First Fridays at Museum for Art in Wood
Visit the Museum for Art in Wood during First Friday and experience its latest exhibitions, BA Harrington: Suite Américaine and Viola Bordon: Muliebrity.
Artist BA Harrington brings inherited craft knowledge into contemporary feminist practice. Revisiting historic American furniture typologies designed to accommodate women during the Early American and colonial periods (c. 1620–1700s), Harrington constructs and animates these forms while opening them physically and conceptually, revealing interiors filled with textiles, quilts, and collaborative interventions.
The Museum's Gallery also features fellow Radical Americana artist Viola Borden and her exhibition, 'Muliebrity.' 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 Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 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.
Suite Américaine and Muliebrity are a part of Radical Americana, a citywide initiative organized by The Clay Studio that unites Philadelphia’s leading arts and cultural Institutions through a series of exhibitions showcasing research-driven work by contemporary artists.
