Prince of guides: Brett Keyser reenacts Lewis and Clark in the park.

Art

APS Museum’s new director is on the money.

by Roberta Fallon

Not quite a Shackelton or Peary experience, but the two-hour trip around Independence National Historical Park organized by the American Philosophical Society Museum (APS) as part of its public programming for the current show “Undaunted,” proved the adage that you don’t have to look far to find amazing things.


The meta-expedition—the crevasse was the dangerous Fifth Street crossing between the museum and the park across the street, the granite cliff was the Second Bank of the U.S.—was led by the hilarious and knowledgeable Brett Keyser, a local performance artist. The project creatively weaves art into science to make science lessons stick to the brain better than boring Discovery Channel specials. Artist Roderick Coover captured the odyssey in an interactive video for viewing at the APS Museum for those who prefer to adventure digitally.


APS museum director and curator Sue Ann Prince is the brains behind the museum’s wildly imaginative programming. Prince, brought on board in 2001 to reopen a museum that had been shuttered to the public since 1811, is a formally educated (advanced degrees in French lit and art history) jane of many artistic trades. She spearheaded an oral history project for the Smithsonian, served as art critic for the Seattle Times and is a textile artist in her own right. When the APS decided to reopen the museum, they hired Prince “to build a museum from scratch,” she says.


“Undaunted,” the current exhibit at Philosophical Hall on Fifth Street, highlights five local explorers with ties to Philadelphia: surveyor and astronomer David Rittenhouse; naturalist and artist John James Audubon; natural history illustrator and Antarctica explorer Titian Ramsay Peale; physician and explorer Elisha Kent Kane; and freshwater ecologist and inventor Ruth Patrick. The exhibit showcases photos, specimens, books and instruments—a compelling and compact introduction to the our area’s early explorers.


It’s great to see the APS didn’t just dust off and reopen an old institution—the place is vibrant, popping with energy. It’s also refreshing to see artists interspersed in the programming. Art and science have long been uneasy bedfellows, with the whole right-brain/left-brain issue, but every once in a while you can rub them together and get a nice spark.