If diversity drives your curiosity, Philadelphia is the place to be this summer. From Springsteen to the Dead Sea Scrolls, we promise you Philly won’t be boring.
Through Sept. 3 the National Constitution Center will be chronicling the life and time of “The Boss” as it presents From Asbury Park to the Promised Land: The Life and Music of Bruce Springsteen. See more than 150 personal items in this 5,000-square-foot exhibition. Lots of this memorabilia has never been seen by the public before: handwritten lyrics, Springsteen’s 1960 Corvette, the outfit he wore on the cover of Born in the U.S.A., family photos from his childhood back in Asbury Park. That’s some of what you’ll see. What you’ll hear includes Springsteen’s 1972 audition for Columbia Records. Powerful stuff.
Polar opposite, perhaps, is what The Franklin Institute is displaying May 12 – Oct. 14. This exhibition defines the term ‘blockbuster.’ Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Ancient Times brings together 20 scrolls, including the oldest known copies of the Hebrew Bible. In all, there will be more than 600 items on display at The Franklin. Through them, immerse yourself in the beliefs and iconic objects that were so much a part of everyday life 2,000 years ago. A highlight: a three-ton stone from Jerusalem’s Western Wall.
Then there’s art, specifically art from the brushes of three masters. Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia runs June 20 – Sept. 3 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Arcadia is the theme here, an earthly paradise. In the France of the early 1900s it was a powerfully captivating ideal. Explore the way three artists envisioned the place. Contemplate Gauguin’s Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? See the human symmetry in Cézanne’s The Large Bathers. Revel in Matisse’s Bathers by a River.
Philadelphia in the summertime can be hot and sticky. Leave that all outside and come into the cool of these three extraordinary venues of the mind.
Story by Jerry Chandler
(Image: gamillo)
