Just Do It

Annual Holiday Party and Threads of History Reception

by Dianca Potts

	print	email	reply	rss feed

Published: Dec 9, 2008

Will Brown

Fri., Dec. 12, 6-8 p.m., exhibit runs through Feb. 22, 2009, Fabric Workshop and Museum, 1214 Arch St., 215-561-8888, fabricworkshop.org

The Fabric Workshop and Museum is celebrating more than egg nog season at this year's holiday party. Officially, the fête serves as the opening reception for FWM's newest exhibit, "Threads of History: The Fabric Workshop and Museum 1977-2008," a visually lush survey of wall hangings, scarves, lamps umbrellas and other works by artists from the U.S. and beyond. Think of it as FWM's greatest hits. Showcasing 31 years of artistic evolution, "Threads of History" shines the spotlight on FWM's Artist in Residence program and those artists' importance to the museum's mission. The program gives artists from across the globe, who may have no background in working with fabric or fibers, the tools and manpower to create in that medium. As assistant to the directors Jeffrey Bussmann notes, the program was FWM's first enterprise.

"Threads of History," which includes the work of Philly artists Edna Andrade, Will Stokes Jr., Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Temple grad Trenton Doyle Hancock, as well as international megastars like Roy Lichtenstein (whose 1979 silkscreen Untitled is pictured), makes its home in the newly opened first and second floors of the museum's building. "The new gallery spaces ... provide a worthy exhibition space for the high caliber of art that we produce at FWM in collaboration with our artists in residence, as well as for the works that we accept for exhibition that have been made out-of-house, so to speak," says Bussmann. Officially open to the public since this summer, FWM's new space will double this season as a social hot spot — a place for Philly artists to hob-knob and get into the holiday spirit, fiber-style.

Very Merry
Shopping Spree
In The Event That...
Just Do It