Another resource and ally in the Open Data movement (as I've written about in previous blog posts) has popped up online as of last week: CultureBlocks.com.

CultureBlocks is a free web-based mapping tool that collects cultural data and assets throughout Philadelphia (i.e. schools, rec centers, public transportation, parks, and libraries) which can be combined with economic, demographic and geographic census data (i.e. neighborhoods, council districts, and school catchments) to create detailed and robust maps to inform individuals and organizations on arts initiatives, investments, and neighborhood revitilization.

The Free Library is an integral part of neighborhoods in Philadelphia and invaluable cultural asset in the city that promotes literacy and the arts.

The site was launched by the City of Philadelphia Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy; the City of Philadelphia Department of Commerce; The Reinvestment Fund’s (TRF) Policy Map; and the Social Impact of the Arts Project (SAIP) at the University of Pennsylvania; and is supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and ArtPlace.

The web-tool is being managed by the Office of Arts Culture and the Creative Economy, which will coordinate the use of CultureBlocks among City agencies and provide technical assistance to public users. Moira Baylson, Deputy Cultural Officer of the OACCE, says, "The vision of CultureBlocks is to use data to foster economic and social vitality in Philadelphia neighborhoods."

Overall, CultureBlocks it is a very robust site and great tool to learn more about the arts and how they relate to the neighbrohoods that make Philadelphia a vibrant, exciting, and interesting place to live, work, and visit.

In related news, be on the lookout for some new map updates and features from Free Library in the coming weeks!

Tags: art, databases, maps, tech

Today marks what would have been the 84th birthday of Nobel Prize winning activist and Civil Rights Leader Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr.

The DREAM@50 is a tribute series that was held throughout 2012 and continues into 2013, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. The series included a student art contest (K-12), a world music/dance festival, and  video PSAs, all in celebration of creative collaboration in both the Civil Rights Movement and the arts as the foundation for a new paradigm in how we can live together. Philadelphia was one of 10 U.S. cities chosen to participate in the contest.

Students involved in the Free Library's Literacy Enrichment After-school Program (LEAP) who submitted art  to the contest currently have their art on display in Parkway Central Library.

The Free Library LEAP DREAM@50 contest winners can be seen on the right.

Those winners have been submitted to the Philadelphia-wide DREAM@50 art contest which will be judged with the results being announced at an awards ceremony on February 20th at Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Good luck to the artists and their entries!

Tags: African American, Awards, Exhibitions, Parkway Central, art, children's programs

By Edward Pettit

The Vincent Van Gogh exhibition, Van Gogh Up Close, now open at the Philadelphia Museum of Art has been receiving lots of attention. The exhibition focuses on Van Gogh’s paintings of nature and one can see the vibrancy in color and texture of our everyday world  that the artist illuminates.  Van Gogh also brought this same urgency, this same blazing brilliance to mundane objects like chairs. 

And one chair that inspired him was an engraving by Luke Fildes of “The Empty Chair” of Charles Dickens.  Fildes had been illustrating Dickens’s last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, when the author died.  As a tribute, Fildes painted a watercolor of Dickens’s work space: the writing desk in his study and the now empty chair, prominently displayed, never to be filled again.  Fildes’s watercolor is on permanent display (along with Dickens’s writing desk) in the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia.

An engraving of Fildes’s “Empty Chair” was published in the journal Graphic (as well as many other magazines).  Van Gogh was an ardent admirer of illustrated journals (including Graphic), especially in their dedication to social realism in art.  Van Gogh greatly admired Fildes’s painting (and may have first seen it in Graphic) and even owned a copy of the engraving.  For Van Gogh, the empty chair symbolized the coming absence of the artist.  He wrote “Empty chairs—there are many of them, there will be even more and sooner or later there will be nothing but empty chairs.”

But for me, this kind of melancholic fatalism doesn’t come across in Van Gogh’s chairs.  His chairs have a pipe, flowers, books, a candle perched on their seats.  These mundane objects are hopeful in a way, placeholders waiting for the eventual return of a sitter.  And maybe that can serve as a blithe reminder for Fildes’s mournful chair.  Maybe the Empty Chair is welcoming, inviting us to have a seat in Dickens’s imagination and enjoy the works he created while seated there. 

Join us all year as we metaphorically sit in Dickens’s chair.

http://libwww.freelibrary.org/calendar/calbydateDickens.cfm

Edward Pettit is the Charles Dickens Ambassador for FLP’s Year of Dickens and writes about his adventures in Dickens at http://readingcharlesdickens.com/

Tags: Rare Book Department, Year of Dickens, art

From Mad Men to Mod Women: Fashion in the 1960s

2nd Floor, Art Hallway Gallery

September 15 – October 25, 2010

Inspired by the current television show Mad Men and the retro '60s fashions we are seeing today, the exhibition features 1960s Saturday Evening Post covers, images from the Library’s circulating picture collection, and magazine fashion spreads. This six-case exhibition is a brief survey of fashion in a decade that saw monumental changes in western culture–in music, fashion, and social roles. It touches on some of the highlights of fashion at the time.

The Art Department has many books on fashion – both circulating and reference copies. Fashion is classed in the call number 391. A section of circulating books on this subject can be found on your left as you walk into the Art Department. If you don’t find what interests you there, please ask one of the reference librarians for help, as there are a number of additional books in the closed reference section.

From September 20^th to October 15^th, a number of circulating books and DVDs on the subject of fashion will be on display on the back of the desk in the main lobby of Parkway Central.

Tags: Exhibitions, art, fashion