Midweek News, Whitney Museum is free, Brooklyn Rail is 24 years old, Wharton Esherick Museum exhibit, Free Library Author events, plus participatory opera at Fringe

Roberta: Hi everyone, it’s Roberta.

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

Roberta: on Artblog Radio. I love the fall. Don’t you love the fall? It’s so, so crisp and even though it’s a season where things are dying, I feel like it’s a renewal for me. You know, for so many years I live with an academic. We have the fall schedule, which is always, you know, the time of excitement and things happen that after a summer and spring and whatnot, winter.

So I like the fall.

Ryan: Yeah, I like the fall. I, my hypothesis is that people who are born in and around the fall. Are the big fall lovers? I dunno, what do you think about that? So I’m born in November, right around Thanksgiving, and my favorite holiday is Thanksgiving.

Roberta: Did you get birthday presents in addition to turkeys?

Ryan: I like the food. I love the coming together. I love the drama at the table. People say, don’t talk about politics at the table, but I’m like, it is just so much. I mean, it’s how you write a story. If no one talks about anything, there’s no books written.

Roberta: Yeah, that’s true.

Ryan: But loving the fall, I don’t, obviously, It feels like death, but it’s not really death, it’s just like holding over through the winter into the spring

Roberta: True, that’s true. If I knew more about biology, I would have the vocabulary to talk about it, but I don’t. So it’s death it, but it’s not, it’s quiescence. It’s sort of quieting down for the winter months and whatnot and Yeah.

Interesting. Well, as someone whose birthday’s in February. I do love the fall. So there goes at least your one small sample size to discount what you said.

Ryan: There we go.

Roberta: So I’ve got four things I want to talk about in the news and one of them is happening today and we’re recording this on Tuesday, but it won’t really be up on Artblog and disseminated until Wednesday or Thursday.

So I’m going to mention it anyway. Even though it will be in the past. So starting out, I’m going to just barrel right into my news. Okay.

Ryan: Barrel right in there.

Roberta: All right, I will do that. So a couple of New York things that struck me were the Whitney Museum has, announced that they are starting free entrance for 25 and under in mid-December.

This is courtesy of, and this is the real kicker, Julie Martu, who’s an artist, has shown at the Whitney Museum she donated to a million dollars to the Whitney Museum specifically for this new initiative for free entrance for 25 and under. So thank you Julie Martu. What a, a standup thing to do. And I want to say way to go artist who can contribute $2 million. Right?

Ryan: Yes. That’s what I was thinking too. I, I saw that as well and I thought, well, that’s great. And then I saw the money. I’m like, oh, wow, that’s really interesting. Because I feel like you don’t usually see that from, maybe for, you know, specifically philanthropists or Elon Musk is donating X amount of money to go vote and be maga maga.Yeah.

Roberta: Won and that’s illegal.

Ryan: We won’t talk about his lawsuit. The DA of Philadelphia just sued him, so we won’t talk about that right now.

Roberta: Yeah.

Ryan: But yeah, that’s a great story. Whitney Museum.

Roberta: And the Whitney is always worth stopping by. Not that we need to tell you that if you, I.

Follow the art world. You know that, so the Whitney Museum, plus it’s down near the Highline. You can take a walk on the Highline, which is always a fun thing to do, except in the summer when it’s too crowded. But yeah, in the fall it would be a great time to take a walk on the Highline and go see the Whitney.

My second little news ad is about the Brooklyn Rail, which is 24 years old this year. And you all know the Brooklyn Rail. It’s this oversized, tabloid, it’s a. Magazine, but it’s in newsprint and, you know, must weigh five pounds. It’s a very large and they cover a lot of art. They are very wonderful at doing interviews, doing reviews a lot stuff.

And they get a lot of support. So good on them. They’re in their 24th year and they’re celebrating it with a website overhaul. So they just redid their website. I guess the website has been sort of not their primary product. Sure, the primary product is the paper, but the paper doesn’t circulate as widely as the internet does.

As we all know, things on the internet go everywhere. So they overhauled it has a rather striking masthead at the top, which is a video that doesn’t stop moving and is very distracting. But there’s a little off button that you can click, so please, I. Find the off button, click it off, or you’ll go crazy.

Ryan: Yeah. I guess now you wonder why Artblog doesn’t have any moving images.

Roberta: Yeah. Really? We hate that.

Ryan: Yeah. It is really distracting. The website feels a bit much for me. It feels too big. I mean, I guess it’s like the paper. It’s big, the paper’s big, so maybe it’s the whole vibe, but yes, it’s still, it’s still beyond me.

And it’s funny that they went with the 24, so they’re getting a. 24th birthday website. I thought it was like paper and then cotton and then leather. Like I feel like we were skipping a few. I don’t even see website on the 24th anniversary list.

Roberta: Well, for whatever reason, the funding was there. They did it.

You know? That’s good. Regardless of the date they did it. I want to point out that currently, you can find on their site a really in-depth interview with Pepon Osorio about, you know, looking, it’s with Dan Cameron, who is a curator of longstanding in the art world and has been following Pepon’s art since the 1980s, I believe he says in the interview.

It’s about Pepon’s, arts and artistry and focusing in particular on his Jefferson Hospital piece, Convalescence, which we saw Ryan and took our students to see, which is a marvelous piece about the medical industrial complex, I guess you could call it critical and you know, forward looking to how can we change this?

So I thought that was good to mention. I was very happy to see that and the founder of the Brooklyn Rail, whose signature is that he draws a pencil sketch, a very realistic pencil sketch of each person who’s being interviewed on the Brooklyn Rail. So there’s a very nice pencil drawing by Phong Bui is the name of the founder of Brooklyn Rail.

I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly. Anyway, he did a very nice portrait of PEP that runs with the interview. So congratulations, Brooklyn Rail and pep, or a nice piece in the Brooklyn Rail.

Here’s an opportunity that I found that I thought I would throw out there for all of you. Woodworkers of whom I believe we have a bunch in Philadelphia. There’s used to be the Wood Turning Center, and now it’s the Museum for Art and Wood. The Wharton Esherick Museum has a call for its annual Juried Woodworking exhibit, and the deadline is January 6th, 2025. We’ll put in a link to the application deadline to apply. That is January 6th, 2025, and the Wharton Esherick Museum is, I forget what town it’s in.

It’s in an exurb of Philadelphia, somewhere on the outskirts, not too far to get to, and is a showpiece in and of itself just to go see it. So if you make wood furniture or wood sculpture or wood, anything, check it out. It’s a good opportunity.

Ryan: Yeah. I’ve never actually been there either. Yeah, it’s just outside of Valley Forge.

Roberta: Okay. Right. Oh, geez. That’s close.

Ryan: Yeah, I think it’s pretty close.

Roberta: You could ride your bike out there.

Ryan: I think I have.

Roberta: Oh, got to stop in.

Ryan: Yeah, I do.

Roberta: We should probably do an Artblog safari out there. That would be fun.

Ryan: I’ve reached out to them. They said to stop by anytime, so we just have to coordinate it.

Roberta: Let’s do it.

Ryan: Yeah, that’d be fun.

Roberta: Okay. Get in touch with us if you want to go with Artblog and see the Wharton Esherick Museum. Okay. Finally, I’m going to tell you about what I’m going to do tonight. This is Tuesday. October 29th at 7:00 PM at the Free Library. I’m going to go hear an author Q &A. Myra Coleman, who’s a New York artist showed at the ICA once upon a time, a number of years ago, and she’ll be in conversation with Alex Connor of Common Wheel Gallery.

So a long time. Myra Coleman, love her, and I’ve got three of her books. I’m going to get another book because she’s really wonderful. She does these. Quirky drawings of, you know, Hy Watercolory street scenes. And she has some children’s books. And here’s one that I really liked, Swami On Rye. And when she had her show at the ICA, which was back in something or other, I’ll find that and put it in the transcript.

Libby and I were invited to read one of her books, her children’s books. They were having a family reading hour and we got to read one of her books. I don’t even remember which one it was, but we sat up on the stage, all the families were sitting on the floor and we read one of Myra Coleman’s books. It was so sweet.

And this was in conjunction with the exhibit that they had at the time. So that sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll tell you more about it after it happens, but it is going on tonight and so look out for things that go on at the free library. Absolutely. I don’t know how you get onto their author series list, but it’s worth hunting around on the free library website.

Maybe we can find a link and put it in for people because they have very interesting speakers coming in and. They had a whole kerfuffle go on this summer. Yes, with the staff quitting and it was very sad. Who knows why, and I never followed up with that. But they’re back in business now doing author events with the new staff, and they always have good things, and it’s worth supporting the library.

A lot of it is free. Like this one tonight on Tuesday is free. They’re not all free, but the prices are not, you know, going to break your pocketbook. They’re in the. $20 range for a ticket

Ryan: Is Commonweal doing a kid-focus thing they have coming up on November 2nd? They have Commonkids Art Morning with Adam Levitz. It’s 8 to 10:00 AM

Roberta: Great. Yeah. Adam has two children of his own little kids, so maybe he’s going to run the workshop.

Ryan: Yeah, I think he’s running the workshop. But I didn’t know if Alex has got a kid theme coming up for, I mean, the show doesn’t necessarily add Commonweal, but I didn’t know if this was something they’re developing.

Roberta: I don’t know.

Ryan: Well ask him if you talk to him.

Roberta: Yeah, really. I will. I mean, we all love children. Children are the future and you know, they, well, and they’re not getting a lot of art in their schooling these days. So,

Ryan: Well now they can go to Whitney for free, so they need to stop complaining and just go to the Whitney.

Roberta: Yeah. I wonder what the PM’s position on, I mean, they do have free. One Sunday a month. I think you can get in in the morning between 10 and noon for free. Is that correct? Me if I’m wrong? Yeah, we’ll put, we’ll figure that out and put that in the transcript also. Yes, there should be more free museums. Like we were talking before when you went to Washington, how all the museums, the Smithsonian museums are all free.

And that’s the way it should be. I mean, culture belongs to the people. We need culture.

Ryan: That’s a relatively new idea. You know, it was, I was the, the history of museums was really for academia and for research. And we’re not designed for people or being molded through or rummaged through. And but that kind of changed in the middle 19th century.

So it’s not a terribly new idea. I guess museums aren’t that terribly old to begin with.

Roberta: Yeah. I don’t know. History of museums.

Ryan: I think it was like the British and the French, once they started raping and pillaging from around the world, they had to put somewhere to put their booty.

Roberta: Yes. Private collections.

Ryan: Yeah. So I guess that’s kind, that’s kind of a, I’m sure there’s a book on the history museums, where they came from and what they collected, but yeah. Obviously, they’re, they’re different now, so.

Roberta: Oh yeah. Very different. They all have education departments and rightly so, and do a lot of programming.

You know, it’s not just come in and look at the art, but it’s come in and learn about the art we’ll teach you. And that’s a really good thing because people are so disconnected from culture. They’re very connected with other things, such as web browsing, sports, and food. But the connection with culture is still very split.

It’s, there’s a chasm there and people think it’s unbridgeable, but it’s not baby steps. You just got to go in.

Ryan: Yeah. Or, and normalizing it. Like make it a part of your every day we normalize the other parts.

Roberta: That’s true. We do normalize the other parts.

Ryan: Yeah. Which is culture.

Roberta: So what do you got this morning, Ryan?

Ryan: Well mine are, I, so I went to the Big Ramp show because I wanted to see how political that the Hanging the Meow Show is going to be Uhhuh. And it wasn’t as political as I was expecting, so that was nice. And that was a fun little playful show. If you haven’t seen that, that’s up right now at Big Ramp.

Roberta: Well, I’ve seen the, I’ve seen the photograph, I think. Yeah. Chris put a photo on his Instagram and it looks like everything is. Located on the floor or at like knee level,

Ryan: which yeah. Is hilarious. And one of the cat toys is his beard. He actually shaved for this show.

Roberta: No?

Ryan: Yes. So oh, he, it

Roberta: tell people what his beard looked like before he shaved it.

Ryan: So, well it kind of had a bowl and then it came to a. It was braided at the end, so I kind of had a large ball at the top and then it braided down. So it was a perfect cat toy. Yeah, it was long. Yeah, so it’s a long, perfectly sized cat toy, so he put it on a string and then a to a stick, and then it kind of just suspended there at the show.

Roberta: Oh, I love that. That’s great. Yeah. I’m not sure if I’ve actually seen him clean-shaven before.

I have not. Radical

Ryan: and yeah, it wasn’t so, as far as the show being political, it was much more of a radical show, like enjoying and pleasure and playful, but it, it was also, it was a lot of fun. It was a, it was a good show.

Yeah. So let me get into my things and, and I’ll keep this show a flowing. So there is Fellowship the musical, which I think sounds hilarious. There’s a couple of musical sing song events that I wanted to point out. This one is Fellowship. It’s the musical parody of the Fellowship of the Ring, and obviously that that book series is one of the most popular book series of all time.

And then they made some very popular films on the topic, and now there’s a popular streaming show on the set. Same topic. So there’s clearly. People who are interested in it. This is running November 1st through December 22nd, so plenty of time to see it. This is at Side Quest Theaters 20th and Sansom.

And that could be a lot of fun. Obviously, this week is Halloween as well, so there’s a lot of things that are happening, so I’ll try to keep it off the Thursday. So there’s a lot of things that are happening Thursday for Halloween and then throughout the weekend. Not necessarily on my list, but Fleischer normally has a big Dia De Los Muertos event.

So if you’re interested in Dia De Los Muertos, that’s a fantastic place to go. Consistently good, consistently great food and events at Fleischer. But that’s not going to count as my three, because I try to keep it to three. So I’m just going to mention that one and keep it as my extra.

Roberta: You’re cheating. You’re cheating.

Ryan: I’m kind of cheating. And I mentioned the Commonwealth too, which I’m not going to count as mine. Fringe Arts has a show coming up as well. We have gone as far as we can together. That is a participatory opera. I’m not quite sure what that would be. Made me think like of a Jake Jacob Collier kind of show where he gets the audience to participate in the singing, which.

It’s just a lovely time together. So I’m curious what this one’s going to be like. This is running from November 1st through the ninth. This is at Fringe Arts. So obviously Fringe is over, can is over, but Fringe Arts is hosting this, so if you are interested in singing, I, I’m not sure what the opera experience is going to be, but it sounds like a lot of fun.

Roberta: Well, operas always have choruses, right? So you may not get to sing on Aria. Sure. Or you could maybe, yeah. Yeah. But there’s a chorus. There’s always a chorus. Yeah. But but it’s going to be curious like what, what your level of ex what, what the expectation’s going to be. But it, but that does look interesting, so I was curious to see what that would be like.

Ryan: And then in, in the spirit of, of Halloween, there is also a mischief night portrait painting at Mors Arboretum. And I think with the fall and the Halloween coming. That was going to be a lot of fun. That’s going to be on the 30th of October from five 30 to seven 30 at Morris Abri. And I think it looks, the weather’s, you know, we’re setting record dry.

Even my dad who lives in in Scottsdale was like, oh, we’re talking about how dry it is in Philadelphia. I’m like, what? I know it’s dry, but it’s pretty, pretty beautiful weather. So if the weather holds mischief night portrait painting at Mor Arboretum. It could be a lot of fun if you’re looking for a pre Halloween event as well.

Roberta: Wait, when is mischief night? Is that the night before Halloween?

Ryan: Yeah, Halloween Eve. Is that a thing? Yeah, October 30th. So those are my three things, and there are a few things that are coming up. Obviously, this is going to be. First Friday, so Halloween’s the 31st of October, which means November 1st is First Friday.

So all of the big events. So also not on my list are like Paradigm is has opening Arch Enemy, Third Street Gallery. None of these are on my list, but they’re all on my list. They’re also all on our Log connect.org. The following Thursday is not Second Thursday, so it’s the third week of November, which is the second Thursday at Korean Arts, and there are a few openings that we’ll talk about then.

And that’ll be coming up in a couple weeks. The shows are opening, but then they’re like, the receptions are happening in a couple weeks. So those are all available. All that information is on ArtblogConnect.

Roberta: Great. I want to sneak in another one too. I guess I’m going to go to five today. That would be five for me, but Sounds good.

Maybe it’ll be quick. There’s a new place opening in West Philly. That I had heard about from Logan Cryer when Logan and I were talking once upon a time. Logan writes for Artblog and we’re friends, so they are involved in this Paulownia Projects. So Paulownia is a tree or a bush or something or other, and it’s called, they’re having a launch event on Halloween, October 31st from five to 8:00 PM.

This is at Calvary United Methodist Church, 801 South 48th Street. They’re going to have an artist-in-residency program and it sounds really new and different and hippie. I want to say, I can’t wait to go to this place, so I may stop in on Halloween, but I think it’s O open to all. Free, so stop on by if you’re out on Halloween in West Philadelphia, 48th and corner of Baltimore, actually. Baltimore and 48th.

Ryan: And that’s from five to 8:00 PM on Halloween, correct?

Roberta: Yep.

Ryan: What, what are you dressing up as Roberta?

Roberta: Myself.

Ryan: Oh, nice.

Roberta: I am my own horror.

Ryan: Oh my goodness. That’s good.

Roberta: Anyway, well that’s about it that I have. That’s it for me as well. Okay. So let’s say Tutu Lu. And we’ll see you again next week, Ryan, if not before.

Ryan: That sounds good, Roberta.

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

Ryan:  And this is Ryan. Bye-Bye.