Weekly Entertainment Guide

    WHYY’s Arts Calendar curator Robin Bloom sorts through hundreds of listings each week to find out what’s happening in the Delaware Valley. Here are her picks and listings.

    Featured Events

    A new look at an old master

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    Van Gogh Up Close opens Wednesday, February 1 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, focusing on the tumultuous years of the artist’s life when he left Antwerp for Paris in 1886 and continued until his death in Auvers in 1890, a period of artistic heated experimentation. This exhibition is the first to explore the reasons and means by which the artist made such unusual changes to his painting style in the final years of his life and features some 40 masterpieces borrowed from collections around the world, on view through May 6.  

     

    Tap into your creativity at the Franklin Institute

    The Franklin Institute hosts Design Zone, a behind the scenes experience demonstrating how skate park designers, music producers, roller coaster engineers and other creative problem solvers use math to do the amazing things they do. The exhibition is organized into three interactive areas, highlighting the relationship between math and the creative process in art, music, and engineering with a video game design lab, architecture studio, digital design, DJ recording studio, on stage, dance party, theme park, and action sports, January 28 through April 1, 222 North 20th Street, Philadelphia.

     

    NJ exhibit focuses on wildlife

    Tricia Zimic is the featured artist of the New Jersey State Museum’s ongoing New Jersey Artist Series (NJAS), highlighting the work of contemporary artists living or working in New Jersey. Zimic employs a variety of media including clay, oil paint and watercolor and her highlighted pieces, created over the last several years, focus on the plight of wildlife impacted by sprawl and adaptation to urban life. “Essential Life: Painting & Sculpture by Tricia Zimic” can be seen through February 19 at 205 W. State Street, Trenton, NJ.

     

    Philly Style

    The group show “Philly Style,” is on display for the month of February at Rodger LaPelle Galleries, including works by local artists such as Bollinger, Clarke, Danziger, Ghanad, Hunter, LaPelle, McGinnis, Poole, Rader, Waddington, and more, at 122 N. 3rd Street, Philadelphia.

     

     

    Delaware by Hand

    Every two years, Delaware By Hand (DBH) hosts a membership-wide juried competition to select individual artists considered masters of their craft. The 2011 winners are represented by three works of art in the Masterworks 2011 exhibition at the Biggs Museum of American Art, through February 26 at 406 Federal Street, Dover, DE.

    Murals Set in Motion

    Inliquid presents Murals Set in Motion, an exhibition of video works and visual art in relation to recent mural projects in Philadelphia and other cities, specifically exploring the cinematic possibilities of the mural-making process, through March 2 at the International House Video Lounge, 3701 Chestnut Street, first floor, Philadelphia. Inliquid is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing opportunities and exposure for visual artists and designers and to making visual arts more accessible to a broader audience through community-based art exhibits and programs.

     

    Other events and listings around the Delaware Valley

    Steel City Coffee House hosts live music with a variety of artists including Marshall Crenshaw with Cliff Hillis, Saturday, January 28, 8:30pm, Jeffrey Gaines with John Faye, Saturday, February 4, 8:30pm, Cheryl Wheeler, Saturday, February 11, 8:30pm, Blue Bizness and Porkroll Project, Saturday, February 25, 8pm, 203 Bridge Street, Phoenixville, PA.

    Opening this weekend at Luna Theater Company is “Bachelorette,” by Leslye Headland, through February 12 at Skybox at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom Street, Philadelphia.

    RAIN: A Tribute to the Beatles comes to the Kimmel Center this Tuesday, January 31 through February 5, performing the full range of The Beatles’ discography live onstage, Broad Street, Philadelphia.

    Opening with previews this Thursday, February 2 at Curio Theatre Company is “Slaughterhouse-Five,” by Kurt Vonnegut, adapted by Eric Simonson, through March 3 at 4740 Baltimore Avenue, Philadelphia.

    Opera New Jersey and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra partner together to perform Puccini’s tragic masterpiece Tosca, Friday, February 3, 7:30pm, McCarter Theatre, Princeton, NJ, featuring soprano Kara Shay Thomson, sung in Italian with English super titles.

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