Eastern State Penitentiary 22nd Street and Fairmount Avenue

2007 Season

Contact Info

22nd and Fairmount Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19130

215-236-3300

info@easternstate.org
www.easternstate.org

Gallery Hours: Daily, 10 am – 5 pm


About the Exhibition

Opening reception for Susan Hagen: Recollection Tableaux, and returning artists: Friday, May 11, 55:30 - 7:30 pm.

Linda Brenner: Ghost Cats
Thirty-nine sculptures represent the colony of cats that took up residence in the prison grounds after the penitentiary closed in 1971.

Dayton Castleman: The End of the Tunnel
Hundreds of feet of two-inch steel pipe trace paths in and around Eastern State's original seven cellblocks like giant red lines representing imagined escape routes.

Susan Hagen: Recollection Tableaux
A series of miniature dioramas in Cellblock 7 show - accurately and poetically - the daily lives of prisoners at Eastern State throughout its history. A new exhibit for 2007.

William Cromar: GTMO
A materially and dimensionally accurate representation of one cell from the now abandoned Camp X-Ray at GTMO (military abbreviation for the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba) is inserted inside of a now-abandoned Eastern State Penitentiary cell.

Michael Grothusen: Midway of Another Day
This sculpture functions as a combination clock, calendar and addresses the slow, almost still, passing of time which was experienced by many inmates.

Alexa Hoyer: I Always Wanted To Go to Paris, France
Using three televisions to screen excerpts from over seven decades of prison film history, this installation challenges visitors to re-examine their notion of prison life.

Ann Messner: Penitentiary
An offset 28 page tabloid of full-page black and white photographs is distributed free of charge through a newspaper vending machine in Cell Block 10. The photographs are images taken within the complex that visualize a dual reality of the site: that it was once a penitentiary where people were imprisoned, that it is now a historical site where visitors are free to come and go.

Matthew and Jonathan Stemler: Juxtaposition
This installation gives new life to fallen material by dividing the cell horizontally with suspended plaster pieces. It provides an area in which to consider the building’s past and present experience in light of material position.

Judy Taylor: My Glass House
Black and white, glass-plate photographs showing specimens of the natural habitat found within Eastern State's walls replace missing windowpanes in the penitentiary greenhouse.


About the Gallery

Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, Inc. works to preserve and restore the architecture of Eastern State Penitentiary; to make the Penitentiary accessible to the public; to explain and interpret its complex history; to place current issues of corrections and justice in an historical framework; and to provide a public forum where these issues are discussed. Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Site, Inc. carries out these activities using the highest standards in educational and public programming, and in conservation.

While the interpretive program advocates no specific position on the state of American prisons, the program is built on the belief that the problems facing Eastern State Penitentiary’s architects have not yet been solved, and that the issues these early prison reformers addressed remain of central importance to our nation. Adopted by the Board of Directors, December 1999


See Eastern State Penitentiary's previous exhibition
Image copyright © 2008 Eastern State Penitentiary and Artists