcony around it that you can look down on it. It’s this incredible moment to experience up close an old steam engine inside a museum. You know?

It’s like, how did they do that? How did they get it in there? Yeah. Why did they do that? And I think Baldwin has a Philadelphia connection. I think it was. An engine that was built here, or I don’t know. I think it has. Baldwin engines came from Philadelphia. Anyway, that’s tomorrow. We’re going to check out the Franklin Institute because that is culture, right?

Science, culture, art, there’s, you know, 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. You didn’t

Roberta: do your three things. You already did two things

Ryan: well. One was an opportunity, the other, the healing verse.

Is a reminder, so, oh, it, it counts as a previous week

Roberta: ping. 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 Mayor Me Carmel Holmes. This is at Agent 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 meld, it’s kind of growing. So it was an arts, sorry, it was an audio and visual, 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, the performance section of is going to be. So if you’ve seen stuff like that before or, yeah, so that’s coming up on November 23rd, six 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 and 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 Fast Horse. This could be at Stage Crafters Theater.

So this was something that was, had also been happening in West as well. But Thanksgiving play is, looks to be fun and interesting. It’s running from November 22nd through December 8th at Stage Crafters at 81 30 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, they’ve exceeded my expectations, which is 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 property representation of. People that may have feelings other than their own. Yeah. And this is written by Larissa Fast Horse, so, so that could be an interesting, and then my final one is Arden 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 from everyone on stage is having a good time being there, and, 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 don’t, I have never been disappointed at an ardent show.

Roberta: And this is Peter Pan. Are they going to have Peter Pan? 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 preached to us about what Peter Pan is.

But we went back and read it and I’m like, oh, this is weird. Yeah, I’ve forgotten how kind of. Strange it is. Anyway, so this is Ardent Theater. This is in Old City, 40 North second 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 Ardent Theater Company in the development department named Jessica, can’t remember the last name. Lovely person, young person, very much into community and. Had a joy to her that I thought was really, it coincides with what you just said about the den and joyful.

That’s interesting. Yeah, she was lovely. Yeah,

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 dozen shows there pro probably more. Yeah. And I’m never disappointed.

Roberta: So what are you doing for Thanksgiving, Ryan? I. 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. Okay. That don’t count as bonus. It’s like my mother says, calories don’t count on your birthday, so. Oh, they don’t? These are my events that don’t count today either.

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 like this berry mash that I know my son likes. So

Roberta: Wow.

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

Roberta: Okay.

Ryan: I don’t go crazy on the lattice or overthink it too much, but I.

It’s really about the having some sort level of crust that doesn’t feel gluten-free, right? Yes. You egg wash, put

Roberta: 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, it’s four, so you know, one takes, you know, four will take just slightly longer than one. Yeah. So just kind of make. Make my mix and keep going. Usually I do it in two, actually, Uhhuh, because I don’t have enough bowl stuff to make four in one big bowl, so

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. No, you can get two in the oven at the same time.

Ryan: That’s what we do.

Roberta: Cool. And yeah. What about yourself? Well we talked to, we had max and Kim, my son and daughter-in-Law over for dinner on Sunday night before they left. It dawned on us we ought to talk about Thanksgiving and we hadn’t talked about it before.

And it was like, 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. Oh. 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. Just we enjoy the, the dog show.

We’ve gone to the dog show a few times.

Roberta: Oh, the one in Oaks? Yeah. My son and daughter-in-Law went to it and he, they loved it. And after the election, this particular election, it was just what they needed.

Ryan: Oh really? Yeah. Kind of the

Roberta: up sort of silliness and, and.

Ryan: Yeah.

Roberta: Beauty. I mean, those animals are beautiful.

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

Roberta: Love that movie? Yes. I love all his movies. Yes, they’re great.

Ryan: So we, we’ve seen that many times and thought it like, 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. Like, these people are literally embodying that movie right now.

And so I had like take pictures like, this person is from this show and this, this person is in this movie. I’m like. 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, 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. Rooting for their people. That’s nice. 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. No.

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

But that’s what parking will take. But I’m sure there’s some garages.

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

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

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

Ryan: along the bridge it would be pretty.

Roberta: Wow. Yes. Shall we sign off, Ryan?

Ryan: Sounds good.

Roberta: Okay. Bye everybody. Thanks for listening to Roberta.

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