Philadelphia Museum of Art Rebrands Itself as the Philadelphia Art Museum

Philadelphia Art Museum, rebranded / Photograph by Rob Cusick

Check phillymag.com each morning Monday through Thursday for the latest edition of Philly Today. And if you have a news tip for our hardworking Philly Mag reporters, please direct it here. You can also use that form to send us reader mail. We love reader mail!

Philadelphia Museum of Art Rebrands Itself as the Philadelphia Art Museum

In news we can file under “worst-kept secret” — they put the signs up last week, as captured by HughE Dillon — the cultural institution whose official name is Philadelphia Museum of Art, but who Philadelphians generally just call “the Art Museum” or “that building with the Rocky steps,” has a new name. Get out of here, prepositions! It’s called Philadelphia Art Museum now.

The rebrand also includes a revived griffin logo — you can find that griffin as an architectural detail on the roof of the museum, and in older logos — and a new custom typeface called Fairmount Serif.

Unless you’re really into semantics, or graphic design, or are — and I’m just hypothesizing here — magazine editors with print magazines in production that require you to be prognosticators of the world a month from now and thus have to go in and change everything before November is sent to the printer, this probably isn’t big news. Though, switching from PMA to — and this is real — PhAM … that’s a choice.

The new acronym comes with a new website, visitpham.org, which boldly declares “Art for All” at the top of the page.

And that is really the crux of the rebranding: a desire to “bring art into the everyday, making the museum accessible, relevant, and deeply connected to the people it serves,” according to this morning’s press release announcing the change. “Our focus and vision are unabashedly Philadelphian; we’re opening our doors to become more collaborative and future-focused for all,” says Sasha Suda, CEO of the museum. For Ryan Moore, executive creative director and partner at the New York–based design studio Gretel responsible for this redesign, the process was about bringing the museum “down the steps” — connecting it more directly to its community.

All of which is to really say that the museum wants to boost attendance and reach out to younger demographics to accomplish that. They hint at more “programming” to follow this rebranding, and the Inquirer this morning reported that the museum “has formed partnerships with sports figures like Saquon Barkley and Malcolm Jenkins, and discussions are underway with the Roots for the hip hop band to become artist-in-residence.” They’re also planning a DJ-in-residence program for their Friday night series. (If they really want to boost accessibility, maybe they should bring back pay-what-you-wish ticketing for Friday nights, just saying.)

The Wawa Gobbler Is Back

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Wawa (@wawa)

If the chilly morning air wasn’t enough to make it feel like it’s fall in Philadelphia, we’ll do you one better: The Gobbler is back at Wawa. Yes, Thanksgiving in a hoagie, the sandwich our food critic called Wawa’s best, has returned. And there’s sweet potatoes in it now! You can also get it in bowl form, or just order a big bowl of stuffing because you’re having that kind of day. No judgment here.

By the way, if Thanksgiving in other packages are your kind of thing, Rockwell & Rose opens today in the Curtis Building and they’ve got “ a whole-ass Thanksgiving dinner rolled porchetta-style” on the menu, according to Jason Sheehan’s report.

By the Numbers

$325,000: Value of the MasterCraft speedboat Jimmy Rollins won for getting a hole in one at the American Century Championship at Edgewood Tahoe in July. Rollins’s boat ownership was not long for this world, though: He sold it to Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready, “with no hours and no water on it,” he told the Inquirer.

0-2: The NLDS isn’t going well for the Phillies. They face elimination tonight as they play Game 3 against the Dodgers, in L.A.