MISS DOCENT: Electricity tubes, salty endings and a jazz oasis

Impressive permanent collections may have put our area museums on the map, but it's the rotating exhibits that keep visitors coming back. Every Thursday, Abigail Minor updates you on the newest and most browse-worthy. This week: electricity tubes, salty endings, and a jazz oasis.

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MISS DOCENT: Electricity tubes, salty endings and a jazz oasis

POSTED: Friday, April 13, 2012, 2:00 PM
Filed Under: Arts | Museum Philly Artists

Impressive permanent collections may have put our area museums on the map, but it's the rotating exhibits that keep visitors coming back. Every Thursday, Abigail Minor updates you on the newest and most browse-worthy. This week: electricity tubes, salty endings and a jazz oasis.

“Tempus Fugit” at the American Philosophical Society Museum

What better way to reopen after a long hiatus than with an exhibit on the complexities of time? The American Philosophical Society Museum is back with “Tempus Fugit”, featuring select items from its collection interspersed with the appropriate pieces of Chicago artist Antonia Contro, many of which, through video and sound installations of rapidly flipping pages, reflect the dwindling beauty of printed books. Contro is the first artist to compile an exhibit within the Museum’s walls, and she does so by titling the divided exhibit cases after musical terms such as “adagio (slow movement)” and “aeon (eternal time)”, within which are her responses to: the ancient pages of the Book of Hours, an illustrated documentation of the seasons and holy day devotions, a static electricity tube reminiscent of Benjamin Franklin, and scattered items such as shattered glass left behind by General Electric founder Elihu Thomson.

Fri., April 13-Dec. 30, $1, American Philosophical Society Museum, 104 S. Fifth St., 215-440-3442, apsmuseum.org.

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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