CollectionsBloodsucking creatures, nationhood, and crime scenes are among topics of exhibitions.September 11, 2011
Museumgoers this fall will be able to piece together crime-scene evidence via mass spectrometry, ponder bloodsucking creatures of the imagination, and consider the imperfect mosaic of nationhood as a parade of diverse and unusual exhibitions and programs marches through the region's specialized museums.
Offerings include the start of a yearlong project seeking to "imagine Africa," a show of works exploring the African American imagination, an outdoor exhibition focusing on worldwide malnutrition, and a portable greenhouse of the future, complete with room for future fossils - a kind of museum-to-be.
In addition, the front of the first floor of the newly renovated Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent will open, with the rest of the museum to follow in the spring. Such varied displays and events promise to keep visitors busy piecing together past, present, and future - not simply looking and moving on.
Stephan Salisbury, Inquirer culture writer
Greenhouse and Cabinet of Future Fossils Empress Josephine's greenhouse, featured in the current exhibition at the American Philosophical Society, has inspired a portable, "organic" greenhouse constructed for the society's garden. It will serve as the staging area for a "sound installation," a theater production, and many other activities this fall.
Architect Jenny Sabin cooked up the Greenhouse and Cabinet of Future Fossils; composer Kyle Bartlett created the sound environment, Chaotic Menagerie. And a play called A Paper Garden: An Idiosyncratic and Indefatigable Account of Empress Josephine and André Michaux's Love of Botany is being performed as part of the Live Arts Festival/Philly Fringe.
Greenhouse runs through Dec. 3 in the Jefferson Garden of the American Philosophical Society. A Paper Garden is performed there weekends, the last performances at 1 and 3 p.m. Saturday. (215-440-3400 or www.amphilsoc.org)
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