EXHIBIT PREVIEW // GEORGE BIDDLE: THE ART OF AMERICAN SOCIAL CONSCIENCE
Consciousness Raising: George Biddle shows us our past—and our present
by Heather Shayne Blakeslee
EXCERPT //
“The art of working in museums is to give people the handles or the frame, and thereby encourage a meaningful experience … to provide enough so a visitor knows what universe they’re walking through,” says Bill Valerio, director of the Woodmere Art Museum in Chestnut Hill.
He gives the example of the Crystal Bridges Museum of Modern Art in Arkansas, which has studied how experiences at the museum affected the lives of children. “They were able to study issues like empathy, and the ability to understand different points of view,” Valerio says. “And the evidence is really—to me—compelling.”
The universe you may soon find yourself in is that of George Biddle, an early 20th century American painter, the scion of a wealthy and distinguished family in Philadelphia, who managed to get outside the rarified air of his upbringing. George Biddle: The Art of American Social Conscience opens September at the Woodmere Art Museum, where assistant curator Rachel McCay says that, Biddle, through his paintings, is able to communicate to viewers about what he has seen, and in this way to educate them about the state of the world. His paintings can also help viewers to “feel empathy toward those who are suffering, those who are under different social circumstances.” Imagery includes the horrors of field hospitals during both world wars, the terror of authoritarian regimes, and the brutalization of the poor via hunger and other deprivations.
Valerio says that the family name may distract from fully seeing Biddle’s contributions to American Modernism, but that Biddle was able to use his perch within a wealthy family to see the world up close, including its darker corners and chapters.
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