While the Center’s Project grants provide support for arts organizations to commission and premiere new works in Greater Philadelphia, many of these creative endeavors continue to connect with and inspire audiences beyond the region and showcase the region’s lively and forward-thinking cultural scene around the world.
The half dozen exhibitions below left their mark with Philadelphia audiences. Read on to see where they’re on view now.
The Shape of Time: Korean Art after 1989
Minneapolis, Minnesota (March 23 – June 23)
After opening at the Philadelphia Museum of Art last fall, an exhibition presenting the work of artists of Korean descent travels to the Minneapolis Institute of Art. The artists featured in the exhibition—who came of age during a period of major transition from South Korea’s last authoritarian regime to the onset of globalization and new democratic freedoms—"reflect on social and political tensions, economic and cultural shifts,…and what has been gained and lost in South Korea’s ascendance,” according to the MIA. On the breadth of the exhibition, curator Hyunsoo Woo told The New York Times, “Now, the museum audience is savvy enough to see and absorb the different aspects of Korean art. Previously, you’d have just a single masterpiece show that spanned the ages.”
The Contest of the Fruits
Berlin, Germany (February 6 – April 6)
Berlin-based artist collective Slavs and Tatars (whose members hail from Poland, Iran, and the US) created an animated film and exhibition for the Hurford Center for Arts and Humanities, presented at Haverford College in 2021. The work is now on view at Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler in Berlin through April 6 and based on a nineteenth-century Muslim text, written in Uyghur, that captures the possibilities of boundary crossings to cultivate understanding, tolerance, and identity in a pluralistic world. In a press release, the gallery observes, “In their humorous, but in-depth researched-based works, Slavs and Tatars affirm that language, rituals and commodities have consistently traversed geopolitical boundaries.”
Milford Graves: A Mind-Body Deal
Bennington, Vermont (February 27 – April 27)
An exhibition surveying Milford Graves’ lifetime of multidisciplinary work (in jazz and visual art as well as botany and science)is on view at Bennington College’s Usdan Gallery through April 27, complemented by musical performances and a documentary screening. During its premiere presentation by Ars Nova Workshop at the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute of Contemporary Art, co-curator Anthony Elms told WHYY, “There are no periods in Milford’s thinking. There are only commas or semicolons. There is an early interview in a jazz magazine where he says, ‘How can you be a master drummer if you don’t know anything about herbs?’” In addition to his many other pursuits, Graves taught music at Bennington College for four decades.
Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births
Stockholm, Sweden (June 14, 2024 – March 31, 2025)
In an exhibition and book, Designing Motherhood, showcases hundreds of items related to the arc of human reproduction, from medical tools to maternity clothing to menstruation devices, to examine the relationship between design and reproduction. Originally produced by the Maternity Care Coalition, Designing Motherhood opened first at two Philadelphia institutions—the Mütter Museum and the Center for Architecture and Design—before touring to the MassArt Art Museum in Boston and the Gates Foundation Discovery Center in Seattle. In June, the exhibition travels to the Swedish Center for Architecture and Design, running through March 2025.
Jayson Musson: His History of Art
Cincinnati, Ohio (April 5 – September 8)
Created during the artist’s residency at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, this video-based exhibition satirizes art history in the style of a children’s TV show, scrutinizing the limited perspectives and power imbalances fostered by art institutions and pedagogy. The project’s next stop is the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, where it will be on view from April 5 through September 8. In an interview with Artforum, Musson explains, “Through the torture of writing, I’d eventually reach that special point of exhaustion where I convinced myself I’ve struck a perfect balance between insightful and irreverent.”
File/Life: We Remember Stories of Pennhurst
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (January 17 – April 13)
Now on view at Thomas Jefferson University’s Helix Gallery through April 13, this community-based storytelling project first opened at Arch Street Meeting House last spring and then traveled to the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, last summer. Developed by the Institute on Disabilities at Temple University, File/Life draws from the archives of the now-closed Pennhurst State School and Hospital, which once housed over 4,000 residents in overcrowded and inhumane conditions, to bring those residents’ lived experiences of disability into dialogue with historical accounts, challenging and reinterpreting the historical record.
