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As the election draws closer and polls grow tighter and advertisements get louder, many in Pennsylvania are experiencing feelings of voter fatigue. A recent Pew Research Center poll shows two-thirds of adults are "exhausted" by politics.
On Monday, Philadelphia will once again be at the center of the national show when Vice President Kamala Harris brings her whirlwind campaign to the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art with a major rally on the eve of the election.
Meanwhile, inside the Art Museum is a much quieter display of political messaging.
"What Times Are These?" opened Oct. 19 and is a sparsely hung exhibition of work by artists using the power of suggestion or outright silence to make their political points.
"I think many of us have encountered political art that can feel like we're being hammered over the head," said curator Eleanore Nairne. "It's not always the best way to appeal to people's humanity or to encourage people to be dwelling with work."
Nairne is the museum's new curator of contemporary and modern art, a position she started in February. "What Times are These?" is her first exhibition in that role, designed to be both relevant to the current moment and a respite from it.
"I thought it would be interesting to do something about artists who are political, but in more lateral ways," she said. "Maybe not in explicit or partisan ways, but who find very powerful ways to inspire a sense of civic agency."
Ironic for a show that purports to be about silence: it starts with noise. Upon entering the museum, atop its Grand Staircase where normally a golden statue of the goddess Diane presides, a film screen has been hung onto which is projected filmmaker Steve McQueen's "Static," a seven-minute looping film of the Statue of Liberty shot from a helicopter circling around it.
The soundtrack is the noise of the helicopter blaring out of speakers arranged in the space, such that the museum is offering noise-canceling headphones at the coat check to those who ask.
At one point during the film, McQueen fades those helicopter sounds down to nothing.
"What makes it very moving is that when those chopper blades, that kind of thunderous sound, subsides there's this incredible serenity to the piece," Nairne said.