The other day, when we snapped some photos of the ongoing construction of the new Family Court Building, we caught an in-person glimpse of Grumman Greenhouse for the first time.

Disarming artwork

Artist Jordan Griska has taken a decommissioned Grumman Tracker II, a Cold War era submarine bomber, and bent the nose of the plane to make it seem like it has impacted into the ground. Several sections of the plane are apparently being used as spaces for growing vegetables with the assistance of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, hence the name Grumman Greenhouse.

As we mentioned months ago, the main public art piece in Lenfest Plaza is Claes Oldenburg’s sculpture, Paint Torch, located close to Broad St., on the eastern end. The western side of Lenfest Plaza is intended for temporary installations, lasting about a year, from young, still developing artists.…

On Groundhog Day city officials and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts resident and CEO, Dr. David R. Brigham, showed off the new Lenfest Plaza, the future home of what they project to be a creative and serene atmosphere for local artists on what is now East Cherry Street. With tourist traffic around the Convention Center expected to surpass the 1.4M mark, this new plaza (designed by internationally renowned landscape architecture firm OLIN, a client of the Philadelphia Museum of Art) should open this summer and will be a nice escape from the general craziness of Center City. The project will feature outside seating, landscaped scenery, rotating works from artists, a 53-foot paintbrush sculpture from Claes Oldenburg (he did the Split Button and Clothespin structures we all know), and an upscale restaurant. The names of PAFA graduates and art vocabulary terms will be sandblasted into…