'Pay What You Wish' At Philly Art Museum 1/16

On Monday, January 16 you can visit the renowned Philadelphia Museum of Art and pay what you wish for entry.
If you were thinking that the Museum isn't open on Monday this will come as a delightful surprise for you. This special Monday event is in celebration of the opening of the wonderful Zoe Strauss exhibition.
We've had a chance to preview Zoe's  photography (and to meet the artist, herself) and we can tell you this is a "not-to-be-missed" event.
Zoe Strauss: Ten Years is a mid-career retrospective of this acclaimed photographer’s work and the first critical assessment of her ten-year project to exhibit her photographs annually in a space beneath a section of Interstate-95 (I-95) in South Philadelphia, where she continues to reside.

Strauss’s subjects are broad but her primary focus is on working-class experience, including the most disenfranchised people and places. Her photographs offer a poignant, troubling portrait of contemporary America.

This artist has an uncanny knack for finding the people and places that we seem to ignore -- those we tend to forget, are in the habit of forgetting or those persons and scenes that we consciously turn away from. With her photographs, Zoe forces us to confront them. At the same time, the artists vibrant spirit and humanity affirms her subjects.

Untrained as a photographer or artist, Strauss nevertheless founded the Philadelphia Public Art Project in 1995 with the objective of exhibiting art in nontraditional venues. She turned to the camera in 2000 as the most direct instrument to represent her chosen subjects. In 2006, Strauss participated in the Whitney Biennial. In 2008 she published her first book, America.

Strauss states that her ambition is “to create an epic narrative that reflects the beauty and struggle of everyday life.” Zoe Strauss: Ten Years will offers one version of that narrative, presenting approximately 150 of her photographs, along with slideshows displaying more of her imagery.

But here's a really exciting part of the exhibition: Installations of  Strauss' work on billboards throughout Philadelphia extending the exhibition beyond the Museum. 

Between 2001 and 2010, Strauss hosted yearly day-long exhibitions of her photographs under an elevated section of I-95. She affixed prints to columns in an area roughly the size of a football field, providing visitors with a map keyed to a list of photograph titles. Prints of the exhibited images were available for sale for five dollars, with Strauss stationed at a nearby table to sign them. 

These installations animated the site with art, commerce, and social interaction, transforming it into a vibrant public space. 

Zoe Strauss: Ten Years examines how, for Strauss, the opposite settings of the abandoned urban zone under I-95 and the galleries of the Philadelphia Museum of Art complement each other. Her engagement with both places is deep and she highly values the Museum as a place for civic discourse, just as she strove to make the space under I-95 a place for social interaction.

Zoe is an extraordinary artist. You owe it to yourself to see Zoe Strauss: Ten Years which runs from now through April 22.

Click here for more information.


Clothes in Lot, 2005
Zoe Strauss, American
Inkjet print
Sheet: 11 11/16 x 16 1/2 inches
Gift of the artist, 2006
2006-130-3