Philadelphia's National Liberty Museum is intriguing with avant-garde exhibitions on everything from religious tolerance to the civil rights movement. While museums often focus on either artistry or history, the National Liberty Museum recounts historic events through artistic media.
In the modest lobby are exquisite works of glass such as a chess set with Protestant and Jewish figures in conversation. Striking colors and cutting effects dominate the handiwork of the pieces. One exhibit celebrates people who have lost their lives to bigotry. Victims include a white Midwestern housewife shot for her efforts in the Montgomery boycott and a African-American man who was decapitated after being dragged from a truck in the mid-'90s.
Other exhibits strive to empower museum patrons, such as "Heroes From Around the World." There are dioramas, such as one of Nelson Mandela's jail cell, and there is a wall of biographies of more obscure international heroes. The exhibit that best embodies the quirky museum is "From Conflict to Harmony." Here are exhibited provocative mixed media images of violence, some of which are disturbing, such as the x-ray of a young boy's severed spine. One of the museum's most famous pieces is the "Jellybean Kids," a sculpture of little children made out of thousands of jellybeans.
The museum is creative in its fusion of history and art, but the "liberty" spirit feels overdone with pieces such as the "Flame of Liberty," the "Conflict-Resolution Pyramid" and the "Wings of Liberty." The exhibit "Voyage to Liberty Through Faith" feels dissapointingly biased. It is mainly concerned with the evolution of Christianity and does not give proper attention to other prominent religions.
The National Liberty Museum galleries are not stocked with dusty memoirs from yesteryear but rather poignant sculptures and photographs that appeal to patriots and revolutionaries alike. It deserves to be checked out.
