Category: Philadelphia
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Split Button
University of Pennsylvania Front of the Van Pelt Library Split Button by Claes Oldenburg cost $100,000 with $37,500 coming from the University, $375,000 from NEA and the remaining raised through contributions. It is made of reinforced aluminum, weighs 5000 pounds and meashures 16 feet in diameter. A legend exists, mainly circulated by students at…
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Paint Torch
Pittsburgh, PA Lenfest Plaza Installed in August 2011 at a daring 60-degree diagonal position, the 51-feet high Paint Torch sculpture by Claes Oldenburg in Lenfest Plaza honors the act of painting—from the classical masters in PAFA’s museum to the students in PAFA’s School of Fine Arts. Paint Torch, commissioned by PAFA, stands on the point of its handle in…
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Covenant by Alex Liberman
University of Pennsylvania Locust Walk Weighing over 25 tons, Covenant, the creation of Alexander Liberman (1912-1999) was commissioned as part of the university’s fulfillment of the Redevelopment Authority’s Percent for Art requirement. Alexander Liberman’s sculpture has been described as so “wildly asymmetrical” that every change in the viewer’s angle of perception alters the apparent axes. During his…
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Grumman Greenhouse
Grumman Greenhouse Lenfest Plaza This crashed and artfully crumpled full-size airplane is titled “Grumman Greenhouse,”. The creation of 27-year-old Jordan Griska was installed in 2011. The plane is a U.S. Navy Grumman Tracker S-2E, built in 1962. It flew from aircraft carriers. Mothballed in the 1980s, it had a second career helping to fight forest…
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Aero Memorial
Philadelphia has the largest collections of Public Art in the United States and much of it can be viewed with an audio tour I was particularly drawn to this bronze sphere which sits opposite the main entrance of the Franklin Institute and is dedicated to aviators who died in World War I. Inscribed with the…
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Lichtenstein in Philadelphia
United Plaza South 20th Street Philadelphia, PA Philadelphia has a wonderful program called Museum Without Walls, and this is part of that program. Roy Lichtenstein’s Brushstroke Group, was brought to Philadelphia in August 2005 courtesy of Duane Morris L.L.P, one of the city’s largest law firms, which occupies the adjacent building. In an unusual arrangement,…
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Wanamaker, An Organ, and An Eagle
1300 Market Street Philadelphia, PA Designed by renowned organ architect and Scotsman, George Ashdown Audsley, and built by the Los Angeles Art Organ Company for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, the Wanamaker Organ originally incorporated more than 10,000 pipes. The cost of construction ($105,000) actually bankrupted the builder. Fortunately, the Organ found a new…
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Swann Memorial Fountain
Logan Square Philadelphia, PA The Swann Memorial Fountain (also known as the Fountain of the Three Rivers) is by Alexander Stirling Calder (who has shown up on these pages before) and designed with architect Wilson Eyre. The fountain memorializes Dr. Wilson Cary Swann, founder of the Philadelphia Fountain Society. Calder created large Native American figures to…
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Dendroids by Roxy Paine
Philadelphia – February 2018 Benjamin Franklin Parkway 24th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue This piece, titled Symbiosis by Roxy Paine, was installed in 2014. It is stainless steel and part of Paine’s “Dendroid” series of stainless steel treelike structures. “Dendroids”is a greek word that combines Dendron meaning tree and oid a suffix meaning form. The piece…
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Pennsylvania – Bucks County
Outside Philadelphia – This is the Mercer Museum in Doylestown, (Bucks County) Pennsylvania. Henry Mercer inherited his money from a maiden aunt and with this money he started collecting objects of everyday life, convinced that the history of Bucks County was the history of the world. At first he did all the collecting himself, but…
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Philadelphia – Claes Oldenburg
In Front of the City Center building downtown Philadelphia. I am a huge fan of Claes Oldenburg. Born in Stockholm, Sweden, the son of a Swedish diplomat stationed in New York. In 1936 his father was transferred to Chicago where Oldenburg grew up, attending the Latin School of Chicago. He studied at Yale University from…
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Philadelphia – Following your spirit
My favorite artists are ones that find their passion and pursue it, with no thought to commercialism, or the sale. The thing that is shunned by the neighbors, until they realize you aren’t a crazy old coot, you have a vision and it is just different. Well I found one of those in Philadelphia. His…
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Philadelphia – Playing Games
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – 1417 JFK Boulevard This installation is entitled “Your Move” by Daniel Martinez, Renee Petropoulis and Roger White, it was installed in 1979. While difficult to discern on the ground, the tiles appear to be some sort of game board, not checkers, or chess, but orderly like a game board. The tops of…
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Philadelphia – Eastern State Penitentiary
I am in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My habit in any town is to seek the odd ball. After an entire morning spent at the Philadelphia Art Museum, I headed out to an odd ball spot. Before explaining that however, I must say, that if you have the opportunity to visit the Philadelphia Art Museum, please do.…
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Philadelphia – Public Art As Playgrounds
This is entitled “White Water” by Robinson Frendenthal. It was installed in 1978, and the plaque reads “Installed as a Fine Arts Commitment as required by the Redevelopment Authority of Philadelphia.” So sad, sounds like the really didn’t want it. Robinson Frendenthal graduated from Penn with a degree in architecture and turned to sculpture…
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Philadelphia – Government of the People
“Government of the People” is located in front of the Municipal Services Building in Philadelphia. A piece by Jacques Lipchitz it was dedicated in 1976. It seeks to portray the artist’s ideas regarding the struggle for freedom and the push to ensure democracy Lipchitz (1891-1973) was a Lithuanian. In 1909 he moved to Paris to study…
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Philadelphia – Maxfield Parish meets Tiffany
Dream Garden is an enormous glass mosaic designed by artist Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966), and executed by Louis Comfort Tiffany and Tiffany Studios, for the lobby of the Curtis Publishing Building in Philadelphia — home of The Ladies’ Home Journal and The Saturday Evening Post. The work was commissioned by Edward Bok, Senior Editor of the…
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Philadelphia – Feeling the Love
Okay, you knew this was coming. I am in Philadelphia, City of Brotherly Love. City of Brotherly Love isn’t actually a nickname. It is merely a translation of the Greek phrase “brotherly love” from philos “love” and adelphos “brother”. William Penn was an English Quaker, a Latin and Greek scholar who was educated at Oxford.…
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Philadelphia – June 16, 2011
I am in Philadelphia and I hate doing the classic tourist stuff, so sorry, you won’t see a picture of the Liberty Bell, but this is pretty touristy as things go. This is Christ Church Burial Ground. I love cemeteries, they are so full of history, even if you don’t know anything about the people buried there,…