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Exhibitions and festivals for the soul
The BSR Weekly Arts and Culture Roundup, September 14-20, 2022
Kyle V. Hiller
As we head into the final official days of summer, how about the chance for a little introspection, remembering, and healing? This week is doing plenty to open up that opportunity for you. Home as Stage, Waiting Room, and Landscapes and Hierarchies make space to explore space. Deep Rivers, Outside Your Expectations, and US and the Holocaust explore challenging aspects of our history. Then, music comes to save the day with the Dolly Parton of our dreams (that’s a plot point, not hyperbole) and the Mill Creek Community Partnership Hip Hop and Jazz Fest.
Be safe, Philly!
Here You Come Again
September 14-October 2
Delaware Theatre Company, 200 Water Street, Wilmington
Delaware Theatre Company opens its world premiere of Here You Come Again, a performance celebrating the humor and wit of Dolly Parton. In 12 easy songs, a life will be saved, and right before the tour makes its way nationally.
Home as Stage
September 15-December 30
Wharton Esherick Museum, 1520 Horseshoe Trail, Malvern
The Wharton Esherick Museum concludes its series of installations exploring ideas of home with Home as Stage. The installation features work from Philly-based artists Emily Carris-Duncan, Kay Healy, Colin Pezzano, and Stacey Lee Webber, all who used the space as a stage for their own creative practices. Pezzano uses woodwork, Carris-Duncan explores the African American quilt tradition, Webber employs metalsmithing, and Healy uses paint and fabric to create life-sized installations—all of which are means to contribute to conversations around home.
A virtual opening will stream on Thursday, September 15, at 6pm.
Outside Your Expectations
September 15-17
Icebox Project Space, 1400 North American Street, Philadelphia
Live performance and video installation come together for this interactive healing art exhibit from the Reclamation Dance Project. Through themes of ancestry and Afrofuturism, Outside Your Expectations explores social constructs that are put upon Black women and the ways that it affects their mental health, providing “grace, love, and opportunity to be soft with one’s self again.” The exhibition is part of this year’s Fringe Festival—consider this another one of my picks.
Mill Creek Community Partnership Hip Hop and Jazz Fest
Saturday, September 17, 1-7pm
Lucien E. Blackwell Park, 4615 Fairmount Avenue, Philadelphia
Hip-hop and jazz artists and performers, community artists, DJs, a dance-off, poetry and spoken word, art and cultural resources—everything you could possibly expect, really—are live this weekend with the second annual Mill Creek Community Partnership Hip Hop and Jazz Fest. Rain or shine, the free, family-friendly event celebrates Black and Brown cultural and artistic contributions to music, dance, and more.
Deep Rivers
Saturday, September 17, 2pm
Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion, 200 West Tulpehocken Street, Philadelphia
Germantown artist Linda Gail Sanders will unveil the new mural Deep Rivers, a mural honoring the achievements of 19th-century Black Americans. Check out the mural this weekend, which is installed in an entire room in the Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion.
Waiting Room
September 17-November 19
Hot Bed Gallery, 723 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia
Using light, shadow, and movement, six artists are featured in this new immersive art exhibit for wellbeing. Each art installation is set up as a waiting room for the audience to spend time with the experience “with the intention of calming, inspiring, or transforming.”
The opening reception is Saturday, September 17, at 6pm. You’ll have to make reservations to visit the exhibition at any date.
Landscape and Hierarchies
September 17-January 22
ArtYard, 13 Front Street, Frenchtown, NJ
Alexandre Arrechea’s new solo exhibit explores the “responsibility that lies between the individual and the collective and the ripple effects human actions have on society and nature.” Here, Arrechea uses watercolors, sculptures, and multimedia installations to juxtapose commonplace objects in natural elements.
The US and the Holocaust
Premieres Sunday, September 18, 8pm
WHYY-TV, streaming online
The US and the Holocaust is a new three-part, six-hour series exploring America’s response to the Holocaust. Directed and produced by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns and inspired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Americans and the Holocaust exhibition, the film examines global antisemitism and racism, the eugenics movement in the US, and race laws in the American south.
The premiere arrives on television on WHYY locally and can be streamed online via WHYY.org. The in-person preview screening is sold out.
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