Temple Gallery Gets Contemporary, from Whirr to Wurlitzer to Buzz

An indoor apiary with a pipeline to fresh air on campus, a neon beacon to the neighborhood, a machine that translates regional accents like “wooder” (water) or “aboot” (about), a playable bicycle-Wurlitzer organ hybrid, installations of mass incarceration and vacant Philadelphia schools, interactive fiber and karaoke stations, a kiln and shale cup casting cooperative, and a calendar full of creative programming:  

These are all ways that Tyler’s School of Art’s Temple Gallery is rebranding its new name as Temple Contemporary, opening its doors more often for events and involving a community advisory board to plan exhibitions and happenings. The change was made official last month, moving from the traditional gallery practice of one or two curators choosing existing and thematic art to where the community programs, through the conduit of an advisory board, create a truly interactive process of collaborative art-making on several themes in the same walls.  It is this change that makes it a contemporary, vital, and a living space.