NOTES ON MUSIC

The Philadelphia Orchestra is in virtual concert on Aug. 5 at

7 p.m. with a very special performance of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto featuring three of the greatest musicians of the century: cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist

Itzak Perlman and pianist

Emanuel Ax, another of the PO’s year-long tribute to the celebration of Beethoven’s birthday 250 years ago. And something new: on Aug. 8 at 11 a.m., the Orchestra’s assistant principal cellist Yumi Kendall leads an At Home Cello PlayIN, a class and musical performance of songs in the Suzuki method, perfect for all levels and all ages. philorch.

org. •

Bristol Riverside Theatre has three performances ready for action.

“A Night at the Movies” is a ticketed production by Bristol’s talented cast of singers/dancers presenting favorite songs from Hollywood’s greatest musicals. Live on Aug. 5 at 7 p.m., then pre-recorded on Aug. 7 at 7 p.m., Aug. 9 at 3 p.m. 215-785-0100. •

The Curtis Institute is on YouTube on Aug. 11 in a program of works by Bach, Mozart, de Falla

and others performed by soprano Sara Shaffer, violist Roberto Diaz, cellist Angela Park, guitarist Jiji and violinist Elissa Lee Konjolen, with spoken commentary. For concert time, 215-893-5252. Other archival and new performances by Curtis students and alumni are available at noon on weekdays, also on YouTube. •

Our city›s popular Clay

Studio has ample tuto

rials on projects to do at home without a wheel or other professional tools. This is also a chance to learn about the importance of under glazing and how to make prints from clay creations. Anytime, at theclaystudio.org/ clay-at-home-tutorials. •

“Vida Americana”

is the big new show at the Whitney Gallery in

NYC, subtitled “Mexican

Muralists Remake Amer

ican Art, 1924-1945”, an examination of the postwar success of Abstract Expressionism This virtual tour, while the Museum is closed, offers a selection from the show as well as related videos. whitney. org. •

Three of our region’s own museums have re-opened for public viewing, all with special pandemic related restric

tions. At Woodmere Art

Museum in Chestnut Hill through Sept. 9 is “Africa in the Arts of Phila.: Bullock, Searles

and Twins Seven-Seven”. Timed tickets and details at woodmereartmuseum. org. At the Michener Art Museum in Doylestown through Jan. 20 is “Rising Tides: Contemporary Art and the Ecology of Water”, timed tickets at michenerartmuseum.org Also in

Doylestown at the Mercer Museum is “200 Years of Bucks Co. Art” through Dec. 31, open daily with special hours for seniors and the immunocompromised, closed daily from 1 o 2 p.m. for cleaning. mercermuseum.org/visit. •

A live performance of

Leoncavallo’s tragic oneact opera “Pagliacci” is set for Aug. 8 at 4 p. by Amici

Opera as part of their 21st season, sung in Italian by young vocal artists with piano accompaniment. Social distancing is guaranteed, hand sanitizer will be available and bring your own mask. Redeemer UMC, 1128 Cottman Ave. 215-224-0257. •

Ballet has truly found a marvelous niche on line and in virtual performances and the list of companies offering such soothing

events continues to grow. Here are a few of the latest entries: City Center Live @

Home has a series of tap dancing every Tuesday

through Aug. 25 with dancers tapping and also discussing their art. nycitycenter.org/tap. •

Geoffrey Holder’s 1974 dance “Dougla” is a fusion of Africa-inspired and Indian-accented dance, an homage to the hybrid Dougla culture of Trinidad, Holder’s birth

place. 8 p.m. nightly on the company’s YouTube

page. dancetheatreofhar

lem.org/dthondemand. •

Ballet Hispanico celebrates its 50th anniversary with a notable event on Aug. 5 at 7 p.m., a special archival release of “Cada Noche...Tango”,

choreographed by Graciela Daniele and performed in 1992, inspired by Buenos Aires’ passionate underground nightlife from the 1920’s and 30’s. Following the performance, dancers and Artistic Director Eduardo Vilaro will offer comments. ballethiispani

co.org/bunidos/watch-party. •

Koresh Dance has created three new topical short films available at koresh

dance.org: “6 Feet Apart”, “The Elephant is in the Room”, and “All Dance Leads Home”. •

BalletX’s popular Sunday Morning High

light Reel continues to reveal archival footage. In addition, they are now offering Vail Dance Festival through Aug. 7 on FaceBook and You Tube and also 2-minute workshops and BalletX Beyond Virtual. Information on all this at BalletX.org. •

The always reliable Metropolitan Opera continues to buoy our spirits and also encourage donations as they wait out their planned re-opening at Lincoln Center in NYC

on Dec. 31. Their nightly free streamings of new and archival productions, glamorous and opulent with the world’s greatest singers, are available at 7:30 p.m. through 6:30 p.m. the next day. Here is the current schedule: Aug. 5, Verdi’s “Simon Boccanegra” from 1992, a golden oldie with stars Kiri te Kanawa and Placido Domingo, conducted by James Levine; Aug. 6, Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” with Kristine Opolais and Roberto Alagna; Aug. 7, Wagner’s “Parsifal” from 1992 starring Waltraut Meier and Siegried Jerusalem conducted by James Levine; Aug. 8, Handel’s “Agrippina” with superstar and Academy of Vocal Arts alumna Joyce DiDonato and Curtis’s Matthew Rose; Aug. 9, Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” with Simon Keenlyside and Hibla Gerzmova. metopera.org for information on these as well as on the Met’s new ticketed Opera Stars at Home Gala every

other Sunday at 4 p.m. •

Major retrospective featuring rarely seen works by virtuoso woodcarver

September 27, 2020–January 10, 2021

In September 2020, the Barnes Foundation will present Elijah Pierce’s America, a landmark exhibition featuring the rich and varied sculpture of woodcarver Elijah Pierce (1892–1984). On view in the Roberts Gallery from September 27, 2020 through January 10, 2021, this is the first major retrospective of Pierce’s work to be presented outside his home city of Columbus, Ohio for more than twenty-five years.

Elijah Pierce’s America at the Barnes is sponsored by Northern Trust and Comcast NBCUniversal. Critical support for the exhibition is also provided by Victor F. Keen and Jeanne Ruddy and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Born on a farm in Baldwyn, Mississippi, Pierce joined the Great Migration and settled in Columbus, Ohio, in 1924. After years spent working as a barber and preacher, he opened his own barbershop in 1954, which became a social hub and functioned as his studio. A virtuoso woodcarver, Pierce created a unique body of work over the course of 50 years, producing works of art in moments between cutting hair. His work features remarkable narratives—religious parables, autobiographical scenes, episodes from American politics, and includes figures from sports and film—with subjects ranging from Richard Nixon to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and from Hank Aaron to Richard Gere. In 1984, Pierce told the

Columbus Dispatch: “I’d carve anything that was a picture in my mind. I thought a pocketknife was about the best thing I’d ever seen.”

Co-curated by Dr. Nancy Ireson, Deputy Director for Collections and Exhibitions & Gund Family Chief Curator at the Barnes, and Dr. Zoé Whitley, Director of Chisenhale Gallery in London, Elijah Pierce’s America features approximately 100 rarely seen works created between 1923 and 1979, including painted bas-reliefs and freestanding carvings. Using wood, corrugated cardboard, crepe paper, house paint, aluminum foil, glitter, and rhinestones, Pierce created extraordinary objects that expressed his faith, values, and perspective on the world. His art reflects the complexities of life in 20th-century America.

“Today Dr. Albert C. Barnes is best known as a visionary collector and pioneering educator, but from the turn of the twentieth century, he was also a fierce advocate for the civil rights of African Americans, women, and the economically marginalized,” says Thom Collins, Neubauer Family Executive Director and President. “Barnes’s commitment to racial equality, social justice, and education, which he believed was the cornerstone of a truly democratic society, is the historical legacy that we have worked hard to extend and grow in everything we do at the Barnes.”

“In Elijah Pierce’s America, we are looking at Pierce as the artist he was—not as a ‘folk’ or ‘outsider’ artist simply because he was self-taught,” says Zoé Whitley. “One of our goals with this exhibition is to raise key questions about the writing of art history: are self-taught artists automatically considered ‘outsider’ even if they were denied formal education by circumstance and social status? Within the history of early 20th-century art, how can we begin to recontextualize the contributions and innovations of selftaught artists? Through his woodcarvings, Pierce not only succeeded in telling a personal history alongside the history of African American people, but also revealed a dynamic visual history of the United States.”

Elijah Pierce’s woodcarvings strike a chord with the diverse aesthetics present in the Barnes collection. As a collector, Dr. Barnes was interested in art for its formal characteristics and was not concerned with artists’ social origin. As a result, the Barnes collection is home to many works by artists with little or no formal art school training, including Paul Gauguin, Horace Pippin, and Henri Rousseau. In his display, Dr. Barnes placed renowned canvases by Matisse, Picasso, and Cézanne alongside household items he collected, such as furniture and wroughtiron objects, overturning traditional hierarchies to reveal universal elements of human expression.

“We are proud to present this long-awaited exhibition, which honors Dr. Barnes’s commitment to championing artists regardless of their training,” says Nancy Ireson. “The COVID-19 health crisis, which required our current temporary closure, forced us to adjust our exhibition schedule and delay the opening of Elijah Pierce’s America until September. We are incredibly grateful to the lenders for their flexibility and for the opportunity to keep this important exhibition on view until January 2021. This is an exciting opportunity to celebrate an important yet under-recognized figure, whose work still deeply resonates today.”

Exhibition highlights include: • The Book of Wood (1932), the tour-de-force volume of biblical scenes for which Pierce is best known, featuring seven

large, didactic polychrome reliefs • Major and rarely exhibited large-scale works,

from private collections, including Joy (1930s–1940s) and Bible Stories (c. 1936) • Works inspired by Pierce’s biography and his calling as a pastor, including The Place of my Birth (1977), The Archangel Michael (1948) and Prayer (1966) • Vividly allegorical works featuring animals, including Monkeys at a Card Table (1938–1940), and The Little Elephant (c. 1923), the earliest carving he made as a gift for his wife • Works documenting Pierce’s take on popular culture and sports, including Popeye (1933) • Works chronicling American political themes, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Kennedy Brothers (1977), Love (Martin Luther King, Jr.) (c. 1968), Watergate (1975), and Abraham Lincoln (1974)

Exhibition Organization

This exhibition is co-curated by Dr. Nancy Ireson, Deputy Director for Collections and Exhibitions & Gund Family Chief Curator at the Barnes Foundation, and Dr. Zoé Whitley, Director of Chisenhale Gallery, London.

About Elijah Pierce

Elijah Pierce received the National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1982, a lifetime achievement award recognizing how his art demonstrates and reflects our nation’s living cultural heritage. His work has been shown in museums such as the Corcoran Gallery of Art,

Elijah continued from page 8 Washington, DC; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Pierce’s work is in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; the California African American Museum, Los Angeles; and the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH—the largest repository of Pierce’s work—among others.

About The Co-Curators

Dr. Nancy Ireson is the Barnes Foundation’s Deputy Director for Collections and Exhibitions & Gund Family Chief Curator. A specialist in European art of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Dr. Ireson began her post at the Barnes in August 2018. On completion of a PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art, she began her curatorial career at the National Gallery, London, before taking on roles at the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Courtauld Gallery. Dr. Ireson was the Rothman Family Associate Curator at the Art Institute of Chicago before becoming Curator, International Art at Tate Modern, London. Notable exhibitions she has curated and cocurated include Cezanne’s Card Players (Courtauld Gallery, 2010), Toulouse-Lautrec and Jane Avril: Beyond the Moulin Rouge (Courtauld Gallery, 2011), Temptation: The Demons of James Ensor (Art Institute of Chicago, 2014), Modigliani (Tate Modern, 2017), and Picasso 1932: Love, Fame, Tragedy (Tate Modern, 2018). She has published and lectured on a wide range of related subjects.

Dr. Zoé Whitley is the Director of Chisenhale Gallery, London. Most recently, Dr. Whitley served as Senior Curator at the Hayward Gallery in London, prior to which she was Curator, International Art at Tate Modern. She has conceived numerous site-specific artist commissions, film screenings, and special projects internationally. Exhibitions to her credit include curating the British Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale and co-curating the acclaimed Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (Tate Modern, 2017). Author of The Graphic World of Paul Peter Piech and the children’s book Meet the Artist: Frank Bowling, she has also written exhibition catalogues, essays, and interviews on Grace Wales Bonner, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Lubaina Himid, Alexander McQueen, and Jack Whitten, among others. Dr. Whitley was named one of Apollo Magazine’s 40 Under 40 Thinkers in Europe, and one of Artlyst’s 2019 “100 Alternative Powerhouses” in the not-forprofit contemporary art world.

CATALOGUE

Co-published by the Barnes Foundation and Paul Holberton Publishing, London, the fully illustrated exhibition catalogue features essays by co-curators Nancy Ireson and Zoé Whitley, as well as contributions from Dr. Sampada Aranke of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and artist Theaster Gates. As the first substantial book on Elijah Pierce to be published in more than 25 years, this catalogue marks a new phase of the artist’s critical reception, building on the pioneering work of the Columbus Museum of Art in the 1980s and 1990s.

The exhibition catalogue is made possible by the generous support of the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Foundation.

LOOKING FOR COMMUNITY ORIENTED FREELANCE WRITERS To cover local stories and community meetings in Center City and University City. Please send resume & cover letter to Bob Christian, Editor at editor@pressreview.net

AUGUST 5, 2020 • PHILLYFREEPRESS.COM • UCREVIEW.COM • 9 Philadelphia ZOO Welcomes a Caribbean Flamingo Chick to its Growing Flock - Celebrating the First Successful Hatching of this Species in More Than 20 Years

Philadelphia, PA - Philadelphia Zoo is pleased to welcome an adorable new member to its ever-growing family: a flamingo chick, hatched on July 12—is the first of this species to hatch at the Zoo in more than 20 years! To avoid disturbing the new flamingo family and the rest of the flock during this sensitive stage in development, Zoo staff has not yet handled the chick so its height, weight and its sex is not yet confirmed. To see this adorable little one, tune in to the Zoo’s Facebook Live program, PhillyZoo@2 on Wednesday, August 5th at 2pm to see babies first day out!

“We are so pleased to welcome this new flamingo chick to our growing flock. After several years of preparing the flock and their enclosure for successful nesting, we are all very happy to watch the chick’s development under the

care of its doting parents.” says Ian Gereg, the Zoo’s Vice President for Animal Well-Being.

In celebration of the birth, the Zoo is enlisting the help of the public to name its new arrival. Selecting from a list developed by zookeepers, voters can vote as many times as they wish on their favorite name. Beginning today through Sunday, August 9th at 5:00 pm voters should visit www. philadelphiazoo.org/flamingo.

Flamingos are native to the Caribbean and Central and South America, so Zoo staff chose the following names from words from the Spanish language: · Rosado: means “pink” · Alto means “tall” · Flaco means “slim” or “thin”

With strong familial bonds, flamingo pairs share parenting duties including incubating their eggs, (which lasts about 27-30 days), and feeding their offspring. Females lay an egg atop a mud mound, built by both parents, and together the pair protect the nest and their eggs until hatching. After a chick hatches both parents will feed it with “flamingo milk” which is produced in the upper digestive tract and dripped into the mouth of the chick. Red in color, this “milk” is the bird’s primary food source in its first few months after hatch. As the chick grows, it becomes more independent, venturing further from its parents. To stay connected, the family will use frequent familiar vocalizations, which they recognize as each other’s distinct calls

Throughout its first year, the chick will change

a great deal. Starting out at just 6-inches-tall, it will eventually grow to 5-feet-tall and transition from a gray fluffy down to a grayish-pink plumage, eventually turning to a vibrant pink – the result of carotenoids in bird’s food supply.

As America’s First Zoo, Philadelphia Zoo has always been a leader in animal care. It was this excellence that led to the discovery of the correlation between flamingo diets, carotenoids (yellow, orange, and red organic pigments that are produced by plants and algae) and coloration. In the 1940’s, the Zoo developed a new diet for the flamingos that included ground carrots for the first time. A change in feather color and skin pigmentation was soon noticed, and by the mid-1950’s Philadelphia Zoo’s flamingo diet breakthrough was shared with zoos around the world.

Native to the Caribbean and Central and South America, Caribbean flamingos, sometimes called American flamingos, are considered ‘Least Concern’ by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Wild flamingo populations have significantly rebounded following conservation efforts implemented in the 1990s to protect birds and their sensitive nesting sites.

ABOUT PHILADELPHIA ZOO:

Animals are on the move like never before at Philadelphia Zoo with Zoo360, a first-in-the-world system of see-through trails passing through treetops, crossing over pathways and connecting habitats, giving animals like amazing big cats, majestic primates and marvelous meerkats the opportunities to travel and explore. Visit our young western lowland gorillas, giraffes, hippos, white rhino,

zebras, red pandas, Amur tigers and more at America’s first Zoo. Explore our 42-acre Victorian garden and enjoy award-winning exhibits like Big Cat Falls, PECO Primate Reserve, McNeil Avian Center and KidZooU, a wildlife academy that offers dynamic displays, rare breeds and hands-on experiences. Philadelphia Zoo is the second highest ticketed attraction in Philadelphia, one of the region's foremost conservation organizations and home to nearly 1,300 animals, many rare and endangered. By connecting people with wildlife, Philadelphia Zoo creates joyful discovery and inspires action for animals and habitats. The Zoo welcomed more than 1.25 million visitors last year. Philadelphia Zoo is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Philadelphia Zoo is a non-smoking facility. For more information or to reserve tickets, visit us at www.PhiladelphiaZoo. org. Facebook: PhiladelphiaZoo; Instagram: @ philadelphiazoo; Twitter: @ phillyzoo.

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