Despite my dad being an artist (shameless plug), I feel like most times I don’t really “get” modern art. I see when things look nice, I appreciate the technique, but those paintings where the skill level is hovering around Kindergarten don’t really appeal to me. So you have a solid black canvas with a red line painted on it – so what? That is supposed to represent your inner thoughts, or be some great commentary on society? I don’t think so. At least not to me.
When traveling, I always feel like I should be going to museums (and I do!), but I tend to stick to the more traditional sites. I’ve visited the Louvre in Paris with all its crowds, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam with all of the stoned Americans, as well as other large museums like the Tate Britain and Tate Modern in London and of course the MET and MoMA in New York City. All of those famous paintings that we’ve all seen a million times? Yea…those are all at these museums.
When I visited the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar, I really enjoyed that there were artifacts rather than paintings, although this is more of a cultural difference rather than the style of the museum. Jeweled falcons, ornate jewelry, Arabic writing – it was all very impressive, even if the museum’s collection is sparse.
Enter Philadelphia. While the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which houses everything from Egyptian artifacts to Pablo Picasso, is spectacular, its not the place to visit between dinner and drinks on a Friday night. Philadelphia instead has “First Friday“, which occurs, obviously, on the first Friday of each month. Galleries stay open late and serve wine, so you can meander around and enjoy the local art and hipster scene. Probably though, you will end up in an old warehouse that has been “converted” to an art gallery. And you’ll see something like this:
Alongside these suspended bananas, you’ll find a booklet about the author. But it won’t be something like “so and so studied art at such and such impressive school.” It will be more like “Here is my psych diagnosis. You’ll see that I have a personality disorder.” Ok then. And then to make it JUST that much more awkward, when you’re explaining all of the psychology mumbo jumbo to your friend, you’ll suddenly realize the artist is RIGHT. THERE. Yep, that happened.
So visit First Friday in Philly! Its not quite like the Louvre…but you’ve seen that Mona Lisa paintings a million times already anyways.
Glad to find out my boyfriend, his visiting friend from NYC (who was already creeped out by the dilapidated warehouse) and myself were not the only ones that this happened to! Only in Philly!
Definitely agreed! This type of experience is quintessential Philly.
That’s my hometown baby!
I LOVE Philly – it’s so surprisingly strange!