Museum without Walls is a self–guided audio tour of Philadelphia’s public sculptures. On audio files on the museum's website, experts talk about each work for a few minutes. Here's the audio and visual experience, from City Hall to Rittenhouse Square.
2:00 p.m.: I decide to start at the beginning with a cast bronze Will Penn swanning about on top of City Hall. What I envision will be three minutes of pretending to listen to voicemail becomes a small public lecture—Museum without Walls blares out of my phone on loudspeaker, and I don’t have headphones. I’m sure the homeless man residing on my bench is interested to know that, at the time of construction, William was the highest point in Philadelphia. I feel him: if I started a city, I’d find the highest point in the place and get on it like a car hood.
2:17 p.m.: As I stand in front of “LOVE,” its sculptor tells me, and anyone in earshot, that “everybody should have love.” Well, you know who’s got the take–home message here? All the couples currently surrounding me and no one. I see what they’re doing here—taking photos with the sculpture because it says what they’re in. Isn’t that beautiful?
2:18 p.m.: Museum without Walls, I know we only met 10 minutes ago, but do you—do you want to take a photo with me under the LOVE sculpture? Oh wait, we can’t because you’re also my camera. I love how multifaceted you are.
2:23 p.m.: Like many works by Roy Lichtenstein, “Brushstroke Group” at 17th and Market streets has no alibi. It’s U–G–L–Y. The director of the Lichtenstein Foundation announces to 17th Street that this sculpture was constructed from Lichtenstein’s sketches nine years after his death in 1997. I’ve walked into a horror film starring Roy Lichtenstein: He’s inflicting his art on the living from beyond the grave.
2:40 p.m.: The good thing about a no–walls museum is that you can take it places. I bring my public disturbance to Joe Coffee on Rittenhouse. You don’t see the Barnes or PMA hanging out here. Sitting at the window, I can see the sculptures in the Square (sort of… if I use my imagination…). The musem website lists a work titled “Duck Girl.” “Elephant Man’s daughter,” I presume, and open the audio.
2:42 p.m.: I stand corrected. This is actually a sculpture of a girl with a duck. My phone tells me that it was a thing back in the day to give girls pets to “prepare them for maternity.” Infallible logic right there.
2:45 p.m.: As the last stop on my tour comes to an end, my cappuccino arrives. It is a work of art, but I can’t find its audio file.
Visit museumwithoutwallsaudio.org to try it yourself.
