Exhibition

Abelardo Morell: Pictures in Three Museums and Two Views of Philadelphia

May 2, 2014–August 17, 2014

Abelardo Morell, Painting and Sculpture, Pennsylvania Academy of The Fine Arts, 2014. Pigment print on archival paper. 40 x 45.4 inches. Courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery/New York.

The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) presents new work by Cuban born, Artist-in-Residence Abelardo Morell who lives and works in Brookline, Massachusetts. Morell is internationally known for imbuing a sense of wonder into his photographs of everyday objects, such as his well-known camera obscura series. For his Pictures in Three Museums exhibition, Morell created a new body of work by photographing artworks from the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), the Pennsylvania Academy of The Fine Arts (PAFA), and The Barnes Foundation, and transforming these objects through their juxtaposition. Public opening reception Friday, May 2, 2014 from 6:00 to 8:00pm. Members-only artist talk by Abelardo Morell at 5:30pm at FWM, 1214 Arch Street, Second Floor.

Pictures in Three Museums

I like making pictures in museums because of the way gallery spaces
can “play with” the content of the pictures hanging in them.

In this project I photographed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the
Pennsylvania Academy of The Fine Arts, and The Barnes Foundation.
In several of these works I combined and altered art and rooms from
some or all of the institutions to make a kind of art mash-up creating
new and impossible museum installations, art, and architecture.

Two Views of Philadelphia

This pair of camera obscura images are a breakthrough for me.
They represent my first attempts to picture day and night views
from the same viewpoint.

—Abelardo Morell

Location

The Fabric Workshop and Museum
Second Floor

Opening Reception

Friday, May 2, 2014, 6:00—8:00pm
Members-only artist talk by Abelardo Morell at 5:30pm

Also Opening on Friday, May 2, 2014
FWM, 1214 Arch Street, First Floor
Exhibition of photographs by Philadelphia Photographer Will Brown
Members-only artist talk by Will Brown at 6:00pm

The New Temporary Contemporary, 1222 Arch Street
Exhibitions of work by Philadelphia Photographers David Graham and Ray K. Metzker

The New Temporary Contemporary’s Video Screening Room
Lectures and videos by these Photographers and additional artists

Artists in This Exhibition

About the Artist

Cuban-American, born 1948, lives in Brookline, MA.

Photographer Abelardo Morell immigrated to the United States as a teen in 1962, completing his undergraduate degree at Bowdoin College in 1977 and his MFA in 1981 at the Yale University School of Art. Morell has exhibited his work extensively, and in 2013 the Art Institute of Chicago organized his retrospective, Abelardo Morell: The Universe Next Door, which traveled to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.

Major exhibitions of the artist’s work have been presented at the Yale University Art Gallery (2008); the Detroit Institute of the Arts (2001); the St. Louis Art Museum (2000); the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1999); the Cleveland Museum of Art (1998); and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (1998). He has exhibited internationally in exhibitions staged at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; The Print Center, Philadelphia; and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Morell’s creative process and experience as an artist was the focus of a 2007 feature length documentary, Shadow of the House.

Morell has received a number of grants and awards, which include a 1992 Cintas Grant, a 1994 Guggenheim Fellowship, and the International Center of Photography’s 2011 Infinity Award in Art. He taught as a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art & Design from 1983 until 2011.