9 Big Reasons To Visit Philadelphia In 2017

The NFL Draft, Museum Of The American Revolution Opening & A New Opera Festival On Tap For This Year

Credit: Photo by R. Kennedy for VISIT PHILADELPHIA^®

2017 looks to be another blockbuster year for Philadelphia, giving people plenty of new reasons to visit and explore the raved-about city. Still pumped from the excitement of a visit by Pope Francis in 2015 and the Democratic National Convention in 2016, Philadelphia will continue to bask in the national spotlight when the NFL Draft takes over the town for three days of star-studded events this spring. Additional highlights include the opening of the new Museum of the American Revolution, the largest retrospective of works by Andrew Wyeth since the 1970s at the Brandywine River Museum of Art and the debut of an annual opera festival O17. 

Here’s a look at what’s in store for Philadelphia in 2017: 

1. Here’s one that will please history lovers and outdoor fans. The new year brings the opening of the new Bartram’s Mile, a 1.1-mile addition to Schuylkill Banks recreational trail. The 15-foot-wide multi-use path will extend along the western bank of the Schuylkill River through the grounds of historic Bartram’s Garden, frequented by Washington, Jefferson and other boldface names from history. Selfie alert: The new plaza at the 56^th Street access point offers great skyline views. Winter. Grays Ferry Avenue to south of 56^th Street, schuylkillbanks.org
2. The Museum of the American Revolution opens its doors this spring in the Historic Philadelphia district, just steps from Independence Hall and in the heart of a city that served as the headquarters for the Revolution. Through immersive exhibitions and priceless artifacts, the museum traces the evolution of the colonies from the earliest days of unrest through a legendary war and the improbable victory that led to a new nation. Highlights include General Washington’s original headquarters tent, Revolutionary War weapons, centuries-old military documents and hundreds of other authentic objects. April 19. 101 S. 3^rd Street, (215) 253-6731, amrevmuseum.org
3. Score one for Philadelphia, landing the 82^nd NFL Draft for the first time in more than 50 years. During three days of festivities—all taking place outdoors—fans can enjoy interactive experiences, get autographs from current and former players, take pictures with the Vince Lombardi Trophy and much more. April 27-29. Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Sports fans rejoice: The Penn Relays, the oldest collegiate track meet in the nation, also take place this weekend at the University of Pennsylvania’s Franklin Field.
4. Block by block, LEGOLAND^® Discovery Center will unlock imaginations as wannabe builders dive into an interactive world of hands-on play. Iconic Philadelphia landmarks created from millions of LEGO bricks in MiniLand, Play Zones with an almost unlimited supply of LEGO bricks, a kid-friendly ride and 4D cinema will keep children and parents entertained for hours at this indoor playground. Spring. Plymouth Meeting Mall, 500 W. Germantown Pike, Plymouth Meeting, legolanddiscoverycenter.com
5. LOVE Park, which got some love of its own in the form a major makeover, is getting ready to show off its new look. Redesigned sloping lawns, colorful new flower beds and a large central fountain are the backdrops to Robert Indiana’s famous LOVE sculpture, offering stellar sightlines of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway for photo ops. The iconic round visitors center will also sport a new look and will offer food and beverage service. Spring/Summer. 15^th Street & John F. Kennedy Boulevard, phila.gov
6. Not since 1973 has an exhibition so deeply explored Andrew Wyeth’s work. That changes this summer when the Brandywine River Museum of Art celebrates the 100^thanniversary of his birth with Andrew Wyeth: In Retrospect, featuringmore than 100 of the artist’s works on canvas and paper. June 24-September 17. 1 Hoffman’s Mill Road, Chadds Ford, (610) 388-2700, brandywine.org
7. After delighting crowds for more than 85 years, Longwood Gardens’ fountains are undergoing a $90 million makeover. Enhanced by 21^st-century technology, dramatic new lighting and a variety of newly choreographed fountain shows featuring jets that shoot more than 175 feet in the air will elicit ooohs and aahhhs. New seating areas, a grotto, trestle bridge and landscaped paths offer guests lots of photo-worthy scenes. Summer. 1001 Longwood Road, Kennett Square, (610) 388-1000, longwoodgardens.org
8. The city’s musical profile hits a high note when Opera Philadelphia introduces O17, a new opera festival that will mark the start of the company’s season. O17 will thrill audiences with some of the genre’s glittering stars featured in more than 25 performances, including three world premieres, the exclusive East Coast appearance of an internationally renowned production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, commissioned works and must-see, one-time-only performances. September 14-25. Various locations, (215) 732-8400, operaphila.org
9. What makes a monument in the 21^st century? Monument Lab will attempt to answer this question for Philadelphia with an eight-week city-wide public art and history exhibition co-produced by Mural Arts Philadelphia and curators Paul M. Farber, A. Will Brown and Ken Lum. Monument Lab, a series of temporary installations by local and international artists accompanied by interactive pop-up laboratories for creative conversations. September 15-November 19. Various locations. (215) 685-0750, muralarts.org

VISIT PHILADELPHIA^® is our name and our mission. As the region’s official tourism marketing agency, we build Greater Philadelphia’s image, drive visitation and boost the economy.

On Greater Philadelphia’s official visitor website and blog, visitphilly.com and uwishunu.com, visitors can explore things to do, upcoming events, themed itineraries and hotel packages. Compelling photography and videos, interactive maps and detailed visitor information make the sites effective trip-planning tools. Along with Visit Philly social media channels, the online platforms communicate directly with consumers. Travelers can also call and stop into the Independence Visitor Center for additional information and tickets.

Sanford Biggers and Matthew Harrison At The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit-MOCAD

Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit

The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) is pleased to present two new exhibitions, both opening September 9th: Sanford Biggers:Subjective Cosmology and Detroit City/Detroit Affinities: Matthew Angelo Harrison. Please view the below press releases for more information on the two shows:   SANFORD BIGGERS - SUBJECTIVE COSMOLOGY Sanford Biggers, Shatter, 2015 production still. Courtesy of the artist. For his solo exhibition Subjective Cosmology, Sanford Biggers will create an immersive interactive experience throughout MOCAD, incorporating video installation, visual art objects, and new media. Imagined as an unseen world made visible, the exhibition gives physical form to hidden landscapes where the past, present, and future synergized into an atemporal experience. Subjective Cosmology can be seen as the link between his three—part film suite Shuffle, Shake, Shatter.  Shuffle, Shake, Shatter is an ambitious three-part film/video suite that explores the formation and dissolution of identity through the journey and actions of an un-named main character. With the completion of his journey, he will have also retraced the North Atlantic Slave Trade route, albeit abstractly, from Europe to the Americas and finally Africa. Throughout his journey he grapples with his identity to the point of crisis, or enlightenment, where he then transcends his notions of male and female, life and death and the corporeal versus the auratic. In Shatter, the protagonist transcends his corporeal existence, shape shifting into an auratic entity. The installation will provide the backdrop for an exclusive new Moon Medicin performance. Moon Medicin is a multimedia concept band performing original compositions interspersed with re-imagined covers. The collective performs against a backdrop of curated sound effects and images of sci-fi, punk, sacred geometry, coded symbology, film noir, minstrels, world politics, and ceremonial dance. For this iteration of Moon Medicin, Biggers, the creative director, will collaborate with a rotating cast of musicians, designers, and performance artists based in Detroit. Laocoön, is a rendition of a previously exhibited figurative work. For his exhibition at MOCAD, Biggers created a site specific Laocoön measuring 30 feet in-length, the largest version the artist has created. Occupying over a quarter of the gallery space, the work is named after a famous Roman sculpture, Laocoön and His Sons, depicting a priest struck down by the gods Athena as he warned the Greeks about the Trojan horse. Biggers created the work in reaction to recent events, including the killing of unarmed black civilians by the police and the allegations of sexual assault leveled against Bill Cosby. The piece uses the Fat Albert figure to allude to these victims of police violence while also representing the loss of faith in authority and the father figure. Bill Cosby created Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids in the 1970's as a vehicle to explore the problems affecting primarily African-American and urban youth, and offer advice on how to avoid the pitfalls specific to their environment.   Watch Sanford Biggers a TED Talk here.  Artist Talk: Saturday, September 10 at 1-2pm with Sanford Biggers. About: Sanford Biggers is a visual artist producing paintings, sculptures, immersive installations and video. Biggers also creates multimedia musical performances with his collective Moon Medicin. He combines each of these media into compelling, sensual and witty works that are platforms from which to discuss challenging and far-ranging topics such as hip hop, Buddhism, politics, identity, pop culture, and American and art history while offering new perspectives and associations for established symbols. This exhibition has been organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and is curated by MOCAD's Executive Director Elysia Borowy-Reeder. Born out of experimentation and a desire to create a new platform for engagement, this project and exhibition is supported by the Joyce Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Massimo De Carlo and Monique Meloche. ​   MATTHEW ANGELO HARRISON - DETROIT CITY/DETROIT AFFINITIES Matthew Angelo Harrison, The Consequence of Platforms, 2016, Aluminum, stainless steel, ceramic, marble, 75 x 33.5 x 33.5 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman Gallery. Nelson Goodman's theories on human cognition and practice, which touch on everything from logic to epistemology, science to aesthetics, are considered some of the most complex yet coherent ideas in postwar American philosophy. Particularly influential was his book The Structure of Appearance (1951), which offers an intricate analysis of the conditions behind systems of societal and scientific concern and introduces the concept of irrealism: the simultaneous existence of various realities within one another. It asserts that the world is, in itself, no more one way than another, and that neither is humanity. This book was of great importance to the Detroit-based artist Matthew Angelo Harrison (b. 1989), who in his late teens took a deep interest in philosophy through Goodman's writings and in particular his work on art. Harrison was inspired to delve into contemporary art and eventually to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Harrison is interested in the construction of systems and the possible relativity of the world around us. He does not think in closed and resolved terms but embraces open-endedness in a way that is perhaps typical for artists of his generation; his outlook combines a strong sense of community, both local and global, with the systems of the digital world. He is interested in aspects of manufacturing, in particular its often-hidden performative aspect. The artist closely studies the aesthetics of prototypes and carries over into his own practice the anticipatory feeling of the unfinished object. Three-dimensional printing, also known as additive manufacturing, has been around for almost four decades, but only in the last ten years has it become practical and affordable for individuals outside industry. The printers use a series of coordinated stepper motors to distribute material in specific places so as to build objects in many layers, in a time-consuming and often-monotonous process. It has in many ways revolutionized thinking around the production of art (if not yet the making of art); very interesting in the context of Detroit, the birthplace of assembly line, is the idea that 3D printing might signal the beginning of a third industrial revolution succeeding the Fordist production process introduced in that city at the outset of the twentieth century.  Harrison's 3D printers are not the sophisticated high-tech equipment typically found in industrial production facilities. All of his devices are homemade constructions, DIY gadgets with low-tech parts put together by the artist himself, suggesting more kinship with abstract sculpture than with anything state-of-the-art. They combine minimalist aesthetics with the industrial look of open-source hardware. And not only are the machines homemade, but so is most of their software. Harrison's printers use clay rather than the more common plastics. This gives the artist the ability to build large volumes rapidly and to change at any moment the form of a sculpture being produced.  Harrison's 3D printers on view at MOCAD use computer aided design (CAD) files, created via a 3D scanner, to print replicas of traditional African masks. Harrison is less interested in the masks as ceremonial or aesthetic objects and more into drastically changing our perception of something by replicating it in unlikely materials. A historical African mask is re-created by using a FaceGen process in which CAD files are specifically used to sculpt human faces, connecting the tribal and seemingly exotic world of Africa with the DYI sphere of the digital age.  The tension between authentic and inauthentic, organic and nonorganic, and the pull among repetition and difference, original and clone, nature and culture, all play a major part in Harrison's artistic considerations. Another series of works consists of transparent, highly polished acrylic boxes and benches and large bones of African animals. While the boxes and benches might recall the work of John McCracken, Larry Bell, and other fetish finish Minimalists of the 1960s and 1970s, the idea of "(hand)crafted to perfection" so important to those sculptors has been entirely replaced in the popular imagination by the kind of surface perfection possible thanks to automation and precision machinery. Indeed, it seems perhaps more difficult today, given the tools at one's disposal, to make something imperfect than something flawless. Here we encounter interesting questions of the position of the artist in the production process: Should an artist let the tools finish the work, or get in between the tool and the work? Harrison seems to be doing both. Forcing the organic and the nonorganic to work together creates a tension of not only materials but also sense and experience. When a bone breaks, it produces a visceral response because of the bone's direct relationship to the body. When clear acrylic breaks, the response is purely visual, pictorial: the only thing ruined is a perfect image. The bone of a dead animal speaks as well of lifelessness and possibility; it is essential material that can be reused for completely different purposes (such as an elephant bone as part of a sculptural installation). The exotic animal bones are part of a visual vocabulary, an iconography, that Harrison is slowly developing. It is a landscape of visual tropes, some familiar and some unfamiliar, some exotic and others common, and all mysterious yet literal and quotidian at the same time. Integrating the bones within acrylic boxes and benches prevents the production of a likeness of nature and points instead to architectural boundaries: cages, walls, fences. Harrison is a native Detroiter. He grew up Grosse Pointe and is no stranger to the complicated discussions around class and race that are pertinent to the city's history and current realities. While he sees his work as firmly part of conversations around African and African American experience, the work simultaneously has qualities that are universal, and that have the potential to creep into many other cultural spaces. Harrison sees race as peripheral to human experience and is interested in finding a way to make art that can transcend it. Yet he has also stated unequivocally that to avoid discussing racial issues in his work would be to dismiss some of his central concerns. Harrison is part of a generation of sculptors born in the 1980s who are socially astute and politically engaged (for instance Cameron Rowland), who are interested in the digital world and DIY technology, and their particular aesthetics (such as Josh Kline), who focus on materiality and objecthood (such asMichael E. Smith), and who bring identity politics and personal histories together with highly formal and abstracted explorations of found materials (as in the work of Kevin Beasley). He cites artists such asCosima von Bonin, Rachel Harrison, and Trisha Donnelly as influences, less for the actual forms they create than for the ingenious ways they discuss their own female identities in a mostly male-dominated world without ever being overtly direct with their critiques. He credits Michelangelo Pistoletto andJoseph Kosuth as well, for their use of materials and the intellectual rigor of their practices. Yet it isDavid Hammons who comes to mind most when thinking about the often-humorous side of Harrison's work: his Duchampian readymade gestures, his concerns around commodification, his fusion of objects associated with African American history and heritage with post minimal aesthetics. As his 3D printers produce the new works in the gallery we will not fully know what the final exhibition will look like and feel. We are left with the anticipation of the realization of his unique concept and that anticipation that builds up when the an artwork created in front of our own eyes.    Curated by MOCAD's Susanne Feld Hilberry Senior Curator at Large Jens Hoffmann  As Part Of: DETROIT CITY is comprised of three concurrent series: Detroit Affinities (exhibition), Detroit Speaks (education), and Detroit Stages (performance). This multi-year research program is one of the most ambitious undertakings to date at MOCAD.

Normandy Impressionist Festival 2016 From April 16 To September 26

Held from 16 April to 26 September 2016, the third Normandy Impressionist Festival will continue the direction taken by the two previous editions, which attracted 1.8 million visitors.
This vast array of cultural activities, exhibitions, live shows, dance performances, operas, guinguettes, film programmes and seminars will attest the cultural vitality of Normandy to its French and international visitors.
The theme for 2016 is Impressionism in portraits: portraits in the classic sense of the term but also in more contemporary interpretations.
The goal is to place the human element at the heart of the Festival: though portraying a period in the nineteenth century with its society, recreations, women, children and artists, the Festival is also interested in contemporary versions of the portrait, like selfies. It explores the notion of representation, of oneself and others, as well as its value, message and significance 140 years on.
MAJOR EXHIBITIONS:
Gustave Caillebotte, Painter and Gardener
Musée des impressionnismes
Giverny
March 24 to July 3, 2016
Caillebotte, long considered a wealthy amateur painter, collector and the patron of his Impressionist friends, is today seen as one of the group’s major figures. A large part of his work was dedicated to gardens. Some 100 paintings, drawings and sculptures will reveal many inspirations for his art, from the Paris of Baron Haussmann to Yerres, from the Seine to Le Petit Gennevilliers and his garden, and his relationship with Monet.
Exhibition curator: Marina Ferretti
Bernard Clarisse
Musée de Dieppe
April 16 to June 5, 2016
Bernard Clarisse, a contemporary painter, has embarked upon the portraits of the great artists and thinkers of our generation and past centuries. The musée de Dieppe will present those important individuals who frequented or lived in Normandy, including those strong personalities from the Impressionist age in Dieppe. Bernard Clarisse renders manifest the creative force and influence that these individuals had on the arts by painting their portraits 120 cm in height, and superimposing the word MEGAS (Great) in gold Greek letters on the figure’s forehead.
Exhibition curator: Pierre Ickowicz
Caillebotte, an Intimate Portrait of a Norman Family
Musée d’Art et d’Histoire Baron Gérard (MAHB)
Bayeux
April 16 to September 18, 2016
Gustave Caillebotte (Paris 1848 - Gennevilliers 1894) is mainly known for his paintings of the Paris region and the Seine estuary. The exhibition focuses on a different aspect of the character: his attachment to Normandy, the setting to his family’s history. The representation of his relatives was a theme dear to the artist. The painting Portraits à la campagne, held at the Baron Gerard Museum of Art and History, is one of his more personal works and is therefore naturally the main thread of the exhibition.
Exhibition curator: Dominique Hérouard
Scenes of Impressionist Life
Musée des Beaux-Arts
Rouen
April 16 to September 26, 2016
Portraiture lies at the heart of this display of about 100 paintings by Manet, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, Degas, Caillebotte, Fantin-Latour, Morisot, Cassat and many more. Sculptures, photographs and personal letters too will help lift the veil on the personal worlds of the great masters. Beyond a narration of the private lives of outstanding artists, this exhibition of masterworks will shed light on major developments in French society during the 19th century in terms of the status of women and children and the role of the artist.
Exhibition curator: Sylvain Amic
Jeanne Forain, Portraits of an Epoch
Musée Alfred Canel
Pont-Audemer
April 16 to September 26, 2016
Less well-known than the Impressionist painter JeanLouis Forain, her husband, Jeanne Bosc-Forain (Paris,1865–Le Chesnay, 1954) was nevertheless a painter and sculptor of talent. The exhibition to be presented at the musée Alfred Canel will be the first dedicated to her work and show some forty works from private and public collections.
Exhibition curator: Mathilde Legendre
Frits Thaulow, Landscapist by Nature
Musée des Beaux Arts
Caen
April 16 to September 26, 2016
This is the first retrospective of the work of Frits Thaulow (1847–1906), leader of the Norwegian painters in France during the Impressionist and Postimpressionist years. A cousin of Edvard Munch and the brother-in-law of Gauguin, Thaulow adopted nature as his central theme, and his body of work is characterized by "pleinairisme" and "atmospheric" painting that does not abandon the ecological and humanist vision of the countryside typical of Scandinavian culture. The exhibition also looks at Thaulow’s European and American career and the generation of artists affected by his genius, including Monet, who traveled to Norway in 1895.
Exhibition curators: Caroline Joubert, Franck Claustrat and Emmanuelle Delapierre
The Studio of Light: Portrait of Eugène Boudin
Musée d’Art Moderne André Malraux
Le Havre
April 16 to September 26, 2016
Throughout his life Eugène Boudin was a writer. His letters, notebooks, journals and even a short autobiography tell us about the man, his relationships, his profession and his artistic ambitions. This exhibit will compare approximately 100 works (watercolors, pastels, drawings, paintings) of this pioneer of Impressionism with the thoughts and aspirations contained in his writings, many of which deal with his desire to master the depiction of natural light.
Exhibition curators: Annette Haudiquet. Scientific committee: Laurent Manoeuvre and Anne-Marie Bergeret
Under the Norman sun...In the footsteps of Paul-César Helleu (1859–1927)
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Saint-Lô
Saint-Lô
Relive the atmosphere of the seaside during the Belle Epoque through the work of Paul-César Helleu! A draughtsman and painter, and friend of the Impressionists, Helleu was lionized by society for his portraits of the most elegant women of his time. Bathing huts, seaside excursions, Parisian interiors, Norman beaches, his works plunge us into the social activities around the turn of the century.
Exhibition curator: Robert Blaizeau
Félix Buhot (1847-1898), Painter of Atmospheres
Musée Thomas Henry
Cherbourg-Octeville
June 9 to September 11, 2016
Originally from Valognes, a small, charming town some 20 kilometres from Cherbourg, Félix Buhot spent his life between Paris, the Normandy coast, England and Brittany. His works, produced at the same time as those of the Impressionists, embraced a wide variety of techniques, taking in oil paintings, gouaches, watercolours and prints on a series of repeated subjects. Buhot focused his attention on capturing the atmosphere of the places around him, attempting to “see superb things that others are unaware of”
Exhibition curator: Louise Le Gall
Sickert in Dieppe
Musée de Dieppe
June 25 to September 26, 2016
Walter Sickert (Munich 1862 – Bathampton [UK] 1942), an English painter born to a German-Danish father and English mother, is by far the most renowned of the artists who visited our town in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. A close friend of Jacques-Émile Blanche and a pivot of French and British culture, Sickert was a key contributor to the evolution of British painting to modernity based on a combination of his own Whistlerian heritage and the Impressionist movement, in the wake of Camille and Lucien Pissarro. Having already known Dieppe as a child, between 1885 and 1933 he was to spend a great deal of his life in the town.
Exhibition curators: Pierre Ickowicz and Delphine Lévy
Being Young at the Time of the Impressionists (1860–1910)
Musée Eugène Boudin
Honfleur
June 25 to October 3, 2016
www.musee-eugene-boudin.html
This display of both portraits and genre scenes will round out an understanding of what it meant to be young, especially in Normandy, during the years 1860–1910, including from the time from when one was cradled in one's mother's arms to the embrace of one's future partner. The classical traditions of portraiture stemming from the 18th century - such s imagining the subject of a painting as a mythological or religious hero - will be represented, as will, at the other extreme, the aesthetic novelties of naturalism. Impressionism, the link between the two extremes, will also sit in the mix.
Exhibition curators: Anne-Marie Bergeret and Dominique Lobstein
Sorolla, a Spanish painter in Paris
Musée des Impressionnismes
Giverny
July 14 to November 6, 2016
In 1906, Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla exhibited for the first time at the galerie Georges Petit in Paris, one of the main impressionist galleries. The exhibition was a resounding success and helped establish Sorolla’s international reputation. His masterful rendering of light effects led critics to view Sorolla as an impressionist painter. This exhibition demonstrates how he created a surprising, innovatory style in late 19th-century Paris. The musée des impressionnismes Giverny brings together around 100 paintings, including 50 oil sketches featuring landscapes, portraits and beach scenes, subjects for which he became famous.
Exhibition curators: Blanca Pons-Sorolla and Maria Lopez Fernandez

Normandy Tourist Board Website

Normandy Impressionist Festival Website

Spring 2016 Exhibitions At The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit

Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit

Spring 2016 Exhibitions Opening May 6, 6–10pm Exhibitions Nancy Mitchnick: Uncalibrated DEPE Space Resident Mitch McEwen Methexis Detroit Affinities: Annette Kelm Mike Kelley's Mobile Homestead Carlos Rolón: Vintage Voyages and Atomic Memories   MOCAD announces the opening of its spring exhibitions on May 6, 2016. First solo U.S. museum exhibition for Detroit-based artist Nancy Mitchnick. Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead transforms into a bootleg nail salon and U.S. Pavilion Venice Biennale architect Mitch McEwen creates an immersive and expansive installation of architectural models in the DEPE Space Gallery. Detroit Affinities artist Annette Kelm will be exhibiting as part of MOCAD’s ongoing DETROIT CITY series of solo exhibitions placing a Detroit artist in dialogue with an artist working in other cities and regions around the globe. About the Exhibitions Nancy Mitchnick, 13757 Buffalo Street, 2015, Oil on canvas, 99 x 88 inches Nancy Mitchnick: Uncalibrated On view May 6 through July 31, 2016 Born in Detroit in 1947, Nancy Mitchnick began to paint in earnest around age twenty. She quickly became enmeshed in the artistic milieu building around her, though as a woman in a movement that was very focused on masculinity, and as a figurative painter in a moment where abstraction ruled the day, she was always something of a divergent figure. Despite this seeming clash, the intensity of Detroit’s Cass Corridor scene—a neighborhood that in the 1960s and 70s was home to a vigorous group of young artists—was a perfect match for her extraordinary drive to paint. Working from the world around her and from photographs, the paintings she produced were energetic, assertive, and direct. Mitchnick left Detroit for New York in 1973. Eventually she came to work as a Professor at Bard, CalArts, and Harvard, taking her from coast to coast and back again over the following decades. With each new environment her subjects evolved. In Detroit she had painted the visages of her artist friends. In New York she discovered her skills as a landscape painter. When she moved to New England to teach at Harvard, she painted the muddy landscapes of Ipswich. Mitchnick was still living in Massachusetts when she began revisiting the landscapes of Detroit; today she has returned physically as well, and is working out of a studio in the Russell Industrial Center. Her paintings reflect the city, with its idiosyncratically doleful emptiness and bucolic appeal. The images are strong, bright, unabashed, and full-frontal, and are among the strongest works of Mitchnick’s career. Curated by MOCAD’s Susanne Feld Hilberry Senior Curator at Large Jens Hoffmann. Artist Talk: Nancy Mitchnick Saturday, May 7, 2016 1pm Nancy Mitchnick in conversation with Susanne Hilberry MOCAD Senior Curator at Large Jens Hoffman Exhibition support for Nancy Mitchnick’s Uncalibrated is generously provided by Ethan and Gretchen Davidson, David and Elyse Foltyn, Marsha Miro, and the Taubman Foundation. V. Mitch McEwen, Photo of House Opera during SigiFest 2015, courtesy of McEwen Studio / A(n) Office DEPE Space Residency: Methexis Mitch McEwen, A(n) Office / McEwen Studio with a video series curated by Marcelo López-Dinardi and Dawn Lundy Martin On view May 6 through August 28,  2016 The DEPE (Department of Education and Public Engagement) Space Residency Project and exhibition series presents interdisciplinary art that serves as a catalyst for learning and transformative conversation about complex social issues. DEPE Space offers opportunities to reflect upon the personal relevance of these topics and how they relate to communities in Detroit and throughout the world. In the DEPE exhibition produced by V. Mitch McEwen and collaborators, a series of design studies, maps, and abstract design codes will reimagine processes of demolition and preservation, specifically focusing on the tens of thousands of vacant houses in the city that were built in the early 20th century. This extensive collection of studies continues the ongoing research of McEwen Studio and A(n) Office focusing on demolition alternatives for publicly owned vacant structures. Visitors will encounter an excessive number of architectural scale models arranged from the floor of the gallery to the steel girders above. These architectural models, fabricated both by hand and digital processes, coalesce into a large sculptural field.  Alongside these study objects, animations and interactive tools show how these design tactics would impact the image of the city. The design research of Methexis began with McEwen Studio’s House Opera | Opera House project. House Opera | Opera House, located in Southwest Detroit, is McEwen’s long-term collaborative project, involving Marcelo López-Dinardi, partner of A(n) Office, Dawn Lundy Martin, and a number of artistic collaborators. For Methexis, McEwen produces new designs to address the tens of thousands of buildings structurally and materially similar to House Opera. Rather than attempting an artisanal solution for each vacant house, McEwen deploys algorithmic methods to present alternatives for vacant buildings. The city’s mass of vacant properties becomes a virtual terrain for design to operate within, along the logic of software. The film series accompanying the design exhibition extends this negotiation of architecture with drama, process, and language. Curated by Marcelo López-Dinardi and Dawn Lundy Martin, 3 series of videos punctuate each month of the exhibit with one of these relationships. Firstly, Lundy Martin explores architecture and drama–dramas of embodiment. Secondly, López-Dinardi presents videos of architecture and process, mining the oeuvre of Gordon Matta-Clark and others. Finally, Lundy Martin presents a poetically rooted video grouping exploring architecture and language. Each segment of videos runs for about a month at a time—three weeks in May and July, and four weeks in June. May: Dawn Lundy Martin curates videos around leisure as a problem, form, and desire of bodies. Videos include works from Ronaldo V. Wilson and Martin's own video titledImpossibility.blackness.Leisure. June: Marcelo López-Dinardi curates short videos about themes of algorithms, variations, control, and time, as well as the condition of vacancy. Including Gordon Matta-Clark: Bingo (1974, 09:45 mins, color, silent) and George Maciunas: End After 9 (1966, 1:00 min, b&w, silent) DEPE Space is funded in part by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Annette Kelm, Target Record, c-print, framed, 2005, 35 x 45 cm, Image courtesy of the artist. Detroit Affinities: Annette Kelm May 6 through August 28, 2016 Berlin-based artist Annette Kelm's photographic works often feature a single, vaguely familiar object, which she renders using a direct and realistic style that oscillates between genres of photography such as documentary and advertising, to unfold that object's social, economic, and cultural context. As she makes series’ revolving around these objects, consequently pressing the relationship between photography and sculpture, her work moves between the creation of an image and the recording of a staged object or objects. In this respect, Kelm shares much with contemporaries such as Josephine Pryde and Wolfgang Tillmans, but perhaps her clearest influence is Christopher Williams, who also puts his camera at the service of finding historical marks and contexts embedded within form. Yet whereas Williams typically provides lengthy captions that help viewers decipher and unpack his images, Kelm offers few clues, making that deconstruction more part of her artistic process. The display at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit brings together a series of works from throughout the artist's’ career that outlines these concerns. In particular the work Art Car (2007) offers a link to Detroit, a photographic diptych depicting an automobile that has been deconstructed. In fact, the convertible's body is stripped down in every sense: The door handles, mirrors, and bumpers have been removed from the car (made in the 1980s by Volkswagen) and stuck in its backseat. Kelm's photographs are similarly unfinished in sensibility, since the car is shot in ordinary daylight against a plain white backdrop it seems to present the bare bones beneath a supple commercial image, depicting the car in a manner that is more in keeping with mug shots than with the glossy, seductive representations of automobiles to which we are accustomed. Kelm was recently awarded the Camera Austria Award for Contemporary Photography by the City of Graz, which is awarded biennially. The jury founded their decision to honor Kelm with this award on the following statement: “Annette Kelm’s intricately produced images are bound to a history of photography—not only as a medium, but also as a practice, a concept, and a provocation to old and new media. Kelm’s images confront the intertwined histories of photography and objects, exploring our complex relationships with both. Inspired by traditional still-life, landscape and portrait photography and riffing on today’s commercial and advertising imagery, Kelm creates uncanny arrangements in her studio. By making the artificial nature of her images obvious, she challenges us to think about how we construct meaning. Unlike most of her peers, Kelm works only with analog cameras, opting for film rolls and the darkroom rather than digital technologies. Curated by MOCAD’s Susanne Feld Hilberry Senior Curator at Large Jens Hoffmann. As part of: MOCAD DETROIT CITY is comprised of three concurrent series: Detroit Affinities (exhibition), Detroit Speaks (education), and Detroit Stages (performance). This multi-year research program is one of the most ambitious undertakings to date at MOCAD. DETROIT CITY funding is provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Kayne Foundation (Ric & Suzanne Kayne and Jenni, Maggie & Saree), and Andrew Kreps Gallery. DETROIT SPEAKS funding is provided by the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan. Carlos Rolón. Get Nailed at the New Museum. New Museum, NY Mike Kelley's Mobile Homestead Carlos Rolón: Vintage Voyages and Atomic Memories On view May 6 - August 28, 2016 Through a commitment to social practice, Carlos Rolón makes art a universal experience for everyone to share. For his Mobile Homestead project, Vintage Voyages and Atomic Memories Rolón will create a pop-up nail salon within the context of a domestic space reminiscent of his family’s home on the Southside of Chicago. On Saturdays during the run of the exhibition, gifted nail artists will work within the installation, creating customized nail designs for visitors on a first-come, first-served basis.  The room will be decorated and finished with vintage wallpaper, framed mirrors, and craft based work including hanging handmade macramé’s for visitors to explore. Rolón views this project as a community service in both micro and macro forms. The various retro decorated rooms will serve as visual backdrop and speak on the many influences of an era when artist and wallpaper designer Jack Denst produced wallpaper that went beyond kitsch into modern art. The complete installation and nail salon creates a sense of wonder that is bold and brilliant, leaving the viewer with visual re-discoveries and new conversations. Nail salon appointments may be scheduled from May 7 through August 27, 2016 on Saturdays between the hours of 11am to 5pm. To make an appointment, please visit the Mobile Homestead Friday through Sunday, between 11am and 5pm. The Mike Kelley Mobile Homestead is commissioned by Artangel in association with MOCAD, LUMA Foundation and Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts with the generous support of the Artangel International Circle. All Exhibitions Opening Friday, May 6, 2016 Member Preview: 6-7pm Opening Reception: 7-10pm Live Performance by Britney Stoney: 10pm Free for MOCAD Members, $7 for non-members after 9pm

Palm Springs Art Museum Opens New Exhibitions Edward S. Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks And Changing The Tone: Contemporary American Indian Photographers

Palm Springs Art Museum Opens New Exhibitions

Edward S. Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks

and Changing the Tone: Contemporary American Indian Photographers

 

  Edward S. Curtis, Bear's Belly - Arikara,

1908, photogravure, courtesy of the

 Christopher G. Cardozo Collection

Palm Springs Art Museum is pleased to present the extraordinary Edward S. Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks exhibition, featuring vintage photographs that represent an important historical documentary of the Indians of North America; andChanging the Tone: Contemporary American Indian Photographers, showcasing works by living artists of Native American heritage. The exhibitions are on view now through May 29, 2016.

Beginning in 1900, Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952) set out on a monumental quest to create an unprecedented, comprehensive record of the Indians of North America. The culmination of his 30-year project led to his magnum opus, “The North American Indian,” a twenty-volume, twenty-portfolio set of handmade books containing a selection of over 2,200 original photographs. Today One Hundred Masterworks stands as a landmark in the history of photography, book publishing, ethnography, and the history of the American West, producing an art historical record of enormous and irreplaceable importance.

One Hundred Masterworks presents an extraordinary selection of vintage photographs by Curtis that highlight both iconic and little known images that reveal the aesthetic, emotional, and spiritual qualities of his art. The exhibition showcases seven photographic print mediums including photogravure, platinum, goldtone (orotone), toned and un-toned gelatin silver, cyanotype, and gold-toned printing-out paper prints. Arranged by geographic region, the exhibition includes a selection of Curtis's most compelling and rare photographs that look beyond the documentary nature of his work to focus on his aesthetic and technical contributions to the art of photography. Accompanying the exhibition is a 184-page catalogue available for purchase at the Museum Store at Palm Springs Art Museum.

In conjunction with Edward S. Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks, the museum presents a special installation of photographs taken by Curtis on loan from the collections of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians and Agua Caliente Cultural Museum, along with a selection of Native American objects from Palm Springs Art Museum's permanent collection.

The exhibition Edward S. Curtis: One Hundred Masterworks has been organized by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, Minneapolis/New York City/Paris/Lausanne, in collaboration with Palm Springs Art Museum. The Palm Springs showing is funded in part by the museum's Western Art Council and its Gold Sponsors Donna MacMillan and Harold Matzner, and Mary Ingebrand-Pohlad, along with support from Carol and Jim Egan, Terra Foundation for American Art through Board Member Gloria Scoby, Luc Bernard and Mark Prior, and the museum's Photography Collection Council. Exhibition Season Sponsors are Dorothy Meyerman and Marion and Bob Rosenthal. 

Changing the Tone: Contemporary American Indian Photographers features photographs and videos by artists of Native American heritage including Gerald Clarke, Will Wilson, Kent Monkman, Nicholas Galanin, Shelley Niro, and Lewis de Soto. In images that reflect on portraiture, cultural heritage, and their relationship to the land, these artists offer diverse perspectives on Native American identity as well as on critical issues around photography as a documentary medium, i.e., the extent to which it is fact, fiction, or some combination of both. These works provide a contemporary context for Curtis's historical photographs. Changing the Tone is organized by Palm Springs Art Museum with generous support from Roswitha Kima Smale and John Renner. 

              

Kent Monkman, The Emergence of a Legend:        

5 Photographs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle 4,       

2006, chromogenic prints on metallic paper,                                         

courtesy of the artist © Kent Monk

                   

Gerald Clarke, Motifs from the Series One Tract Mind,  2009

digital print on canvas, courtesy of the artist © Gerald Clarke 

                                               

In partnership with the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum’s 2016 Native FilmFest, Palm Springs Art Museum is also hosting a free screening of the award-winning film Coming to Light: Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indians. This special screening takes place in the museum’s Annenberg Theater on March 6, at 5 p.m., and will include a Q&A with the film’s director Anne Makepeace, as well as a reception and viewing of the exhibitions following the film. Tickets are free but must be reserved in advance. They will be available at the Annenberg Theater Box Office and Camelot Theatre on a first come, first served basis.

For additional information on the exhibitions, and for Box Office hours, please visit www.psmuseum.org. Palm Springs Art Museum is located at 101 Museum Drive in downtown Palm Springs and can be reached at (760) 322-4800.

About Palm Springs Art Museum

Palm Springs Art Museum is the largest cultural institution in the Coachella Valley and includes three locations in Palm Springs and Palm Desert. The flagship building is located in downtown Palm Springs and features compelling art exhibitions, a vast permanent collection, and the 433-seat Annenberg Theater, all in a 150,000 square foot, architecturally-significant building. Palm Springs Art Museum Architecture and Design Center, Edwards Harris Pavilion, features exhibitions and programming that explore the rich topics of architecture and design. Admission to the A+D Center is free for the next two years thanks to an anonymous donor. Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Desert is an 8,400 square foot, Silver LEED-certified building named The Galen that presents rotating exhibitions and special collections. It is surrounded by the four-acre Faye Sarkowsky Sculpture Garden featuring important sculpture works. Admission to the Palm Desert location is free, generously underwritten by Helene V. Galen. For more information, call 760-322-4800, visit www.psmuseum.org, and follow the museum on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.