Sight Control

CP's art critic takes a look at the most-visited new art gallery in town: the Philadelphia International Airport.

High Profiles: The Philadelphia International Airport's 63 million visitors annually can bring an artist some heavy exposure.

Coming or going, the city's hottest new art venue is the International Airport. With 63 million visitors annually (including employees), an artist could hardly ask for more exposure. Of course, not all visitors will pass before a particular display, but then few of the 700,000 to 1 million visitors to the Philadelphia Museum of Art see every temporary show there.

Leah Douglas, late of the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery (and guest curator of that gallery's current Vito Acconci show), is the director of the airport's new program of temporary exhibitions. One of only eight such programs in the world, it was initiated by outgoing Aviation Director Dennis P. Bouey because he liked the one at San Francisco, where he worked before coming to Philadelphia.

"I can't take credit for that program," Bouey said, but "I think that my most enjoyable legacy at the Philadelphia airport will be the art program. It's so enriching; so entertaining.

"The airport director's first job is to see that the place is safe and secure. Next, it's to serve the public." The airport, he was quick to point out, "is not supported by tax dollars but by the airlines. Sometimes the passenger got lost. That was true here in the past."

Bouey (who left this month for a similar position in San Diego), praised Mayor Ed Rendell for making the exhibitions program and other amenities, like the new upscale food and shopping Marketplace, a priority. "The opportunities are immense; why not take advantage of that? We also provide a platform for a number of people. I'm keen on presenting Philadelphia artists."

Curator Douglas is installing new work as construction is completed on display areas. Because of the high volume of traffic, all art must be well protected. The five cast concrete works by Stephen Robin near the new food and shopping areas in Terminal B/C are enclosed in individual vitrines. Each sculpture represents an immensely enlarged bowl or basket of flowers or fruit, greatly simplified and abstracted in an almost cubist manner.

Basket of Flowers has a quaint Victorian air. It's a high squared-off, woven-textured basket containing two symmetrical lobes of flowers. Something formal and stately in Robin's rendering suggests an almost funerary quality, especially in this work, although the basket form is really more like a May basket than a graveside offering.

Orchid is particularly cubist in its treatment, while the rounded, lidded Urn with Flowers has an archaic quality. Pineapple is a high stack of fruit, including what looks like a persimmon and a pomegranate. Bowl of Fruit II is generously horizontal and contrasts the rhythmic curves of enormous grapes and pears. This group of sculptures forms a small serene area on the outskirts of a bustling intersection.

"Umbrellas from the Fabric Workshop" are displayed in a large wall-related case in Terminal C, something of the size and dimensions of a large department-store display window. The umbrella subjects are certainly well suited to the airport audience. And these umbrellas are amusing. Kim MacConnell's Polka Dot Umbrella and Will Stokes Jr.'s Animals A are relatively conventional, but Robert Colescott makes a literary reference in his Waiting for Godot design. Robert Venturi's black and white Notebook fabric pattern is familiar from years ago but still quite snappy. Dennis Evans evokes other ports with Seattle Umbrella, which celebrates that city's rainy weather and many bookstores. The spaces between the umbrella ribs are labeled with the topics (art, theurgy, philosophy, critique) of small books which dangle from the radiating points of the covering. Painter Robert Kushner, a leader of the Pattern and Decoration movement, predictably chose an unusual fabric, something bronzy and slubby, for his Rain Cabana with its flowing, enveloping curtains. Large crystals decorate the tips of this personal cabana. Don Nakamura seems prepared for anything with his untitled pink and green umbrella to which mittens and socks have been safety-pinned.

All these umbrellas are displayed opened, but Michael Lucero's Untitled Umbrella is closed and stuffed point first into a surprisingly small vase, where it stands like a strange plant—all covered in duct tape.

Two new shows have recently been mounted: Jill Bonovitz's Variations on the Vessel in Terminal E and Out of the Ordinary: Lamps by Harry Anderson in Terminal D. Both will be up through July. Coming in June: Ron Klein: Burmese Nature sculpture and a video component.

While you're in the airport, be sure to check out Acconci's new indoor park in the US Airways Ticketing Pavilion. Ground and mezzanine levels swirl in cursive arcs, magically disclosing plantings and seating for visitors. The maquette for this work is part of Acconci's exhibit at Rosenwald-Wolf.

Stephen Robin: Selected Sculpture; The Art of the Umbrella, Terminal B/C, Philadelphia International Airport through May 1999, 215-937-6944. Vito Acconci, Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, 320 S. Broad St., 215-875-1116, through Feb. 26.