The Village of Arts and Humanities is proud to announce The Futures Gallery, our latest art and advocacy project that builds upon the organization’s nearly 40-year-old history of providing arts and community development opportunities to Philadelphia’s deeply disinvested Fairhill-Hartranft neighborhood.
The Village of Arts and Humanities is updating its main cultural building and adding a permanent Futures Gallery at the terminus of the Germantown-Lehigh commercial corridor. The Futures Gallery will serve as a powerful cultural and economic tool for resilience—for community residents past-present-future, for The Village, and for Black working artists across the City—one that combats the physical and cultural erasure of Black communities.
The seeds of this project were planted during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which highlighted our community’s need for, and lack of, history-making spaces that can name, hold and help people integrate significant loss and change.
During 2022, community members and stakeholders, Village staff, youth program participants, BIPOC artists, and field experts, among others, worked with artist and Afrofuturist Li Sumpter and Village leadership to explore how this upcoming gallery will: 1. hold space for the past, present, and future and 2. creatively and critically respond to the times.
“I leaned into my understanding of mythic literacy and worldbuilding, doing my best to read into the collective story of the Village that was being told through the eyes and experiences of those most connected to its history and future trajectory,” said Sumpter.
These collective ideas and lessons became the Village Oracle: a temporary exhibition and tool for envisioning communal spaces during the construction phase of The Futures Gallery. The temporary exhibition features 13 archetypes and 13 symbols as interpreted by 14 Philadelphia-based Black Artists.
In addition to this Oracle Deck, the temporary exhibition features an immersive 30-minute soundscape created by three sound artists. The soundscape is inspired by the Oracle and comprises audio recorded on-site, in focus groups and research interviews, and original beats and rhythms.
“The day-to-day reality that we consciously grapple with here isn’t nearly as gracious as it could be, said Jeanette Lloyd, Managing Director at The Village of Arts and Humanities. “The hope is that by engaging with these thoughtful, ornate symbols and archetypes and audioscapes all used together as a tool – for remembering the past, acknowledging the present, and imagining the future – the Village Oracle can create new channels of connection in us all. We hope to challenge the viewer to imagine what their personal symbol or archetype would look like and what it would mean to them, their family, friends, neighbors, and the whole of humanity if they boldly shared it.”
Support for The Futures Gallery has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and MacKenzie Scott (Yield Giving). Support for the Village Oracle has been provided by The Kresge Foundation.
For more information about The Futures Gallery and Village Oracle, click here.