Mile-High Musings on Arts, Culture, Creativity and Philanthropy

Aurora Robson - "Up Drop" (detail) One of the great cultural assets of Philadelphia is the now six-year-old DesignPhiladelphia . This major annual celebration of all things design is now housed at University of the Arts, and each year in the month of Ocotber (this year, the 7th through the 17th)  brings together scores of exhibitions, installations, symposia and unclassifiable "happenings around the filed of design - furniture design, product design, sustainable design, fashion design, architecture, landscape architecture, etc. It is definitely a big tent, and plays to the wealth of talent that Philadelphia has in these areas. It also serves as a vehicle for bringing in artists and designers from outside the region to enrich the dialogue. It is the largest celebration of its kind and brings together the work this year of over 450 designers. One of the exciting installations this year is "be like water" - a site specific installation by the artist Aurora Ro...

Artist: Lung Ung, CAPA, 11th Grade, Teacher: John Fanti The exhibition currently mounted in The Art Gallery at City Hall is "A Plus Art - An Annual Celebration of Student Art." This exhibition is a selection of some of  the best art from students in Philadelphia’s public schools. Each year, The School District of Philadelphia organizes an exhibition of approximately 1,500 works of art at the School District Administration Building on North Broad St. Working in partnership with the District’s Office of Comprehensive Arts Education, we have chosen works that highlight our children’s artistic achievement in what we hope will be an annual exhibition in City Hall. This exhibition is also a testament to the many dedicated art teachers in the School District, as well as the arts administrators who emphatically believe that a quality arts education is an important part of a child’s critical development.  Dr. Dennis Creedon, the Director of Comprehensive Arts Education, and Tess...

In a few weeks DesignPhiladelphia 2010 comes to town, and there are an array of really cool projects that are part of it that my Office has been working on. I thought over the next couple of weeks it would be fun to begin to preview some of this exciting work. First up: Virtual Public Art. What is Virtual Public Art you say? Well whip out your smart phone and get ready for some mind-bending public art that exists only in "virtual space" but that is also part of the real space we live in. The first city-wide virtual art exhibit is coming to Philadelphia October 7, 2010. Breadboard ; NextFab Studio ; and Virtual Public Art Project(VPAP) are collaborating with the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy , and DesignPhiladelphia2010 to host the first VPAP exhibit in Philadelphia as part of Design Philadelphia 2010. The VPAP Philadelphia project will include an informative multimedia exhibit at Breadboard’s Esther Klein Gallery (3600 Market Str...