Philadelphia Institutions Present Diverse Exhibitions on War, Photography, and Historical Art

Swarthmore College launched a series titled Artists in Wartime: Bearing Witness / Shaping a Response on March 20, featuring two exhibitions, a symposium, and a poetry reading focused on contemporary artists addressing war and political crises. Janine Mileaf, an Assistant Professor of Art History, moderated the symposium. At Moore College of Art and Design, the Golden Paley Galleries hosted a survey of Jörg Immendorff's career from January 23 to March 21, reassessing his brief period of notoriety in America during the 1980s. The Woodmere Art Museum in Chestnut Hill initiated its Triennial of Contemporary Photography, aiming to highlight diverse photographic currents in the Delaware Valley as the first in a projected series. The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia presented an exhibition from May 9 to September 13, 2003, exploring Victorian wallpaper as a status symbol for the 19th-century bourgeoisie, noting its dense, richly colored designs and connection to mechanical reproduction, which English designers found oddly appealing. The Philadelphia Museum of Art featured an exhibition from June 22 to August 17, 2003, on an artist named Rohrer, a native of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, who was raised in a Mennonite farming community and was expected to become a minister and farmer, with the Mennonites described as a separatist Christian group that emigrated from Europe.