THE PHILADELPHIA JUNTO.: Museum Mile

Tuesday, 10 August 2010

Museum Mile

Courthouse to New PMA Gallery?
By Richard Carreno
Writers Clearinghouse News Service

It's uncanny how the Family Division Courthouse on Vine Street, across from Logan Square, resembles the Hotel de Crillon, on the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Actually 'resembles' isn't quite right. Duplicates is a better descriptive. Down to its 11 columns, slung over 11 arched entrances to a frontal arcade, the Family Court building, designed by John T. Windrim and built in 1939, is a spitin' image of the Paris original. As far as I can tell, the only significant detail that differs in the facades of the two structures is their main entrances. The Crillon's entrance is offset to the left. The courthouse has a centred entrance.

Given this this resemblance, er, duplication, it's easy to understand why Governor Edward G. Rendell remarked a few months ago that the courthouse could make for a great hotel site when and if the Family Division were to move from the location.

In fact, when Rendell made that statement he was already pushing hard to move the courthouse to a new site, and had promised $200 million in state moneys to construct the new facilty.

Enter Ron Castille.

Castille, chief justice of the commonwealth's Supreme Court, soon made a hash of the deal when he took charge of the new courthouse's siting, arranging through a series of brokered deals in cronyism for land at 15th and Arch streets to be the preferred site. In the process, Castille, slippery like the eponymously-branded soap, was able to let $7 million slip through his fingers to his golfing buds. Oops! He got caught by The Inquirer.

It's unfortunate that Castille gummed up the works. Reconverting the existing courthouse to a new dedicated purpose is a necessity. But hotel? Maybe.

Even under the most optimistic scenarios, only part of the 247,000 square-foot palace-like building, could be dedicated to hotel use.

That's why there's a growing sentiment to retool the courthouse as another member of Museum Mile.

With the Pennsylvania Academy for the Fine Arts at Broad Street as the Mile's eastern anchor, that lower stretch of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway is blossoming. Not to forgotten, of course, is the much-awaited opening of the Barnes Foundation at its new nearby Parkway site in 2012. Hotel+museum=more reason for visitors to abandon kiddyland at Independence Mall and head uptown.

Conversion of the courthouse to museum/gallery space also makes sense because it looks increasing clear that plans by the Philadelphia Museum of Art to build an underground, Frank Gehry-designed addition to house its modern and contemporary collections won't be happening anytime soon.

If a courthouse developer is ever found, it would behoove the PMA's Timothy Rub to start thinking about linking the the hotel vision with a revised museum vsion for its modern and contemporary collections. As always in Philadelphia, a city that can never find its specs, it's the vision thing.

Film at PMA
Michael McGonigle, the PMA's film guru, will lecture about 'American Women in the 1950s, as Seen in the Movies,' at 1 pm Saturday, August 21, and then screen, at 2:30 pm, The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio. The event is free to members.

Deal on 'Late Renoir'
The PMA is offering a $4 adult ticket discount, from $20 to $16, to view 'Late Renoir,' the museum's current 'centre ring' show. But hurry! The discount is only good from 10 August to 13 August. Late Renoir runs to 6 September.

Academy of Natural Sciences gets homey
The Academy of Natural Sciences will sponsor a workshop on how to create a Condo Green Committee from 6 pm to 8:30 pm 27 September at the academy's building on Logan Square. The workshop is jointly presented by the Center for Environmental Policy in collaboration with the Green Condominium and Co-op initiative.

BROADSTREETREVIEW.COM INDEX

Articles by Richard Carreño
Diego Rivera's ghost in Detroit October 15 2013 The city of Detroit may be broke, but the Detroit Institute of Arts owns $2 billion worth of art works. Its most valued pieces, by the Communist Diego Rivera, portray heroic workers triumphing over stoic managers. In the best capitalist tradition, Rivera’s frescoes are now being held hostage by a pair of union-busting Republican politicians.

Dissecting West’s ‘Death of General Wolfe’ August 06 2013 Benjamin West’s Death of General Wolfe was once a hallowed symbol of British imperialism. Now it’s been hijacked by Canadians, whose supply of national icons is otherwise limited. National Gallery of Canada. 380 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. www.gallery.ca/en.

Pittsburgh’s culture quest July 24 2012 The Mellons and the steel mills are gone, but Pittsburgh today boasts first-class museums, music, theaters and universities. The trouble is, they’re all in the wrong part of town.

Discovered: La Salle’s unsung art museum November 14 2011 An obscure museum in a North Philadelphia basement houses world-class treasures by masters like Tintoretto, Edouard Vuillard, Rembrandt Peale, Georges Rouault and Joseph Epstein. Most remarkable of all, admission is free. La Salle University Art Museum. Olney Hall, 1900 W. Olney Ave., lower level. (215) 951-1000 or www.lasalle.edu/museum.

Matisse and Barnes: A tale of two museums October 04 2011 Henri Matisse was one of the three great revolutionary artists (with Picaso and Duchamp) of the early 20th Century; Albert Barnes was a brilliant collector of revolutionary art. They made a great team until Barnes’s insufferable personality drove Matisse away, with consequences that still reverberate today.

‘Picasso and the Paris Avant-Garde’ at the Art Museum February 23 2010 Curator Michael Taylor has unveiled, for the first time in recent memory, the astonishing range, depth, and quality of the Art Museum’s Picasso holdings. But his show falls a few bricks short of an Anne d'Harnoncourt blockbuster. “Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris.” Through May 2, 2010 at Philadelphia Museum of Art, Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26th St. (215) 763-8100 or http://www.philamuseum.org/.

Antiquity, looters and the Penn Museum November 10 2009 Who are the best stewards of ancient artifacts— enlightened Western curators whose museums stole the loot long ago, or dictators of Third World lands where the treasures were originally found? James Cuno of the Chicago Art Institute (who believes the former) confronts the Penn Museum (which favors the latter). "Iraq’s Ancient Past: Rediscovering Ur’s Royal Cemetery." Through Spring 2010 at University of Pennsylvania Museum, 3260 South St. (215) 898-4000 or www.penn.museum/sites/iraq.

‘American Stories' at the Met in New York October 18 2009 “American Stories,” currently at the Met in New York, reveals an indebtedness to Philadelphia's artistic patrimony. Almost the whole show could have been assembled from Philadelphia holdings or works by Philadelphia artists. So why is the Art Museum so modest about its contributions? “American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915.” Through January 24, 2009 at Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue and 82nd St., New York. 212-535-7710 or http://www.metmuseum.org/. Art

Museum’s admission hike June 29 2009 The Art Museum recently raised its admission fees, a fund-raising model that is strictly 20th-Century. Then it hired as its new director Timothy Rub, a successful advocate of the 21st-Century model: free admission. Does the Art Museum’s left hand know what its right hand is doing?

Venice: Nice place to visit, but…. March 31 2009 There’s no place like Venice to jump-start your romantic gene. But before you move there, remember: The plumbing stinks. And try schlepping groceries, or hauling a suitcase, or finding a doctor or a decent restaurant or a neighbor who’s under 50.

Newspapers and the Internet March 03 2009 In the Internet age, what will happen to fact-based journalism as daily newspapers fold? Contrary to what you hear from print journalists, the quality of coverage could improve. Which would you prefer: The Inquirer, or a Philadelphia edition of the New York Times?

Vidocq: Philadelphia's Sherlock Holmes December 20 2008 Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chan and Sam Spade are all legendary but fictitious private eyes. But Edgar Allan Poe and Victor Hugo were inspired by a real Philadelphia gumshoe of literary dimensions, as I discovered behind the door of the Vidocq Society in Center City. The Black Tower. By Louis Bayard. William Morrow, 352 pages; $24.95. http://www.louisbayard.com/

Sarah Palin and the ‘C’ word September 13 2008 Thanks to Sarah Palin, the 800-pound gorilla is out of the cage. The 'C' word— class— is the one word in the American lexicon that's even better hidden in polite public discourse than race. And it has little to do with money.

Alfred J. Munnings at Brandywine Museum July 29 2008 A remarkable new show at the Brandywine River museum is a tribute to the great sporting artist Alfred J. Munnings and also to the private collectors of Chester County who’ve accumulated his works without fanfare.“Alfred J. Munnings From Regional Collections.” Through Sept. 1, 2008 at Brandywine River Museum, off U.S. 1, Chadds Ford, Pa. (610) 388-2700 or http://www.brandywinemuseum.org./

The horror of globalization February 16 2008 What is a German discount food chain doing in Philadelphia, pampering its customers and employees alike and otherwise violating cherished local customs? Don’t these foreigners know what we Americans did to the Hessians the last time we got really angry?

George Stubbs paintings at Penn April 17 2007 The English painter George Stubbs is largely forgotten outside racing stables, geezer men’s clubs and faux clubby steakhouses. But he transformed the way artists depicted horses and sporting scenes. Equus Unbound: Fairman Rogers and the Age of the Horse. Through June 15, 2007, at Kamen Gallery, U. of Pennsylvania’s Van-Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, 3420 Walnut St., first floor. Free and open to the public; photo ID required. (800) 390-1829.

Christie’s and ‘The Gross Clinic’ January 03 2007 As a leading art auction house, Christie’s well understands the role of a dummy bidder in jacking up the price of a work. In Jefferson University's recent sale of The Gross Clinic, Christie’s consultants apparently found an unwitting dummy in the Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton. Has Philadelphia’s art community learned anything from this $68 million lesson?

What price admission to the Barnes? August 12 2006 Hefty admisssion increases are the new order of the day at New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum. Derek Gillman, new chief of the Barnes Foundation, may be tempted to follow suit. Here's one hard-nosed reason why he shouldn't.

Celebrating ....

Tuesday, 10 August 2010

Museum Mile