Art exhibit showcases links between art and crime

 

THERE ARE BOMBS on Arcadia University's campus.

 

But instead of drawing cops and explosive-detecting dogs, administrators hope the faux bombs - part of a five-week, crime-themed art exhibit called "No Bingo for Felons" - will draw crowds of art appreciators.

 

The show, which opened last night, takes its name from an obscure law forbidding convicts from operating games of chance.

 

The first thing visitors will see is Anna Duval's fiberglass head, the first bust made by the late forensic sculptor Frank Bender, whose recreated, realistic heads of unidentified corpses helped solve many missing-persons cases. Elsewhere in the exhibit is photographer Arne Svenson's interpretation of Bender's Duval bust.

 

Though the famed Philly artist died two years ago of cancer, his work remains in demand.

 

In January, several of his busts were displayed at the Outsider Art Fair in New York City. And his daughters created a company, Frank Bender Forensics, in hopes of further showcasing his work - and maybe solving more cold cases.

 

"Who knows, the more we get his busts out there, the better," said his daughter Lisa Brawner, who keeps 42 of her father's busts and 12 cartons of other belongings in her South Jersey garage.

 

Bender isn't the only local artist represented at the Arcadia show, whose curators picked pieces to explore "the nature of crime and its relationship to art making," gallery director Richard Torchia said. An ominous photograph by Philly's Zoe Strauss shows a police car idling in a pitch-black night.

 

There are also crime-scene photos from the 1930s; side-by-side videos of a drunken, dancing cop and an angry, antagonistic cop; an 1873 lithograph of a French political cartoon lampooning judges; and a gutted 9 mm Glock, its innards replaced with healing items like an IV needle, tubing and an Ace bandage.

 

But back to the bombs: One is a nuclear bomb, with a baseball in place of the plutonium capsule; another is a porcelain replica; and the third, called "Suspicious Package 2," looks like a well-worn cardboard box but is made of bronze.

 

"No Bingo for Felons" runs through Nov. 3 in Arcadia's Spruance Fine Arts Center in Glenside. Admission is free. Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays; noon to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; closed Mondays.