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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
It takes a lot to really disappear
The 2025 Weekend Trips Slideshow starts in Philadelphia and starts somewhere I have been looking forward to visiting for quite some time now. This is Calder Gardens, a long discussed but only recently realized museum designed by Herzog & de Meuron. The museum does not have a permanent collection and hosts a rotating group of sculptures from the Alexander Calder Foundation, all purposely presented without any descriptions or interpretive statements.
The building is small (surprisingly so to be honest) but interesting. At times it tries to disappear (it’s literally hidden by a mirror at ground level) while at other times, like when descending one of the staircases, it’s in your face and impossible to ignore. Despite this inherent conflict, it still feels exceptionally well designed, fairly coherent and (most of the time) it feels like it was worth the wait.
Calder Gardens is operated by the Barnes Foundation, which sits on the other side of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in a spectacular (and sometimes weird) Williams Tsien designed building. When I went to buy tickets, Calder Gardens offered a combo with the Barnes, and then when I went to buy two tickets, they told me that getting a membership with a free guest pass cost (just about) the same. And that’s how I ended up becoming a member of the Barnes Foundation.
As for the Barnes, I visited it twice that day, once before Calder Gardens and once after. And the one after ended up dangerously close to closing time, meaning that there were moments when I had the always busy Barnes (just about) all to myself. It turns out that membership really does have its privileges after all.
We’ll end our Philadelphia day trip pictures with a picture looking at the windows of the new Comcast Tower on 18th Street, where you can see both a distorted reflection of One Liberty Place and, at the same time, see right through that distorted reflection of One Liberty Place to the moving text ribbons inside the ceiling of the new Comcast Tower.
When I put these slideshows together, I generally try and make some (not always successful) attempt to try and theme each page, something you probably already suspected, especially if this isn’t your first slideshow. Knowing that, a reasonable person would probably determine that the theme of this page is Philadelphia. But, as you also may already suspect by now, that reasonable person would be totally wrong.
Much like Calder Gardens, the Frick Museum (re)opened this year after a long closure and complete renovation. The new museum sparkles in a way that I don’t ever recall the Frick sparkling before, which (like Calder Gardens) made all that waiting feel worth it.
Another long awaited museum opening that finally took place this year was David Adjaye’s brand new Studio Museum in Harlem, a small but interesting building that is all about the stairs, a great big hulking presence that is fun to look at and even more fun to climb.
On the same day that I visited the brand new, recently (re)opened Studio Museum in Harlem designed by David Adjaye, I also visited the brand new, recently (re)opened Princeton Art Museum, also designed by David Adjaye. If the Studio Museum is all about the stairs (and it is). the one in Princeton is a lot harder to define. The building has a lot going on, but the entry sequence (an outdoor skylit atrium with a mural by Nick Cave) and a central atrium surrounded by second floor glass display cases were (for me at least) the parts that I remembered most on the long, slow train ride(s) back home on that cold early December day.
