Exhibits & Programs
Bicentennial City
January 24 - March 6, 2020
“There is a crack in everything, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”–Leonard Cohen
In 1976, America was having its 200th birthday and Philadelphia was chosen to host the party. For over a decade prior, the July 4th weekend stood as a site of possibility. The celebration drew an estimated two million visitors, and in some ways the city was able to catch its breath. Yet things did not go as planned. With a racist mayor, post-Vietnam malaise, and the galvanized resistance of marginalized groups, the Bicentennial in Philadelphia laid bare some of the most pressing questions of America’s national identity. As we revisit this fraught history, Philadelphia’s famous Liberty Bell transcends its index of freedom-ringing and comes to embody the deepest fissures in American life: there’s a crack in the bell.
During summer 2019, five Haverford and Bryn Mawr College students collaborated with poet Thomas Devaney and Greenhouse Media to explore this surreal moment in Philadelphia and national history through an experimental documentary film. The exhibition Bicentennial City continues that project as an interactive installation with multi-channel projections, sculptures, and Bicentennial ephemera, seeking to explore the many roles myth and memory play in the psyche of a city.
Bicentennial City builds on the Summer 2019 DocuLab project “The Bicentennial in Philadelphia,” led by Thomas Devaney and Greenhouse Media (Aaron Igler and Matthew Suib) with Hilary Brashear, Julia Coletti ’21, Jixin Jia ’21, Edward Ogborn ’19, Cole Sansom ’19, and Grace Sue ’20.
Sponsored by the John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities and VCAM.
Opening Talk & Reception
Friday, January 24
4:30—7:30 p.m.
Cantor Fitzgerald GalleryThe Crack in the Bell 1976: A Talk by Thomas Devaney
Thursday, February 13
4:30—6:00 p.m.
VCAM Screening Room 001
An Alarming Specificity
March 20-April 24, 2020
An Alarming Specificity engages with human bodies which do not align with a fictional norm grounded in white patriarchal hegemony. Curated by Aubree Penney, the exhibition examines ways artists subvert the predominance of white, heterosexual, cis-male, non-disabled bodies as the default of humanity.
Across installation, mixed media, prints, gifs, and performance, artists Shannon Finnegan, Chitra Ganesh, Yvette Granata, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Linda Stupart, and Eva Wŏ uphold individual bodies attempting to survive and thrive in a world which frequently neglects to support, protect, recognize, or heal them. This centering of bodies of women, people of color, atypically embodied people, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community extends into mechanisms of display.
Performance by Linda Stupart & Opening Reception
Friday, March 20
4:30—7:30 p.m.
Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery
2020 Fine Arts Senior Thesis Exhibition
May 1—16, 2020
Left to right: Sarah Jesup BMC '20 (printmaking, BMC), Emily Williams '20 (photography), Delilah Buitrago '20 (printmaking), and Hana Luisa Binte Yaacob '20 (drawing).
The 2020 Fine Arts Senior Thesis Exhibition, representing the culmination of studies for the four seniors graduating this spring, will be on view at Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery May 1-16, 2020. This year’s seniors are pursuing concentrations in drawing, photography, and printmaking.