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MUSEUM FOR ART IN WOOD PRESENTS SUITE AMÉRICAINE BY BA HARINGTON AND MULIEBRITY BY VIOLA BORDON
Presented through Radical Americana, the exhibitions uncover how national identity has been shaped by gender, power, and the stories
we choose to display
Photos: HERE
Philadelphia, PA | March 4, 2026 – Beginning March 6, the Museum for Art in Wood (141 N. 3rd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106) presents two exhibitions by multi-disciplinary artist Viola Bordon and woodworking artist BA Harrington as part of Radical Americana. Created and organized by The Clay Studio, the project is centered around a series of exhibitions inspired by the Semiquincentennial. Each exhibition, presented by an extensive group of Philadelphia arts and cultural institutions, celebrates how today’s artists are continuing the city’s unique and rich legacy as a center for creativity and civic engagement.
The two Radical Americana exhibitions coming to the Museum for Art in Wood this spring, Muliebrity by Viola Bordon and Suite Américaine by BA Harrington, rethink American history through the lens of craft and women’s labor. Bordon reimagines Lady Liberty in a richly layered textile work that questions who freedom has truly served, while Harrington transforms historic furniture forms to reveal and celebrate the work of women long hidden inside them. Together, the exhibitions uncover how national identity has been shaped by gender, power, and the stories we choose to display.
“These exhibitions exemplify what Radical Americana makes possible by inviting artists to rigorously research our shared past and reinterpret it through the language of craft to question who and what America has historically valued,” said Jennifer-Navva Milliken, Executive Director and Chief Curator at Museum for Art in Wood. “We are committed to elevating material knowledge and the power of making as vehicles for civic dialogue. Viola Bordon and BA Harrington draw on Philadelphia’s deep craft traditions while challenging inherited narratives around gender, labor, and national identity. Together, their work advances our mission to engage and inspire through contemporary art in wood that is both historically grounded and urgently relevant.”
Muliebrity by Viola Bordon | March 6 to July 26
Philadelphia-based interdisciplinary textile artist and educator Viola Bordon blends sculpture, drawing, printmaking, and fibers to explore the interplay between materiality and environmental fluctuation. Her textile-focused practice draws upon pre-industrial craft techniques like weaving and quilting, intertwining them with inquiries into contemporary issues in our society. For Radical Americana, Bordon conducted research at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to create her exhibition, Muliebrity, where she examines the invention and evolving meanings of American liberty in the national identity.
Since the American Revolution, the Roman goddess Libertas has served as a personification of the nation’s ideals, including ever-shifting definitions of freedom and enfranchisement. Exemplifying the contested meanings of Libertas, the 1886 dedication of the Statue of Liberty coincided with national discord over the boundaries of freedom, sparked by the end of Reconstruction in the South, legislative debates over immigration, and the growing movement for women’s suffrage.
The resulting triptych, Muliebrity, takes its title from a term Bordon uses to articulate a distinctly feminine form of power, one aligned with endurance, fertility, and embodied knowledge. It’s also inspired by poet Sujata Bhatt’s Muliebrity, which describes a woman whose daily labor is suffused with quiet, almost mystical authority.
Bordon presents a kneeling Lady Liberty surrounded by wilderness with found fabric swatches sewn into her quilt through appliqué, a decorative sewing technique in which small pieces of fabric are sewn onto a larger background fabric to create a picture or design. With its visual affinity to late Medieval and early Renaissance depictions of Mary Magdalene, the artist’s patchworked portrayal invites us to consider how this figure of womanhood is repeatedly mobilized to serve the symbolic needs of patriarchal institutions.
Muliebrity is on display in the Museum for Art in Wood’s main gallery from March 6 to July 26.
Bordon received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from Washington University in St. Louis and a Master of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. She has since received numerous grants and awards, including a Fulbright Foreign Research Scholarship and the Stone DeGuire Contemporary Art Award. Her work has been exhibited around the world, including at Eastern Connecticut State University, the Bruno David Gallery in St. Louis, the DaVinci Art Alliance in Philadelphia, the Serendipity Festival in Goa, the Taragoan Museum in Nepal, the National Museum of Kolkata in India, and more.
Suite Américaine by BA Harrington | April 3 to July 26
BA Harrington is a woodworking artist whose practice involves intensive object studies that regard historical furniture from her ancestral and vocational lineage. The daughter, granddaughter, and sister of carpenters, Harrington focuses on iconic early American forms made specifically for women. She learned her trade, like many before her, by reproducing furniture forms of the past as part of a growing, intersectional cohort of women-identifying woodworkers.
Her exhibition at the Museum for Art in Wood, Suite Américaine, illustrates her reverence for America’s history of furniture making while inflecting it with a contemporary feminist imagination. Her artistic practice brings a new perspective to this tradition to reflect on the nation’s founding by considering contemporary issues around women’s rights, gender identity, marriage and family structure, and boundaries and borders. Philadelphia was a major center of 18th-century furniture, making Harrington’s exhibition a timely and unique exploration of a vital part of the city’s history of craft and commerce.
Suite Américaine examines late-17th– through early-19th-century dower chests, writing desks, and sewing tables designed specifically for women but historically made by men. The use of French in the title is both a nod to the 18th-century term for a furniture set and a phrasing allowing the artist to feminize the word “American.” Similarly, the work on display serves as a feminist intervention in historic furniture, using video activations and collaborations with other artists, including a piece with fellow Radical Americana artist Viola Bordon, to deepen discussions around these works.
Where these furniture objects once stored and concealed the labor and craft skills of women, however, Harrington opens them. The works expose, activate, and celebrate their rich interiors, with linens and quilts spilling out of their wooden casings. In her piece “Debutante,” Harrington created an 18th-century lady’s writing desk, displayed with its slant-front open. Instead of a central locked compartment, the desk’s interior features a small staircase with a woven runner covering the steps, which continues across the open slant front and cascades down toward the floor.
In Suite Américane, Harrington not only remakes the original forms with her own hands, asserting her technical skill, but also highlights the revolutionary potential of furniture to self-actualize the creative endeavors of women.
Harrington is a Professor of Woodworking in the Department of Art and Design and Director of the Wood Center at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She continues to write essays, speak at conferences, and build sculptural work in reference to early American furniture forms. She has held Windgate Artist Residencies at San Diego State University and SUNY Purchase and was a recipient of the Center for Craft’s inaugural Craft Research Fund Artist Fellowship. Each year, this substantial mid-career grant is awarded to two artists who are revising, reclaiming, and advancing the history of craft through their work.
The opening reception of Suite Américaine at the Museum for Art in Wood is set for April 3, and will be on display alongside Muliebrity in the main gallery through July 26.
As part of Radical Americana, Bordon and Harrington present research-driven work reflecting Philadelphia’s historic influence on American craft, civic life, and cultural identity. Through the featured exhibitions, each of the 25 participating artists illustrates how the ideas present during the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the commemorations in 1876, 1926, and 1976 continue to influence the nation’s present and future.
Suite Américaine and Muliebrity are generously supported by Radical Americana, the Cambium Giving Society of the Museum for Art in Wood, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Bresler Foundation, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, William Penn Foundation, and Windgate Foundation.
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About the Museum for Art in Wood:
The Museum for Art in Wood is the international leader for contemporary art and creativity in the material of wood. The Museum engages, educates, and inspires the public through the exhibition, collection, and interpretation of contemporary art in wood. Founded in 1986 and sited in Philadelphia, the Museum for Art in Wood serves a local and international community. It has built its reputation by providing opportunities for makers and visitors to experience craft directly, through participatory programming; seminal exhibitions and documentation; and the growth, conservation, exhibition, and care of its permanent collection. The Museum’s practice of keeping these resources free and available to the public emphasizes its commitment to building a democratic and inclusive community. Visit museumforartinwood.org to learn more.