Coming in 2018: Center-Funded Projects from Taylor Mac, Nels Cline, Tania El Khoury, Trenton Doyle Hancock, and More

The coming year brings engaging and cutting-edge Center-funded projects to the Philadelphia region. A range of exhibitions, performances, and public programs will examine pressing social issues, push the boundaries of artistic disciplines, bring new, creative insights to histories and traditions, and more. Browse our highlights of what’s on the horizon in 2018, below.

Stay up to date year-round by viewing our events calendar or subscribing to our monthly e-newsletter.

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Zanele Muholi, Bester I, 2015, self portrait, Mayotte. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Examining Identity and Representation

• Philadelphia Photo Arts Center will bring South African photographer Zanele Muholi to Philadelphia for an 18-month residency and exhibition. Considering questions of gender, identity, and representation, The Women's Mobile Museum will engage a group of Philadelphia women to create a temporary, transportable mobile exhibition space. (Beginning April)

• Temple Contemporary will commission visual artist Trenton Doyle Hancock to create Moundverse Infants, a new exhibition probing the representation of race in the material culture of toy dolls. (May–August)

• In ear-whispered: works by Tania El Khoury, Bryn Mawr College will present a multi-part project showcasing immersive installations and performances by Lebanese artist Tania El Khoury that address issues of displacement, political oppression, and justice. (September)

• The Philadelphia Museum of Art will commission a site-specific public performance and accompanying exhibition by Israeli filmmaker and installation artist Yael Bartana, whose work tackles the complexities of migration, memory, and identity. (September–November)

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Taylor Mac, A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, “Decade 12 (1886-1896).” Photo by Teddy Wolff.

Expanding Cross-Disciplinary Artistic Practice

• EgoPo Classic Theater’s world premiere of Tony Award-winning playwright John Guare's acclaimed Lydie Breeze Trilogy represents the first full presentation of this epic work about an American family, set between the Civil War and the birth of 20th-century industrialism—with original music by Guggenheim Fellow Cynthia Hopkins. (January–May)

• Contemporary music producer Elizabeth Huston will present pioneering composer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s unfinished work KLANG: Die 24 Stunden des Tages, a daylong series of 21 chamber music compositions, each written to represent an hour of the day. (April 7–8)

• Orchestra 2001 will present the Philadelphia premiere of the genre-defying composition The Yellow Shark, by maverick American composer and rock guitarist Frank Zappa. The 17-movement, 75-minute piece will be performed on the 25th anniversary of the album’s release and of Zappa’s death. (April 22–28)

• The Philadelphia premiere of Taylor Mac’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated performance work A 24-Decade History of Popular Music will be presented at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts during the 2018 Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts. Offered in two 12-hour performances, the show is a 240-year journey through US history, from 1776 to the present, as told through hundreds of popular songs. (June 1–9)

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Community workshop with Boris Charmatz at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Photo by JJ Tiziou.

Reimagining Public Spaces

• Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Farm for the City: Growing for Greater Good will transform Philadelphia’s Thomas Paine Plaza into a temporary “farm-as-art installation” to encourage public conversations about the role of urban agriculture in strengthening communities. (June–September)

• Philadelphia Museum of Dance, presented by Drexel University Westphal College, will examine the presentation of public performance in relationship to the exhibition of visual art objects in a large-scale performance event on the grounds of The Barnes Foundation. (September 22– October 6)

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The Campbell Brothers. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Interpreting Histories and Traditions

• In Saturday Night & Sunday Morning: The Gospel Roots of Rock & Soul, WXPN will explore the roots of gospel and its influence on secular popular music through live performances, a radio documentary series, and a media-rich website. (January–October)

• Dance artist Madhusmita Bora’s Threads of History: Resurrection of a Textile will bring to life the stories embedded in a 17th-century Indian textile held in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art through the classical Indian dance form Sattriya. (April)

• Ars Nova Workshop will commission composer and guitarist Nels Cline to create Lovers (for Philadelphia), a concert experience inspired by Philadelphia’s rich musical history and Cline’s ambitious 2016 concept recording, Lovers, performed by a 17-member jazz orchestra. (June)

• Christ Church Preservation Trust will mark the installation of a new, custom-built pipe organ with the commission of a new work by composers Nathan Davis and Phyllis Chen that draws on the nearly 300-year history of Christ Church’s buildings, grounds, and instruments. (September 22–23)