Roberta: Hi everyone, it’s Roberta.

Ryan: And this is Ryan and this is the Midweek News

Roberta: on Artblog Radio. Ryan, you have questions?! Oh, good. Yes. Bring it on. Well, let me start with the news and then you can get into your questions and your exciting things. Leeway Foundation, which does such good in the community, with grants for L-G-B-T-Q-I-A and people of color, they have just announced that they found their new executive director. Their former executive director, Denise Brown, is stepping down.

We’ve known this for quite a while. Denise is a wonderful, wonderful administrator. Good person, lovely person, and the new person coming in at Leeway, the executive director is Pia Agrawal. And she takes over in January and she comes with a very robust resume, and she has ties to the area. She was once upon a time at the Fringe Arts.

She was a member of the Fringe Arts Administration and worked for them. And she also went to Haverford College for undergrad. She has ties to the area. Welcome to Pia! And good luck with your new position. All kinds of thanks to Denise Brown for her years of stewardship of that wonderful organization.

Next up, I didn’t realize this, but the Phillies and SEI (financial services firm, in Oaks, PA, which also collects art — the SEI collection) have an annual mural contest that they inaugurated for murals at Citizens Bank Park. The contest was launched sometime in the past year and they are now announcing the 2024 winner of the mural for Citizens Bank Park —  Jose “Busta” Bustamante, and his mural is called “Next Generation.” (See image above)

And this will be an annual thing, so we’ll keep our eyes peeled and see where they’re dropping the next application for a muralist. And you can then apply. That’s a nice new opportunity. And it’s interesting that SEI is joining with the Phillies. Good for them to do an art project.

Finally we have a reader — Todd Kimmell — wrote into us an open letter to the city council members, the press and the mayor. Todd Kimmel is a noted collector of art, artist in his own right. He has been the auctioneer pretty much every year at the live auction that Space 1026 does. This is a sort of scorched earth letter that takes everybody to task — the unions, the Black clergymen, the Council members, the Mayor, and he says, “Do right by the people. Who are you? What are you? Please in this moment, Do right. Do right.” And we want to say, Thursday’s the big vote (12/19/24). There is an important thing that everybody should be thinking about who’s in city council. Vote for people and community. What are they actually doing and who they’re voting for and who they seem to be voting against?

Anyway, I won’t say anymore, but thank you Todd Kimmel for writing in your impassioned letter. Anyway, that’s it for me. I know there’s lots of other stuff out there, Ryan, but I’ll just close my part now and say, what do you got?

Ryan: In the news Nikki Giovanni recently passed away on the ninth. Yes. So I wanted to mention that.

Roberta: Remind people who that is.

Ryan: So, Nikki Giovanni is a longtime activist, civil rights activist, poet, writer, essayist, story author. So she recently passed away on the, the 9th of December.

Roberta: Is she local?

Ryan: No, no, she’s, she’s a national figure. She was born in Tennessee, stayed in the south area. I think she was living in Virginia. Best known for activism. She’s done a lot of different work in that area.

Roberta: Was this unexpected or was she a woman of some age?

Ryan: She was 81.

Roberta: Sorry to see that she’s passed.

Ryan: So I think one of her more famous pieces that most people would know is “Black Joy.” People may recognize that. And, and I was also thinking like Quincy Jones died last month and, and I was thinking how influential he has been to music over the last century.

And I, I was, you know, I was really surprised that he didn’t get a national day. The president and the vice president put out their memorandum of condolences, but they didn’t say ‘We should have a Quincy Jones Day. There’s so much music that we all value and appreciate and recognize that he was connected to in one way or another.

Roberta: Yes. Thank you for bringing those up. Those are really important people.

Ryan: What else is happening? Yeah, the arena obviously is a big, is a big deal. That vote’s coming up. The Kelces have had some comments about that. I don’t know if you saw that.

Roberta: No. But that’s the Eagles. They’re not the 76ers, right?

Ryan: Right. And he said, he said something to the effect of, in 10 years, no one’s going to be thinking about it anymore. It’ll all be settled and people will be happy with what it is.

Roberta: Oh, I don’t believe that.

Ryan: I don’t either. But that’s, I think that’s his take. I think the people who are going to be happy with it are going to be happy with it. And the people who are not happy with it will be not happy with it.

Roberta: Yes.

Ryan: think that’s how it’s going to be.

Roberta: Yes, exactly. And Jefferson Station is going to be a total mess. Did you read Inga Saffron piece in the Inquirer?

Inga Saffron had a front page story about the way this will impact Jefferson Station. It’s going to turn it into like a rat’s maze. The corridors will be narrow, dangerous, the lighting is going to go away. There’s some natural light that comes in. That’s all going to be gone — bricked over, walled up. It’s terrible. It’s not good.

Ryan: It’s again…I’m a strong advocate that it’s by design and we could do it by design or we could just like piecemeal this thing together and I think for Center City, it’s a place that a lot of people use and I think it’s a reflection of the city and I think we should make it look good and be proud of what it is as a whole piece as best we can as opposed to one-offs.

Roberta: Yes, and one-offs for people that just want what they want.

Ryan: Right?

Roberta: And they want this and they have the money to pay for it.

Ryan: It would’ve been much better to have this conversation when the convention center was getting redone. Wouldn’t it be great to have a convention center and basketball stadium all in one?

Boom. There you go. It’s just two blocks from where they want it anyway. Yeah. Anyway, we’ll get to my three. So obviously the holiday seasons are upon us. If you haven’t done your shopping, the lines are just going to be longer. There are so, but still have fun…Kidding.

Roberta:  Ryan. You can’t just say things like that. You have to say, but get in line and bring your hot chocolate with you and hand out your Hershey’s kisses to everybody else and then you’ll all have a good time waiting in line.

Ryan: I hope you have a great time standing in line. I’ll say that there are, there are actually shows that are opening, that are happening.

There are ongoing shows. I had mentioned last week that I had a couple nutcrackers to see. They were both interesting and I’m glad they were so different from one another. One was the classic storytelling done by a youth dance company. And. It was really professionally done, and I was really surprised how good it was, and it was up in montco and the, the theater was, was great and I, I don’t know why they had the air conditioning on, but other than that, it was, it was really good.

The theater was great, and boy, it takes me forever to get out there. Where was it? It was one of this big montco community building that housed a bunch of different things, their library and a theater and some other community spaces. It’s out in Blue Bell.

Roberta: Oh, blue Bell, okay.

Ryan: And

Roberta: Blue Bell is far. That’s why it takes you long to get there.

It’s very far.

Ryan: If I didn’t have Google, I would have no idea where I was. No idea. Completely lost. It would’ve been hours to get home. Yeah. So I would’ve had to stop like every corner and ask for directions. There was not good markings. And then the road that I was on with Google, actually, they had it closed, so then I had to get off again.

If I didn’t have Google, it would’ve been chaos. Anyway.

Roberta: I’m so sorry. Did your, did you have your kids with you? At least you had fun with the kids in the chaos.

Ryan: Yeah, it, it was a lot of fun. It was everybody raging

Roberta: against the, the roads?

Ryan: No, it was just con No, it was, the roads were fine. It just, I was, I’m always surprised how long it takes me to get to the suburbs and how confusing they are.

And then but the show was great and the, the facilities were great and it was really, really impressive and a lot of fun to see high school kids and some younger ones, you know, young as six performing. So it was a lot of fun. Nice. Then I also went to go see the One Man Nutcracker, which was a lot of fun.

Just a completely different take. But I actually enjoyed it because I enjoyed the commentary about the history of the Nutcracker, what they were thinking. So it was kind of like the Nutcracker plus an essay, you know, kind of getting some commentary on it, which it was kind of fun. It was a very different perspective.

And my review of that is forthcoming too. So, and that’s going to be up through the 29th. As well. That’s, that’s at the Drake. I’m

Roberta: glad that the, that the one person Nutcracker brought in all that history. That’s good.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah.

Roberta: Otherwise it come, comes at you out of sort of where does it come from? I don’t know.

It’s just the Nutcracker

Ryan: and you don’t quite take in some of the context. And there’s some good jokes because quite frankly, it’s the, if there was commentary, you would be like, wow, that’s really racist, but. We kind of skip over that because it’s just the standard Tropey expectations, but it’s pretty out there if you think about it.

Yeah. So I have a couple theater things again that are coming out. One that’s just a short run is at Theater Exile, it’s Kia and the Arc that opens on the 20th of December and it’s running through December 23rd. That is going to be an interesting show with electric cello dance, puppetry and storytelling.

Which is totally, I mean, if you’re going to write me a play, those are some words that you would use. So I’m excited to see that the African American Museum in Philadelphia is also opening a new show, and this show’s going to be running for a long time. Is opening, coming up? That is Shaheed Rucker, it’s going to be fairly large show.

It looks to be, you’re talking about Jet Magazine and some of all those classic designs from that, that era, which looks to be really interesting. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that, but if you. If you aren’t, it’s going to be exciting. And if you, if you have seen it, I think it’s, I think it’s going to show you a lot more and, and open up a lot of things that came from that era.

So it’s like starting in the fifties, you’re going to see a lot of that kind of classic design where it still carries over or still, still lands still seems relevant. So it’s recovering. Do. Iconic is what it’s called by Shahied Rucker.

Roberta: So it’s a design show, historic documentation, it’s documentation.

Of Jet Magazine, is that what it is?

Ryan: I believe so. I’m not sure how much of, if there’s going to be original pieces as well, or if it’s going to be on top of, you know, more of a commentary on it. So kind of, kind of both. I, I think maybe it could be very similar to like that Banksy Basquiat show that I saw recently where Banksy was responding to Basquiat could be something along those lines as well, which I think can be really powerful because it keeps the original source fairly well intact and, and just kind of builds on it to show how important the original work was and how.

How can be slightly adapted to contemporary uses while maintaining its original source materials. So and that’s running all the way through July, so tons of time to see that. But the opening is happening December 20th. So if you want to see that now and need an excuse to not do your Christmas shopping or your holiday shopping.

This is a great opportunity to do that. Lastly, I was thinking sometimes it’s, it’s fun to have some sing-alongs and that kind of thing this time of season. And if you’re kind of over Christmas music in every store that you go into and get jingles, there is a Neil Diamond show that’s happening at Forest Theater, which is 1114 Walnut.

If you haven’t been there. It’s one of the classic theaters in the city. It is a beautiful noise. It’s a created and collaboration with Neil Diamond. Fun except music to sing along with that I think would be just a fun, easy breezy time. If you’re looking for something like that, it’s running now through the 22nd of December.

So those are my three picks. Kind of get you into a, a slightly different mood, but hopefully a positive, exciting, fun time that I, that I also think are all worth, worth seeing in and of themselves.

Roberta: Definitely.

Ryan: And Art Blog Connect already has shows listed for 2025 for May and June. There’s a lot of things that are already happening.

So 2025 is looking to be a pretty exciting year already.

Roberta: Wait a minute. Yeah. There are things on Connect for June. Of 2025 already. Yeah, I want to know who those people are. They are on the ball.

Ryan: Yeah. Way to go get your stuff out. Yeah. And that’s going to be on the calendar for, you know, six, six months.

That’s, that’s great. PR for yourself. It’s free. If you have an event that’s, that you want to have listed, it’s free to put it up there. Yeah, send me a note. I can help you if you have questions with that. It’s a great way to get your stuff up and out there. If you’ve got your PR and press stuff ready, we’d love to help you get it going.

Let’s wrap it up.

Roberta: Okay. Alright, well this has been Roberta and thanks for tuning in and we’ll be back next week. I think. So come back next week for more on whatever day of the week. It’s you, your podcast. Yeah, we on days, we it out on a Wednesday, but you may listen on who knows what night, what day.

Enjoy. Bye bye!

Ryan: And this is Ryan and this has been Artblog’s, Midweek News. Thanks for listening, everybody, and we’ll see you next time.