Also this issue: Anniversary Party The Museum of American Glass at Wheaton Village celebrates 20 years of artistic wonders. -Robin Rice artquicks More stuff going on this week... An Artist's Workshop staged reading -Juliet Fletcher 10-Minute Play Festival -Andrew Parks Blue Man Group The Mercury 13: The Untold Story of Thirteen American Women and the Dream of Space Flight A.L.T.: A Memoir Looking Over The President's Shoulder -David Anthony Fox Songs For A New World -David Anthony Fox

July 24-30, 2003

artpicks

Cities Without Citizens

by Lori Hill

Exhibit

What makes one a citizen, and not just a resident, of a particular area? What constitutes a border in a developing region? How do "civilized" communities deal with the incarcerated? The now four-year-old Slought Foundation has carved itself a niche in the city's arts landscape as one of the few organizations that takes a strong theoretical and critical approach to art. This summer, the very postmodern Slought inhabits the very 19th-century Rosenbach Museum & Library for an installation about the nature of early American settlements and the concept of the stranger in a community, both then and now. Slought's executive director, Aaron Levy, saw potential in the massive holdings of the Rosenbach for such a show (How couldn't he?), and rounded up like-minded artists to muse on the idea of the stranger. From the Rosenbach's collections are artifacts that flesh out the ideas: lists handwritten by Thomas Jefferson; Dr. Benjamin Rush's essay concerning which group suffered more "injuries" -- the Native Americans or the Africans; gorgeous world maps and architectural plans for our gridded city; a copy of the 1784 American Bloody Register; notes from Abraham Lincoln's "House Divided" speech; and proposed prison plans (pictured). Contemporary forensic photographer Lars Wallsten works with discarded crime scene photos. Levy himself altered photographs of children from a U.N.-established German orphanage just after World War II and footage from 1930s Germany of the beginnings of modern dance in that country. Disaster relief architects Deborah Gans and Matthew Jelacic map out African and Indian refugee camps and their ever-morphing natures; Levy points out that these areas lack a center and therefore challenge the very idea of a city. Installation artist Katrin Sigurdardottir's green, idealized "Circuit Cities" are connected by long roads that loop up the wall of the gallery. Go to the Rosenbach and reconsider your place in the community.

“Cities Without Citizens,” exhibit through Sept. 28; curator’s talks, Wed., July 30, 6 p.m., and Wed., Aug. 20, 6 p.m.; $5-$8, Rosenbach Museum & Library, 2008 DeLancey Place, 215-732-1600.