The Philadelphia Museum of Art, with the support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, have announced the 2016 season of Inside Out, a major arts initiative that brings high-quality reproductions of Museum masterpieces into communities throughout the city and region. Conshohocken was selected to serve as one of the host cities for the fall of 2016. Working with the Museum on this project are MoreThanTheCurve.com, the Conshohocken Art League and the Borough. Pictured above with Andy Warhol’s Jackie (Four Jackies) is Eileen McDonnell from the Conshohocken Art League.
From April 6th through July, residents of Old City and Tacony in Philadelphia, and Coatesville, Doylestown, Lansdowne, and Narberth will discover outdoor art installations of Museum masterpieces popping up in their communities. This is the second year the Museum has participated in the program, having brought Inside Out to towns across Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties last year.
As we mentioned, Conshohocken will be one of the participating communities in the fall, along with the Philadelphia neighborhood of Brewerytown, Bristol, Jenkintown, Phoenixville, and Upper Darby. These pop-up exhibitions will take place from August through November. In addition to having the art installed around town, another benefit for the participating communities will be that their residents receive a weekend of free admission to the Museum.
Timothy Rub, The Museum’s George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer, said: “This project is not simply about the Museum sharing its masterpieces. This is a community project and it is about what we can do together. The Museum’s treasures are the community’s treasures, and they are for the enjoyment of everyone. We are delighted to build on last year’s success and share our art in this creative way, engaging a broader and more diverse audience across the entire region.”
”It is one thing to see such stirring works of art in a museum, but an entirely new experience to view them outdoors. By bringing Inside Out to communities across Philadelphia, we’re able to share the treasures of the Philadelphia Museum of Art more broadly and engage people directly as they go about their everyday lives, encountering art in unexpected places,” said Victoria Rogers, Vice President for Arts at Knight Foundation.
The framed reproductions represent key works from the Museum’s world-renowned collections of American, European, Latin American, and Asian art, and are placed within walking or biking distance of each other. All of the works will either be mounted on walls or placed on free-standing posts, displayed in frames representative of the time period in which they were created, and accompanied by a descriptive label.
For the spring, the Museum has already worked with community partners to select works and identify installation sites. This year, Thomas Eakins’ Sailboats Racing on the Delaware (1874) and other waterscapes by American artist William Trost Richards and the seventeenth-century Venetian painter Canaletto, will be installed in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Tacony. In Doylestown, the Bucks County Courthouse will feature Thomas Moran’s Grand Canyon of the Colorado River (1892 and 1908), and at other sites within walking distance will be Andrew Wyeth’s Groundhog Day (1959) and Daniel Garber’s serene painting depicting his daughter on the porch of his studio, Tanis (1915). Major works are also destined to be on view in Narberth, including Mary Cassatt’s Mother and Child (1908) and Georgia O’Keeffe’s Two Calla Lilies on Pink (1928). Other popular favorites of Inside Out include Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers (1888 or 1889), Pablo Picasso’s Self-Portrait with Palette (1906), and Philadelphia-based artist Moe Brooker’s Present Futures (2006).
Katy Friedland, Manager of Special Projects, said: “Inside Out is all about spontaneous interactions with works of art. This year we are branching out to bring more art to more communities in Philadelphia and throughout the region. We have added even more masterpieces to the mix—among them an image of young knight dressed in field armor that is on display in our arms and armor galleries—as well as an extraordinary reproduction of a painting of a rainy day in Paris by Camille Pissarro that currently hangs in our nineteenth-century European galleries. Every town and site offers the chance to encounter art, and hopefully will inspire a visit to the Museum to see the real masterpiece.”
Stay tuned for more information such as what reproductions will be displayed, where around Conshy they will be displayed and details on the free admission weekend at the Museum.