Designing
Woman
Celebrating Zaha Hadid’s
“outside the box”
product designs
Each fall, another leading light in design
arrives at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
to receive the museum’s Design Excellence
Award, and an accompanying exhibition
displays his or her award-worthy work. Past
years have seen retrospectives of Dutch
designer Marcel Wanders and of Alberto
Alessi, a pioneer in the now widespread
trend of commissioning high-profile designers to create everyday objects.
In 2011, Zaha Hadid, the first woman to
win the prestigious Pritzker Prize, added
the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s award to
her long list of laurels. “Zaha Hadid: Form
in Motion,” opens Sept. 17. The Iraqi-British
architect and designer, who is known for her
design vocabulary of organic, biomorphic
ave
Date
Penn’s Landing
the
Talk Like a
Pirate Day
Sept. 17
Learn countless skills
at the Independence
Seaport Museum’s popular Pirate University,
including how to load a
cannon, tie a knot, make
an eye patch, navigate
the seas and sound a
convincing “Ahoy!” and
“Argh.” phillyseaport.org
CaLLowhiLL
USArtists
American Fine
Art Show
Sept. 23–25
Forty leading dealers
of 18th- to 21st-century
American art gather to
exhibit and sell their
work. The fair, at the
Pennsylvania Academy
of the Fine Arts, doubles
as a fundraiser for student scholarships. pafa.
org/usartists
CITY GUIDE
Philadelphia
For additional event, attraction,
restaurant and hotel information,
visit arrivecityguides.com
forms, worked closely with the museum to
create a sculptural environment inside the
Perelman Building’s main gallery. This is the
first exhibition in the United States to focus
on her product designs, including Swarovski
crystal-encrusted jewelry, spiraling shoes
and boots made for Lacoste, and the three-wheeled Z-car made of high-density foam.
A nice bonus from these annual exhibitions is the resulting donations, as many
award-winners end up leaving pieces behind.
Some of these can be seen down the hall at
“Collab: Four Decades of Giving Modern and
Contemporary Design,” through fall 2012.
Examples on display include the iconic Up 5
chair by Gaetano Pesce that’s shaped like a
woman’s lap; Milton Glaser’s 1966 poster of
Bob Dylan with kaleidoscopic hair; and the
Valentine Typewriter, the first “designed”
piece of office equipment, by Ettore Sottsass.
philamuseum.org.
Twisting Tradition
the 2011 Live arts
festival/Philly
fringe’s packed
schedule can be
overwhelming, but
if you’re having
trouble choosing
from the long list
of cutting-edge
performances, you
could always pick
a show according
to the known entity
that inspired it. this
15th year of the
fest includes mind-
bending interpreta-
tions of Macbeth,
Punch and Judy and
Twelfth Night. (if
last year’s Jester’s
Dead, a mash-up of
shakespeare and Top
Gun, is any indica-
tion, these twists on
classics will be well
worth seeing.) this
should also help: the
more than 200 fringe
pieces are likely to be
more experimental
than the 13 Live arts
shows. the fringe is
unfiltered, but Live
arts is curated by the
festival’s producing
director. sept. 2–17;
livearts-fringe.org.
avenue of the arts
Our Class
Oct. 12–Nov. 13
This moving play follows the stories of 10
classmates—five Jewish
and five Catholic—in
a small town in 1925
Poland, whose lives take
unexpected turns as the
country is torn apart by
invading armies, first
Soviet and then German. The Wilma Theater. wilmatheater.org
Citywide
Design
Philadelphia
Oct. 13–23
This 10-day celebration
of Philadelphia design
is the largest of its kind
in the United States. It
aims to innovate, edu-
cate and encourage par-
ticipation in the city’s
thriving design scene.
designphiladelphia.org
fairmount Park
Boo at the Zoo
Oct. 22–23 and
Oct. 29–30
During two weekends
in October, kids can
wear their Halloween
costumes to the zoo for
trick-or-treating. Story-
tellers, games and crafts
round out the festivities.
philadelphiazoo.org
