Also this issue:

Strikes, Fights, Big City
A turbulent New York theater season produced some notable work.
-Toby Zinman

Lullaby of Broadway
This season’s musical theater scene has been a bit sleepy.
-David Anthony Fox

Alone Again, Naturally
-Susan Hagen

Artsbeat
-Debra Auspitz

Green Violin
-Steve Cohen

The Plotz Retrospective
-A.D. Amorosi

Bell Esteem
-Kristina Weise

Don DeLillo
-Andrew Ervin

April 24-30, 2003

artpicks

A Happening Place

by Lori Hill

Long before its address changed from South Broad to the Avenue of the Arts, the Gershman Y was ahead of the art pack. The Arts Council, the volunteer programming arm of the former YM/YWHA, brought the pop-art likes of Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and George Segal to the city for the first time. "They brought to Philly the most avant-garde artists of the era. No one else even came close," says Cheryl Harper, the Gershman’s curator. (The Arts Council, incidentally, was composed mostly of women, including Janet Kardon, who went on to be director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at Penn, and Helen Drutt, who opened a respected gallery that thrives today.) The Gershman is now commemorating the Council’s work with "A Happening Place," an exhibit combining audio and video archival materials with original works. Jim Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg, Wayne Thiebaud -- each were struggling unknowns when they showed their weird, wonderful work at the Gershman Y, and Philly audiences were among the first to recognize their splashy collages, soft sculptures and pastel pastry paintings as evidence of true talent. Now, a new audience can glimpse some of these artists’ lesser-known works while traveling back in time to exhibitions like "Art 1963/A New Vocabulary" and "Dial Y for Sculpture." Really intriguing, though, is the "Museum of Merchandise," a re-creation of the 1967 installation of a trippy supermarket, with "products" made by Lichtenstein and Rosenquist, custom-designed interiors by Christo and Steve Reich’s musical accompaniment.

“A Happening Place,” April 28-June 30, $5, The Gershman Y, 401 S. Broad St., 215-546-4400. Scholarly symposium, Tue., April 29, 9:30 a.m., $20 (students free with ID); film festival, Sat., May 10, 8 p.m. and Sun., May 11, 2 p.m., $9 each day; Page-on-Stage reading, Mon., May 19, 7:30 p.m., $10.