New sculptures in Philly Art Museum’s garden [photos]

    The Philadelphia Art Museum has added two sculptures to the Anne D’Harnoncourt Sculpture Garden, located by the museum’s west entrance.

    Lips, designed for the garden’s Lower Terrace by Austrian sculptor Franz West, sends three pastel-colored tendrils 30-feet into the air.

    Constructed of aluminum and epoxy resin, the three-piece sculpture looks delicate, but visitors are encouraged to sit on it. Curatorial assistant Amanda Sroka said the sculpture was intended to be enjoyed as a seating arrangement. Lips was West’s last site-specific work before his death on July 25.

     

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    In contrast, visitors are discouraged from touching Ellsworth Kelly’s Curve I. The 1973 weathered steel sculpture, inspired by a flattened paper cup, lies almost flush to the ground. . Describing the piece as “reality reduced to geometry,” Sroka said it complements and extends the museum’s exhibit of Kelly’s work, which covers the period from 1949 to 1956. It was last exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in the 1970s.

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