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Painted Bride Art Center records
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Held at: University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts [Contact Us]3420 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6206
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
The Painted Bride Art Center began in June of 1969 as a cooperative gallery of painters. It was located in Philadelphia in a former bridal salon on South Street, a dividing line between the affluent Society Hill section to the north and the struggling Black community below. Its success lay not only in its adhesion as a group but also in its ability to recognize other artists. This visionary group comprised Frank Vavricka, John Kammer, Gerard Givnish, and Deryl Mackie.
The Painted Bride has grown, since those early days, and become the primary venue for the emerging, independent, visual and performing arts in the greater Philadelphia region. Many of the characteristics for which the Painted Bride has become known were present in that original collective venture. A major contribution that the Art Center has made to the local arts community has been the provision of space itself, free of charge to featured performers and artists. It is a flexible space, able to accommodate the visual and plastic arts concurrently with performances of virtually all the lively arts. The Painted Bride defines its community as local, unaffiliated artists, or those who, due to the experimental or non-commercial nature of their work, are denied access to established theaters and galleries. To cultivate the growth of new ideas in this community, artists and performers of national and international stature are included in the program. The Bride's program embraces both the avant-garde and the traditional and has always exhibited a multi-ethnic diversity. Its organizational structure and the design of its space, which places the audience on the same level as the performers on a non-proscenium stage and which is totally accessible to the physically handicapped, have always made the Bride's program highly participatory.
During its first twelve years, the Painted Bride was housed in a rented storefront on Philadelphia's South Street, an artists' neighborhood, which at that time was experiencing a surge of commercial and residential development. In that small theater/gallery, the Art Center began programming the uninterrupted 160-event seasons for which it has since become known. It was during these years that the organization's working structure emerged and was first tested. A formal Board of Directors was established in 1974, drafting the first by-laws and the application for incorporation as a non-profit organization. With the award of a CETA grant in 1977, the first paid staff was hired, with six employees taking responsibility for administration, theater management, promotion, fund-raising, and maintenance. A third major component of the Art Center's operations that emerged during this period is a staff of artists-consultants, or artists active in their specific fields, who curate programs in various disciplines. This arrangement gives the Pained Bride inexpensive access to expert advice in specific areas, plus a group or representatives who are recognized in the field.
In 1982 the Painted Bride purchased and began renovation of a structurally-sound, 12,500 square-foot industrial space in Philadelphia's Olde City, another neighborhood near Center City that has seen marked investment and redevelopment. Since the receipt of a $100,000 Challenge grant from the National Endowment of the Arts in 1984, a capital campaign has brought several improvements to the space, including construction of a separate, two-story gallery, an adjoining lobby, and a favorable restructuring of the Art Center's mortgage. Half of the original space remains undeveloped, providing rental income and awaiting future development as a multi-purpose space.
Funding for the operation of the Art Center has come from every sector of the funding community, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the City of Philadelphia, the Pew Charitable Trust, local and national corporations and foundations, local small businesses, individuals, and members.
The Painted Bride Art Center is a non-profit organization, managed by artists. This presenting organization selects and produces regular series in music, dance, performance art, theater, poetry, art exhibitions, and video in a 45-week season. A literary quarterly and live radio jazz broadcasts are other activities that the Center brings to the community.
The Painted Bride's program has kept pace with organizational and capital development as it has evolved over the years. The Art Center is among the charter members of the National Performance Network and represents the Mid-Atlantic region in the National Endowment for the Arts/Rockefeller Foundation- sponsored Grants Program for Interdisciplinary Artists. Other major program initiatives include:
* The Painted Bride Quarterly, founded in 1976, which features Philadelphia and national literary and visual artists;
* ADELANTE!, a celebration of Latin Arts, founded in 1988;
* KUMBA, featuring African-American creativity, founded in 1988;
* the establishment in 1987 of a formal Artist-in-Residence Program, which provides the general public with access to working artists;
* Voices of Dissent, a consortium of multi-cultural, community-based organizations who have joined together to explore the potential of the arts as a vehicle for social change, first held in 1987;
* the Popular Education Community Workshops, piloted in 1988, in which the Painted Bride Art Center acts as liaison between local artists and neighborhood groups, introducing the latter to the concept of the arts as a participatory organizing tool;
* a community Advisory Council, formed in 1986 and composed of leading artists and art administrators from the city's Black, Hispanic and Asian communities, meets quarterly to assess the Art Center's service to their constituencies;
* an ongoing relationship with ARTREACH (since 1986) with regard to a ticket-distribution program providing access to cultural events for disadvantaged or handicapped persons in the Delaware Valley/South Jersey region.
* a comprehensive Five-Year Plan, begun in 1989, targeting further program development, extending outreach and marketing initiatives to expand and build upon current audiences, maximizing existing physical facilities, and focusing on financial, personnel, and Board development.
The Painted Bride Art Center's mission statements say all one needs to know about its history and future: "To stimulate creative activity, to promote public understanding and participation in the creative process, and to recognize the diversity of contemporary culture, primarily by presenting works of living artists through artist-selected programs in all disciplines" (1989). Further, the "Painted Bride works with artists to create and promote programs which affirm the intrinsic values of all cultures, the inspirational and healing of the arts and their ability to effect social change" (1999).
Performances at the Painted Bride Art Center include:
Dance: records include African tap, Ballet, clog tapping, Indian, Modern, and traditional Tap.
Exhibitions: records include shows where books, ceramics, drawings, jewelry, paintings, and watercolors were exhibited in the Painted Bride Gallery.
Film: records include educational movies, merely entertainment, and those with political agendas, like "Mumia."
Music: records include a diverse selection, from African, Afro-American, Afro-Cuban, Andean, Armenian, Bengalense, Blues, traditional and Country Blues, Cajun, Cambodian, Celtic, Country Western, Electronic, Folk – English Folk, Greek Folk, Irish Folk, Scottish Folk – Gospel, Indian, Indonesian, Jazz, American Jazz, Modern Jazz, Brazilian Jazz, Cuban Jazz, Latin Jazz, Jewish, Korean, Latin, Moroccan, New Wave, Nicaraguan, Persian, Puerto Rican, Rap, Reggae, Russian, Salsa, Scottish, Senegalese, Swing, Turkish. This is only a brief description of the music found in these records.
Performance: records include a myriad of shows, such as clowns, drama, mimes, puppeteers and storytellers.
Publications: record includes books published by artists or those associated with a particular show.
This is just a brief description and in no way represents all that the Painted Bride Art Center has done. The Bride is proud of its history of supporting groundbreaking contemporary artists who have the inspiration to present works that give audiences the chance to "See it. Feel it. Be it." The Bride is Philadelphia's only multi-disciplinary arts center that provides its audiences the unique chance to experience art in the most intimate setting in the region.
The Records of the Painted Bride Art Center at the University of Pennsylvania Library comprise the planning, development, and financial documents for its many programs and artists. The collection at large includes the records from the founding of the Painted Bride as a venue for Philadelphia artists in general, but not exclusively, to have a place to showcase their art. At the heart of this collection, however, are the performance records. They consist of 115 boxes and include catalogs; correspondence; performance flyers; programs; published and unpublished writings; postcards, promotional material; financial and legal records; and clippings covering performances held at the Bride or specific artists trying to showcase their acts in the hope to be granted an audience at the Bride. The Painted Bride Records is such that little of significance regarding the Bride is unavailable to the researcher at Penn.
According to its 1999 mission statement, the "Painted Bride works with artists to create and promote programs which affirm the intrinsic values of all cultures." In light of that it makes sense for the University of Pennsylvania to be the home for the Painted Bride Art Center records, for Penn not only shares these ideals but like the Bride is invested in the surrounding Philadelphia community. Within its records one can easily find that many of the artists and supporters of the Bride came from the University of Pennsylvania family. The Bride, moreover, had ties with Temple, Drexel, and LaSalle Universities, as well as the Community College of Philadelphia. With the Bride's connection to higher learning, it is not surprising that it also had ties to the local public schools of Philadelphia. For example, the Bride had a massive writing project with the West Philadelphia public schools, called the West Philadelphia Writing Partnership Program. School children were read poems by noted poets of the day, such as Sonia Sanchez, and then were asked hard questions about racism, sexism, and violence. The Bride not only brought art, in its various forms, to some of the most impoverished schools in the West Philadelphia area, but it gave a generation of children another way to cope and see the world around, not in black and white, but technicolor. It is clear by their art work and poetry that these children learned a new way to fight back against what they saw in the streets, they fought back in and with their art. With the aid of the Painted Bride the children wrote poetry filled with fear, pain, hurt and, yes even dreams, which the Bride had "bound." This sense of accomplishment must have aided a generation of undereducated, devalued, and invisible children to feel the power that comes with being heard. The Bride also aided in taking back the city from gentrification and neglect, by targeting graffiti, and degrading walls. Once again, the Bride targeted the youth of Philadelphia, and mural paintings were commissioned all over the City, with the Bride nurturing, through generous grants.
In the Records are books of poetry, depicting life in Philadelphia for some who are disenfranchised: poor, undereducated, fearful, yet full of rage; and after seeing the pictures where emotions scream in crayon, where the monsters that haunt a child's nightmare are real and can be found outside, in the neighborhood, I often wondered what became of some of these children. There was also a book of poetry by first generation high school students, who had to deal with racism, and sexism by everyone, including Black Americans, which was perplexing to these native West Indians and Africans. It seems that the Painted Bride was instrumental in reaching these children and got their innermost pain and conflict on paper, whether in the written form or in the pictures. The Painted Bride, run by artists, saved many things: from notes, to minutes from meetings, business records, financial records, incoming and outgoing correspondence. Correspondence, because it is relatively small, is interfiled within the performance records and not only shines a light on the changing art world: we see electronic and hip-hop music offered, as well as traditional jazz and folk. Along with the offering of ballet, tap and swing, moreover, we see the inclusion of break-dancing. The Bride's performance files also show how society's image of sexuality changes over three decades: from one that was still homophobic in the early 1970s, tolerant and accepting in the 1980s, and concerned and proactive in the 1990s with the planning of AIDS benefits. The Painted Bride Art Center was envisioned by artists as a venue to first and foremost showcase their art. It also became a place to nurture the next generation of artists: the world-renowned musician Indian tabla master Zakir Hussain, jazz virtuoso Dave Holland, and composer and musician Hannibal Lokumbe perform in the same season as newcomer Jill Scott. In the same season the dance community might find presentations by Philadanco, Moxie Dance Collective, and Flamenco Ole, alongside street Hip-Hop break dancers. The Bride is noted for presenting artists and performers that we have come to know; however, they also allow space for the emerging artist. The first series, which is an alphabetical set of files for the thousands of performers, artists, and events in the thirty-plus-year history, present a remarkable array of diverse talent and styles.
In the Painted Bride Art Center's Business records, which comprise over fifty cartons, a researcher can find the initial notes considering a performance or exhibition to the financial records projecting the cost of said performance or exhibition to either the performance with its ticket and attendance records or the decision to discard the performance or exhibition. It may be decided that a show will not draw an audience and, therefore, will be passed over. It may be decided that there are no funds this season for another dance program or another music program. Of particular interest are the notes in the margins of the typed meeting-minutes. That is where one gets to see the personalities of the people behind the Painted Bride Art Center come to the forefront: what they may really think of a performer or artist, or even the other people at the meeting. There may even be some speculation as to why a show was really canceled, or an artist denied a performance or exhibition, scribbled in the margins of business minutes.
In the Painted Bride Art Center's Grant Records, which comprise over twenty cartons, a researcher can find great examples of grant writing from former director, Gerry Givnish. Funding for the operation of the Art Center came from every sector of the funding community, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the City of Philadelphia, The Pew Charitable Trust, local and national corporations and foundations, local small businesses, individuals and members. A researcher combing these records will not only learn how the Bride was funded and by what granting organization, but moreover, he may learn how to write grants and obtain funding. These records are so detailed that after one thoroughly goes through these files, one might feel they have obtained an education in grant writing.
Another source a researcher may find very useful, are the five large boxes of photographs, found in the photograph series. The photograph records fill some of the gaps regarding the Bride's run as Philadelphia's premier art center. In these records a researcher will find 8x10" glossies of artists, head shots and body shots. There are also numerous photographs of the visual exhibitions held at the Bride. This is very important, since the collection does not contain any visual examples: like paintings, sculptures, jewelry, etc. The photographs allow the reader to be visual satisfied, where the performance, business and grant records attempt to capture an exhibition of visual art with words, the photographs allow you to see the image. The photographs act as a window in time and a researcher, by looking through the photographic records may be transported in time to the very moment when the exhibited at the Bride. Along with this, the Collection is replete with audio and video tapes of performances: dance, music, dramatic, as well as containing sheet music, play bills, and exhibit catalogs.
The Painted Bride also published its own journal, The Painted Bride Quarterly. Founded in 1973, as an independent, community-based literary magazine, published quarterly on the world wide web and annually in print, Painted Bride Quarterly's main agenda is to support regional and emerging artists. The PBQ allows literary artists a venue to get their writings out to a larger, and more diverse audience, beyond the walls of Philadelphia. Getting your work printed in the PBQ also allowed for greater opportunity to do readings all over the country. The PBQ published Pulitzer prize winning poets such as Stephen Sunn, Yusef Komunyakka and Ruth Stone, along side such new talent as Nick Flynn and Major Jackson. Like the Art Center, the PBQ's philosophy is not to limit itself in terms of voice, school or genre; in fact, both the local and national writers PBQ has published over the last three decades extend from the most traditional to language school explorations. PBQ's print annual is distributed nationally; their subscription base is international, and their website boosts an average of 18,000 hits a month. Although the PBQ is not part of this collection, it can be found in Penn's Ms. Coll. 517. The Painted Bride also created its own publishing house, Singing Horse Press, which published poetry, and prose from various artists. The Painted Bride, then, in its history and mission, has tried to bring art to the community at large, at the same time not limiting that definition of art: as the world around PBAC grows and changes, so to does its art.
Purchased from the Painted Bride Art Center, 2003.
Subject
- Publisher
- University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts
- Finding Aid Author
- Patricia D. Hopkins
- Finding Aid Date
- 2005
- Access Restrictions
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The bulk of this collection is open for research use; however, access to original audio/visual materials and computer files (located in Series V. Audio Visual Records & Computer Records) is restricted. The Kislak Center will provide access to the information on these materials from duplicate master files. If the original does not already have a copy, it will be sent to an outside vendor for copying. Patrons are financially responsible for the cost. The turnaround time from request to delivery of digital items is about two weeks for up to five items and three to seven weeks for more than five items. Please contact Reprographic Services (reprogr@upenn.edu) for cost estimates and ordering. Once digital items are received, researchers will have access to the files on a dedicated computer in the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center. Researchers should be aware of specifics of copyright law and act accordingly.
- Use Restrictions
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Copyright restrictions may exist. For most library holdings, the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania do not hold copyright. It is the responsibility of the requester to seek permission from the holder of the copyright to reproduce material from the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts.