iWoodmere Art MuseumChestnut Hill
Listen with Your Eyes: A Moe Brooker Retrospective
Woodmere's first retrospective of Moe Brooker (1940–2022), from 1960s realism to rainbow patchwork abstractions swept with calligraphic marks, plus sculpture, weavings and personal material.
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Misha Brooker told the Chestnut Hill Local that walking into this show was the first time she wanted to cry, "not out of sadness but because this is him on all of the walls." Her father, Moe Brooker, painted to music, and more than 40 of his works are here.
The route through Woodmere's Smith Hall runs in date order. You start with the academic realism he painted in the 1960s, and then the colour takes over: about 15 large canvases downstairs and 30 smaller ones on the balcony, rainbow patchwork fields crossed by sweeping calligraphic marks. The museum traces them to jazz, Philadelphia's lights and graffiti and African-American quilts. Sketchbooks, weavings and sculpture show the working side.
Admission is $15, free for under-18s and students, and free for everyone on Sundays. Woodmere's fall Friday Night Jazz names each concert after a work in the show, and a 16 November bus tour ($30, members $20) visits his 30-foot painting The Fruit of the Spirit downtown.
Editor's pick
The route opens on James, a realist oil from 1962, before the colour takes over: rainbow patchwork fields crossed by sweeping calligraphic marks, which Woodmere traces to jazz, graffiti and African American quilts. Brooker painted to music.
Look for
The early realism
Look for James, a 1962 oil on linen from his student years: the route opens on realist painting before any of the rainbow grids appear.
The balcony
Upstairs, about 30 medium and small paintings follow on from the 15 large canvases on the floor below.
What If, the cube
An abstract cube that his daughter Misha picks as her favourite, because it shows how big he was thinking about his art.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Locals Who've Seen It All
With kids
Under-18s get in free, so a family visit costs only the adults' tickets, and nothing at all on a Sunday.
Free in the same building
- Free Interpretation of Plant FormsHarry Bertoia's monumental fountain sculpture, made for Philadelphia's Civic Center in 1967, conserved in public view at Woodmere and now permanently installed on the grounds.
- La Cresta: A Land-Sculpting Installation by Syd Carpenter and Steve DoneganTwo organic mounds built from recycled wood in the hügelkultur tradition, designed to decompose into the soil and feed the ecosystem of Woodmere's grounds.
- Woodmere's Outdoor WonderPublic sculpture set among monumental estate trees, a pollinator garden, bioswale and step pools, where the art sits alongside horticulture and environmental science.
Also at Woodmere Art Museum
On now nearby
Image credits
5
- Listen with Your Eyes: A Moe Brooker RetrospectiveCourtesy of Woodmere Art Museum
- An Endless Meeting: Still Taking MinutesCourtesy of Vox Populi
- An Endless Meeting: 變 SLOW BURNCourtesy of Vox Populi
- An Endless Meeting: Featuring New Red OrderCourtesy of Vox Populi
- Woodmere Art MuseumStaib, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0