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(08/07/23 4:08am)
It all began with picking my little sister up from a museum camp. Part of the privileges of being home for the summer is the duty of providing the rides necessary in my public transportation–less hometown of Houston. While waiting for my passenger, I meandered through the halls to find the museum's latest art exhibition: Artists on Site. After tugging on the locked door (and double checking that it wasn’t actually a “pull”), I began to walk away when a young woman in her twenties unlocked the door to let me in.
(07/21/23 5:00am)
Whenever I’m in my hometown, I can’t help but indulge my curiosity and walk into the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (CCBB) to explore their newest art exhibition. The historic building is centered in one of the most beautiful places in my city, Belo Horizonte. With its pastel yellow paint and dazzling Greek–style pillars, the tower attracts tourists from all over the country. Throughout the years, the CCBB has become my second home—I know the location of every single bathroom, where every staircase leads, and have taken dozens of pictures on the multicolored glass mural.
(07/21/23 12:56pm)
My life lives on Google Calendar. Each hour of my life is carefully measured and categorized in beautiful color–coded blocks that account for everything from my class schedule to lunches with friends to “Rotting in Van Pelt.” During the school year, I would play a solo game of Jenga on Sunday night, attempting to figure out how to fit everything on my to–do list into the 168 hours I had in a week. In some ways, my Google Calendar is a diary of my existence, a catalogue of how I spend my waking days—or at least intend to, considering the plethora of 6 a.m. runs scattered throughout my calendar that I've definitely slept through.
(07/14/23 5:00am)
As historians Alvin and Heidi Toeffler first posited—and my middle school history teacher eventually taught me—there have only been three great changes in all of human civilization. The first came around 12,000 years ago, as humans moved from hunter–gatherers to farmers, allowing permanent settlements and trade specialization. The second occurred around 200 years ago, as the steam engine began the Industrial Age, with urbanization, factory life, and ultimately, electricity. And the third change—in whose shadow we currently live—was computing. Once the personal computer was popularized in the mid-1980s, the Information Age could begin, allowing for global communication and instantaneous dissemination of information.
(07/07/23 5:00am)
BASEL, Switzerland—What are the telltale signs that someone’s made it? Is it inscribed in the way they dress, their choice of silk scarf, or seasonal handbag? Or if wealth truly whispers, it might be in the way a person carries herself—head high, shoulders low, unperturbed calm. It might be something else entirely, some mixture of pedigree and learned etiquette. But when I found myself shoulder to shoulder with the world’s most well–heeled art collectors, there was another question on my mind: Can you fake it?
(07/07/23 5:00am)
Inside a building full of art galleries and artists’ studios in the northern edge of Chinatown is Iffy Books, a small independent bookstore filled with all things “hacking, free culture, gardening, zines.” While they may seem unrelated, this tagline summarizes the many passions of founder and Penn alum, Steve McLaughlin (C ‘08).
(06/30/23 2:22pm)
The 76th Tony Awards, which took place on Sunday, June 11, went a bit non–traditional this year. Beyond simply taking place for the first time in the United Palace in Washington Heights, the awards ceremony was aired entirely unscripted. Despite the lack of script, the show went smoothly, with historic wins for transgender performers and awards that confirmed that audiences are thirsty for original material.
(07/28/23 7:56pm)
Walking into Art Enables, a gallery and community arts program for people with disabilities in Washington, D.C., I was instantly greeted by friendly coordinators and the sight of artists perfecting pieces with paint brushes, markers, papers, and canvases.
(06/26/23 3:47pm)
In an era of feed scrolling and 60–second videos, no one has any abundance of time to read hundreds of pages in novels such as Victor Hugo’s famous Les Miserables or The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. But that doesn’t mean that reading is mutually exclusive with our shortened attention spans of the modern age. What if you could read in–depth stories with multifaceted characters and plots in less than 100 pages?
(06/09/23 3:42pm)
Entering a dark room with a beige couch and small coffee table, I faced a large television with blue dots and specks of yellow moving across the top of the screen over a chorus of buzzes. I feel as though I’m standing in a living room, with a portrait of an older woman in one corner. On my left, the name and description of the exhibition: Terence Nance: Swarm. As I move through the exhibition, I see a variety of films highlighting a recurring theme of Black identity and I am surrounded by the production of art through sound and video.
(05/17/23 5:19am)
On visits to the Barnes Foundation, I usually have the same expectations in mind. I’ll see Renoir’s pale naked ladies, Degas’s French dancers, and piece after piece by other white Impressionists. I’ll take in every hazy, pastel–colored world, locked in gold frames, chosen by Dr. Barnes himself.
(04/24/23 4:00am)
I have read two of Carmen Maria Machado’s works: her memoir In the Dream House and a short story from her forthcoming collection, The Tour. Both times her words almost brought me to tears. It’s not explicitly the content of her works that causes the swell of tears in my eyes, though their storylines are certainly powerful in and of themselves.
(04/19/23 4:00am)
Butterflies, tigers, a pair of crying eyes, a blossoming branch—if you can imagine it, Iza Hu (C '23) can design and tattoo it.
(05/19/23 5:00am)
The way we interpret art informs our connection with it. From one person to another, our interpretations may differ, but one thing remains the same—art is, at once, both our emotional window and mirror. The most beautiful things about art are the endless ways it can be formed and understood. Often, it feels like the blank canvas is the only medium through which the complexity of our emotions can be captured; amongst the worst of them, existentialism. It allows for an avenue through which existential dread, or existential euphoria (hair pulling, amongst other things) can be reflected upon and even created.
(04/14/23 12:00pm)
On the night of Friday, March 24, amongst the ancient artifacts of the Penn Museum, another exhibit was on display. Leather skirts, hypnotic patterns, laced corsets, metallic makeup, and skin–tight platform boots circled the third floor of the museum. A red carpet with rose petals sprinkled about led the way into Gallery 54. The lights of the large circular room, with even higher ceilings, were dimmed. Lit candles, brightly colored orbs, and the flash of cameras served as the main sources of light. The Penn Met Gala was a night to remember.
(05/08/23 4:00am)
Dolly Alderton knows what she's talking about when it comes to adulthood—or at least what we've come to consider #adulting. Everything I Know About Love is a collection of diary entries, recipes, anecdotes, and ironic reflections of what she learned about parties, dates, work, life, and—most importantly—love in her adolescence and early twenties.
(04/10/23 7:00am)
It’s 5:30 p.m. on the first 60–degree day in March, and Rittenhouse Square is packed. People just getting off work walk their leashed dogs, ranging from tiny white designer ones to mutts that reach my hip. Parents push strollers as children run around without jackets for the first time in months, while friends sit on benches tagged, “In Memorial Of.” An artist rests with his back against the fence, willing passersby to purchase the paintings that sit alongside him. Another plays the flute.
(04/05/23 4:00am)
When high school students envision Penn, they don’t often think of the arts as being an integral force on campus. The preprofessional track, the competitive environment, and the strong engineering and Wharton schools likely take precedence in their minds. However, the legacy of Peter LaBerge (C '17), founder of The Adroit Journal, continues to grow as more high school students apply to Penn through his influence as a graduate of Penn’s renowned English program.
(04/14/23 2:02am)
Black curtains do more than just shield the public from art. They represent a divide between the morality of censorship for tastelessly sexual or religious minority pieces, and those who feel that policing of media should be curbed at all costs.
(03/19/23 5:38pm)
Nestled in the heart of Old City, multicolored plants grow haphazardly through the wire fences meant to constrain them—that is, in Kate Bright’s paintings at the Locks Gallery. The upstairs gallery, where her paintings will be on view until March 18, contains ten distinct little rainbow worlds, filled with magical squash, figs, leaves, and flora from every season at every time of day. If you look long enough, you can almost feel the plants growing out of the constraints of their canvas boundaries towards the white gallery walls.
