Midweek News, Hidden City Podcast, electric school buses, OSGEMEOS, Basquiat, Banksy, Smithsonian, openings and more

Roberta: Hi everyone, it’s Roberta.

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

Roberta: on Artblog radio. Sorry, it always takes me a minute to find the widget.

Ryan: No worries. Every, every iteration they change where it goes for some reason.

Roberta: Yes, I know it’s. Like Trader Joe’s, they’re always moving the things you love dearly, they move them all the time.

Ryan: Yeah.

Roberta: Cereal. They move it here, they move it there. Whatever.

Ryan: It makes you spend more time in the aisles. That’s the whole point

Roberta: Onto the news. I guess we could go to the news. Sounds good if you wanted.

Ryan: Yeah.

Roberta: I don’t have a whole lot today to talk about. Hidden City. Our pals at Hidden City have a podcast. Did we talk about this before? Ryan? Forgive me if we did.

Ryan: No, go for it.

Roberta: Alright, so Hidden City Daily is an online publication. They cover historic preservation. They cover urban architecture and. Things that are urbanist concerns about streets, scapes, and, and more buildings. And they’re into history.

So we love them. They’re great. They’re a nonprofit and we’ve done several projects with them in the past. We did tours where they talked about the history of buildings in the neighborhood, and we went in and talked about the arts in the galleries in the neighborhood. So they’re good, good people.

Anyway, they are starting a podcast on the 17th of October, and let me pull up my stuff here. It’s called a Song of Philadelphia, a Hidden City podcast, and we’ll put a link into the trailer so you can listen to it. It sounds like it’s going to be kind of crazy. And their description is, think Hidden City meets an impressionistic version of this American life, hosted by a French expatriate who moved here 20 years ago and fell in love with the city.

So Julien Suaudeau is Bryn Mawr University’s Senior Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies and Program Director of Film Studies, but in his spare time, he runs around town and collects audio clips. He’s going to be making audio clips and has made some, I think they have three in the works and they’re dropping them this fall.

So congratulations to Hidden City on their new podcast. Very exciting. I can’t wait to listen. I did listen to the trailer. I can’t quite tell from the trailer what the actual podcast is going to be. But it, it gives you a flavor of the tone, so it’ll be upbeat and lively I guess I would say from what I listened to. Anyway, it’s really good news and it’ll be available on Spotify and Apple and also on the Hidden City website.

Now, the only other thing that I wanted to talk about, and this is really not even art related, although it tangentially relates to. It relates to human beings and artists are human beings, so I’ll bring it up anyway the Philadelphia school district got $17 million to purchase 22 electric school buses.

Now, I think that’s outstanding, and that gets to the fact that. We got a climate crisis going on and we need more electric everything. And the fact that this money came from the EPA, from the feds to the school district, I’m not sure how it got there, but it’s going to double its fleet of electric school buses, which is another shocker.

They already have 22 and they’re getting 22 more. So who knew that the Philly school district had 22 electric school buses? They’re getting 22 more. That’s really great. Apparently the Feds are giving $5 billion to municipalities across the country to up their electric vehicle fleets. This is really great.

All right, well that’s, that’s the extent of my news this week, Ryan. Great. So. What do you got?

Ryan: Well, I have my usual three things plus a, a shout out. So this week is the Mural Arts, We here, Roberto Lugo show that’s coming up on the 19th, that is from 11 to 3:30. So there’s a public forum and it’s a sculpture party.

There’s a list of events that are happening during that time. That looks like a really great show. I mentioned it last week, mentioned again this week. It’s worth a worth a look at that show. There is a Cerulean Arts Collective members exhibit coming up on the 16th, but they, their opening celebration will be on the 19th, and that’s from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM That’s a show with different artists that are part of their collective membership.

Part of (re)Focus, we haven’t talked about (re)Focus in a little while, but the Print Center is doing a 50 Years of Philadelphia women’s art leadership conversation that is on October 17th from six to seven at the Print Center part of the (re)Focus show that’s been happening throughout the year. That could be really interesting.

A lot of interesting people, A lot of interesting stories. And I do also want to mention one other thing that, that popped up that I thought looked really interesting and it’s so I guess I’m going to go past my three, but I do want to say there is a short film festival that’s happening. It is the Ashbury Shorts USA, in conjunction with the Garden State Film Festival, and they are doing an evening of the World’s Best Short Films. And that is going to be in Collingswood on October 17th at 7:00 PM at the Scottish Rite Auditorium. Could be a lot of fun. If you are interested in short films, that’s October 17th in Collingswood, and then also on October 17th.

A quick shout-out is my father’s birthday, so I thought I would add that as well.

Roberta: Happy birthday, Ryan’s father,

Ryan: Everything but my father’s birthday are on ArtblogConnect, so if you want to see those, click through those. But yeah. What? But I, what I was doing this weekend, or I guess yesterday was for Indigenous People’s Day slash Christopher Columbus Day slash there was a new article you ever read about the Christopher Columbus stuff that is, he’s most likely have been born in Genoa, but some people believe he was born in Spain and he’s Jewish ancestry.

Roberta: I read that article. I thought that was so interesting. Yeah, no, they’ve definitively said that now, there’s some DNA evidence or something or other. I don’t know.

Ryan: Somebody said it definitively, and other people definitively said, what are you talking about? So it’s pretty definitively unclear and, you know, how do you, it’s like quoting Shakespeare.

The beauty of quoting Shakespeare is that we spell his name unlike he ever wrote his name. He never wrote it the way we write it. So it was like. Definitively we’re just us and they were just themselves. And that might be a chasm too far to breach, to cross over. We can’t bridge that time gap.

Roberta: Yeah, for sure. The, everything is too different.

Ryan: For sure. Yeah. So I, on Monday I went to Hirshhorn also went to the Native American Museum, which I had not spent any time in. Not necessarily intentional, but just because it’s on the same side of the mall as Hirshhorn. So it’s just down the street and I, again, I like the water features, but I wish there was more bridges, like you’re crossing waters.

The whole point of land treaties have often been defined by. By water, right? We define states and political boundaries and war lines and ceasefire lines by water. And it would be, it’d be, I think, relevant to cross those. I think it would’ve been interesting.

Roberta: Now you’re, you’re talking literally crossing bridges.

Ryan: Yeah. So we have on the north side of the building, there’s like a water feature which kind of creates a moat. And in essence around it. But it doesn’t involve or incorporate people. And it wasn’t done to like, keep people away from it. Like you could easily walk into it. The water comes up to almost an invisible edge at a point, and when it, when the wind blows, it blows the water over the top.

So I’m not quite sure what the design was. Many times I see these federal constructions, I’m like, who designed this? And I was thinking who did you sell this to? And what was your pitch? The Native American Museum I walked out of there going, why don’t they teach any of this in school?

None of it, like I knew none of this. There was a picture, there was a map of California, dozens, dozens of tribal names listed there. Be pre-Gold Rush like I can name. What maybe a dozen tribes across the country. And this was, you know, 35 or 40 different tribes in California alone. When they got there, or, or when, the gold rush, I should say.

So middle 1800’s. And so few of them I’ve, I’ve ever heard of and then they had like pictures from people that, from different tribes, which is really fascinating.

Roberta: So from back in those days, yes. Early like.

Ryan: Civil War Europe, 10

Roberta: types and embr types and all that kind of stuff. Yeah.

Ryan: 1860 threes.

So civil war, so post-gold rush. So people have already been displaced. It, it was interesting. A lot conversation. They did an interesting thing, I’m sure They got a lot of feedback and they said, oh, well this is the best way to do it. They, they basically said there’s two perspectives, which was a bit strange, but almost all of the displays had two perspectives. One was,

Roberta: here’s gotta be binary in this country. It, right, exactly. It is always binary.

Ryan: It’s a two party system. Right. So there’s the US viewpoint and then there’s the, the native tribal lands owner or occupiers at the time, or they didn’t even occupy it.

It’s a completely different perspective. Right. So that’s

Roberta: colon, the colonists,

Ryan: the colonizers, and those that they were colonizing. So

Roberta: yeah.

Ryan: It was, it is a, it’s it’s interesting show, but I would, it, it should be taught in school. It shouldn’t be strange and foreign, you know? I appreciate that.

Roberta: I think it’s slowly turning around, but not fast enough.

Ryan: I don’t know. We’re still teaching to a test and that’s not on the test because that doesn’t get you a job. So, I’m not sure. I mean, I was having a conversation about why music and art aren’t taught in school. With a, a retired Philadelphia school district teacher.

So yeah, it’s just not on the test.

Roberta: Yeah,

Ryan: it’s not in the job description.

Roberta: Right. Not valued information.

Ryan: Yeah. Chat. GPT does not care if you play the clarinet. So but if you can program an R or rust or know what those two things are, then probably. Yeah. So then I went to the Hirshhornbecause Basquiat and Banksy have a, not even a group show, not even a show.

There was like six pieces combined and, and they were in the basement in one small corner room, and it’s only through the end of or, or like the 26th of October. So I thought, oh, I don’t have a lot of time if I want to go see it. And so I went to go see it. It was kind of a nothing show. Totally Passover bull.

Not, not at all that interesting stuff. A few pieces I’ve seen before, but much smaller works. But, so it was kind of fun to see them enlarged.

Roberta: It’s really weird. It seems like it’s a show that was put together because it has two B named artists. And they both were street artists, but there is no commonality between their subject matters at all.

Ryan: Well this one actually, this was, one, the two main pieces were one was a, a Basquiat piece, and then the other was a, like a Banksy comment on that piece. So it, he, it looked like a wheat paste on top of a Banksy piece Basquiat piece. So they were very much twins and they, they were fairly pointed at one another.

And I thought that was interesting. But again, it was just like two walls. And that was it.

Roberta: But wait, Banksy is not the same generation artist as Basquiat.

Ryan: No.

Roberta: Yeah, right. Banksy is contemporary, whereas Basquiat is seventies, I think.

Ryan: Yeah. Eighties. He died in late eighties at 27, something like that. I think he was born in like 1960, something like that.

Yeah, he was 27. But then on the fourth floor of the Hirshhorn two brothers, twin brothers that have a show on the fourth floor. The OSGEMEOS?

Ryan: That Portuguese Wow. Sound. Yeah. So the OSGEMEOS, the Portuguese were twins. They had the entire fourth floor and every room changed. In dramatic ways.

There was continuity with their characters that they created. But it was just a fun and prolific and playful, exploratory political yet, not yet. It was excellent. It was well worth. Let’s see, and that’s on for a whole year, so you have plenty of time to see that show, but so worth it.

Roberta: Yeah, they are street artists in Brazil and I believe they have a set of characters that they’ve created and some of them are sort of stand-ins for themselves and some of them are other, but it’s cartoonish, right?

Ryan: Simpsons-esque. Because of the coloring? I think.

Roberta: Were they actually paintings on the walls?

Ryan: Yeah.

Roberta: So they came in and they did their thing on the walls inside the Hirshhorn because they’re street artists. They do things outside usually.

Ryan: Yeah, I can’t tell if that was work that they just had placed there or if they tagged inside the building. Literally. There was a wide breadth of, of work that they put in there and it covered a lot of different areas, well beyond, well, well beyond street art.

Roberta: So what do you mean by that?

Ryan: Well, they had one room that was all like boxes that were speakers. That each of the boxes had their classic kind of cartoonish shape and face and then they had other ones where it was just all frames and mirrors on the wall. That was also, again, their own.

That same sort of character and that same sort of vibe. Then they also had canvas prints not prince, but they had canvas that they had actually drawn on. Totally different style, like they were trying to express completely ar different artistic styling from it, like a full sculpture of one of their characters that was unzipping.

Its outer layer of skin, and underneath was this illuminated shape. Standing in front of this background that looked theatrical. When people say multidisciplinary, you’re like, okay, I, I expect to see two or three. But this was covering a lot of different things from tagging a subway car to works on canvas to functioning sculpture, like a bedroom scene that was like a diorama, but it was full-size cinematic in, in essence.

Like they were creating some sort of specific scene. It was, it was an interesting show. It was a lot of fun. It was playful and they were trying out a lot of different thoughts. You know, there’s definitely some continuity in certain areas, and then other times they were just like flipping it and going in completely different areas.

And the mind of a twin, I guess, is slightly different.

Roberta: It seemed to me to call to question why? Why right now, why in the us these guys have been out there doing their thing on the walls in Brazil for forever and they’ve been getting international I guess fame and I don’t know about fortune, but at least fame and have been putting things up.

I think they did a spread in New York at one time and elsewhere around the world. So there, it’s not like. I just want to know why at this particular moment it, it is their 15 minutes, so to speak. I mean, more power to them. I think they’re amazing. But I’d like to, I’d like to hear the story of how it arrived at the Hirshhorn.

Who brought it to the Hirshhorn, what curator had the brilliant idea of doing this. Because it sounds, sounds like it’s a, a brilliant, brilliant show.

Ryan: It, it definitely is worth it. You need tickets. They’re just time tickets

Roberta: And all we should mention, all the museums the Smithsonian Museums in Washington are free.

Ryan: They are free. Yep.

Roberta: They’re government supported and that supports your tax dollars, I guess go to support these museums. So they’re free to you.

Ryan: They are.

Roberta: Which is a wonderful thing.

Ryan: Yes, it is. So that was my weekend.

Roberta: Wow. Well since we’re on Washington, I’ll tell you one thing that happened to me over the weekend is that I got something in the mail that I was not expecting and it came in a box and the box was heavy and I opened the box and this is what was in it.

Ryan: Oh, wow. Wow. That is heavy. That is a very, oh, that’s huge.

Roberta: That’s the biggest book I’ve ever. Picked up recently. It’s the National Gallery of Art Collections mega book.

Ryan: Does it actually say mega on it?

Roberta: No, that’s my word. It looks mega. I haven’t weighed it, but I’m guessing it weighs 10 pounds or more. It’s, it’s a, it’s a thing.

And it has color reproductions of, you know, everything. I think it’s a comprehensive, if not catalog, resume of a museum, something like that. So if it’s in the National Gallery of Arts Collection, it’s in the book. So there’s all kinds of stuff. I can’t even, I. You know? Sure. And this raises the question of when does a book become a burden?

You know, it’s like, do you have a shelf you can put this on that won’t damage the shelf?

Ryan: That’s what coffee tables are for.

Roberta: I guess, or maybe it’s for like Shakespearean libraries or those national libraries. They have all the built-in bookshelves that can hold anything.

Ryan: Yeah. The, thing they be, when they become a burden is when you have to move. Yes. When you have to move them, you’re just like, I have 8,000 pounds of boxes. Oh, those, that’s the book section. That’s my library. That’s right.

Roberta: Yes.

Ryan: I don’t, I don’t begrudge it, but it’s definitely a lot of work.

Roberta: Yeah. And you wonder about the scale of a book and how they came up with this. I mean, surely it could have been a series of books instead of one book, but here it is one. Mega book, like I said,

Ryan: well maybe they already have a series and they wanted to put it together in a mega book. Oh. Someone’s like, wouldn’t it be great if it was all together? Yes. Rather than serialized.

Roberta: Yes. Well actually, the PR that came with it says that this is in the same series, and this is from Oli Electra, the publisher. They also have a series of books that’s one is the Metropolitan Museum of Art, masterpiece Paintings, the Louvre, the history, the collections, the architecture, and the Hermitage. So I, I think if you had all those books, you probably could lift some heavy weights and yeah, get your exercise.

Ryan: Get your home workout system with books.

Roberta: Yeah. So way to go National Gallery. Put that book out there. That was the high point of my weekend.

Ryan: That’s good. Good one.

Roberta: All downhill after that. Not true, but you know, so we should probably not forget to mention are very. Near and dear to us Art Market. Yes, of course.

That is going on at Moore College right now. Yeah. If you haven’t been, please join us. We’re going to have a couple of programs, one on October 26th with Beth Heinly and Ali Knowles talking about making comics. So if you like their comics on Artblog, we have the 3 o’clock book by Beth Heinly and the Socialist Grocery by Oli Knowles.

They’ve been running for years on Artblog. Come and support them, hear them talk, see them. Check out the market. There’s lots of merch books, tote bags hats and posters. And lots of beautiful art to take a look at, and I hope you’ll consider going. It’s open six days a week from 11 in the morning till 5:00 PM so that includes Saturday, Monday through Saturday,

Ryan: And Roberta and I are there every Thursday if you want to come get a tour and talk with us about the art and the artists and the different things that are happening every Thursday through December 7th will be there. So if you want to come out and participate with us, we’ll be there.

Roberta: Yeah. Come, come and have your voice captured for, for a pod, an upcoming podcast. That’s right. You’d love that.

Ryan: Yeah. And do you have an event coming up and you want to get that on the podcast? Great. See you on Thursday through December 7th. Come join us.

Roberta: We’ll say goodbye. Bye Ryan. We’ll. See you soon.

Ryan: Bye everyone. See you soon as well.

Roberta: Bye-Bye. Thanks everybody for listening.

Ryan: Thanks everyone. This has been Artblog Radio’s Midweek News, and I’m Ryan.

Roberta: I’m Roberta. Bye. See ya.