Also this issue:

Mirror, Mirror
The world is represented and subverted in “Staging Reality.”
-Robin Rice

Art

Astrid Bowlby: Leaves of Grass
-Susan Hagen

Step One
Run by students for students, Gallery One eases the transition to the real art world.
-Kristina Weise

Kelly Link
-Helen Thompson

Jennifer Weiner
-Alex Richmond

Cecilia Bartoli with Le Musiche Nove
-David Shengold

Barbara Cook: Mostly Sondheim
-David Anthony Fox

September 26-October 2, 2002

artpicks

Mostar/Sarajevo: Modernist Ruins

by Meredith Broussard

In addition to losing lives, land and socio-cultural stability, a country at war loses its familiar physical landscape. Think of the giant hole where the World Trade Center used to be. In addition to a host of other horrific losses, that hole represents the loss of an invaluable architectural treasure. The Twin Towers were a physical representation of a certain time in America; they spoke to our arrogance, the triumph of engineering and the dominance of man over his environment. A vast amount of history was embedded in the physical aspect of that building, which is part of the reason we mourn its loss.

Since the United States has not had a war on its soil since that little spat overseen by Abraham Lincoln, it's easy for us to forget that war puts our crucially important architectural heritage at risk. Photographer Erika Tapp reminds us of this in her new photographic documentary "Mostar/Sarajevo: Modernist Ruins," on exhibit through this weekend at the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania. In this collection of images of Bosnian Modernist architecture damaged during the Balkan Wars (1992-1995), Tapp explores a seldom-discussed facet of war: the deliberate targeting for destruction of another culture's architectural heritage.

Tapp, a William Penn Fellow and a recipient of an Edilitz Grant from Cornell University, spent two consecutive summers in Bosnia participating in architectural and planning workshops focused on the complex process of postwar reconstruction. Tonight, the Kelly Writers House will host a reception with the artist to mark the close of the show.

Perhaps if more such photographic evidence were hung on walls in Washington, the morons down there would not be quite so eager to send us to war in the Middle East. Again.

“Mostar/Sarajevo: Modernist Ruins,” through Sept. 28 (reception with artist Erika Tapp, Thu., Sept. 26, 5 p.m.-7:30 p.m.), Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania, 3805 Locust Walk, 215-573-WRIT.