First Friday Opening for Viola Bordon: Muliebrity
Join the Museum for Art in Wood for the opening of 'Viola Bordon: Muliebrity'! While visitors are at the Museum, experience 'American Graffiti: Painting, Dyeing, and Surface Design in Wood' and make sure to explore the permanent collection of over 1,400 objects and shop the Museum Store for unique handmade objects, jewelry, artworks, and books.
'Viola Bordon: Muliebrity' is a part of Radical Americana, a series of exhibitions organized by a consortium of Philadelphia’s extensive collection of arts and cultural institutions that celebrate how today’s artists are continuing the city’s unique and rich legacy as a center for creativity and civic engagement.
Since the American Revolution, the Roman goddess Libertas has personified the nation’s ideals, embodying evolving definitions of freedom and belonging. The 1886 dedication of the Statue of Liberty, however, unfolded amid national conflict over the boundaries of liberty, including the end of Reconstruction, debates over immigration, and the rise of women’s suffrage. Drawing on archival research at the American Historical Society, textile artist Viola Bordon examines “Lady Liberty” as a fragmented American icon. Her triptych Muliebrity, composed through appliqué and found textiles, invokes a distinctly feminine power grounded in endurance and embodied knowledge, prompting us to consider how figures of womanhood have been repeatedly mobilized to serve patriarchal institutions.
