Yinka Shonibare MBE: Magic Ladders, is the artist’s first major exhibition in Philadelphia, since his residency at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in 2004. The works in the show address themes such as European art, intellectual history, race, slavery, authenticity and commerce through a variety of media including sculpture, painting, photography and installation.
“Several of Shonibare’s sculptures refer to the Enlightenment and its ideals of rationality and exploration,” says Judith F. Dolkart, deputy director of art and archival collections and Gund Family Chief Curator at the Barnes. “Shonibare shares Dr. Barnes's belief that education can improve individual lives, benefitting society as a whole. Barnes turned his pharmaceutical factory into a progressive and integrated workplace, where he devoted two hours of each eight-hour workday to discussions on philosophy, psychology, and aesthetics with his employees.”
The Foundation’s collaboration with Shonibare pays homage to Barnes’s interest in contemporary art and artists. The centrepiece of the exhibition is the Barnes commission Magic Ladders, which explores childhood learning and the opportunities that education can create. In considering the exhibition and commission, the artist reviewed the complicated and decades-long correspondence between Barnes and Leo Stein, a fellow collector and an important advisor and friend as Barnes built his art collection and educational foundation. In Magic Ladders, three children ascend ladders constructed of books written or read by Albert Barnes. Other recent sculptures in the exhibition, Planets in My Head, Philosophy, 2011, Planets in My Head, Physics, 2010 and Pedagogy Boy/Boy, 2011, echo the theme of the magical, transformative discoveries of childhood learning.