CENTER CITY (WPVI) — Artist Nicolo Gentile dug into history for his temporary installation, titled, “Bar None.” It’s on view now through October 26, 2025 in Maja Park.
Gentile was commissioned to create the work after winning the Art on the Parkway competition.
“It’s an open call for artists to submit their ideas about work for this site in Maja Park,” says Charlotte Cohen, Executive Director of the Association for Public Art (aPA).
It’s the second year the Association for Public Art organized the competition in partnership with the Parkway Council and Philadelphia Parks & Recreation.
Gentile used archival photographs to look at the Benjamin Franklin Parkway’s pivotal moments, like the George Floyd protests in 2020. He says there were also images of “civic actions of pride marches and marathons and Thanksgiving Day parades.”
Cohen mentions images featuring “celebration and joyful exhilaration around gathering.”
“All the way to protest, political actions and demonstrations,” says Gentile.
There are powerful etchings of protests, like the Poor People’s Campaign in the late ’60s, which addressed economic justice.
“This civic spine of Philadelphia has operated throughout its history as a site of assembly and collective action,” he says. “‘Bar None’ means, like, without exception.”
The work is composed of 17 police barricades, each depicting an image from 1899 to 2023.
Gentile says he included etchings of historical photos of Puerto Rican Day Pride and Vietnam War protests.
“Those panels are a digitized laser engraving of many of the images that I sourced,” he says.
He mined digital imagery from local and regional collections, including the William Way Foundation’s Archive, the Free Library, along with Temple University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center.
He fragmented the photos to create an abstract, yet inclusive look at history.
Gentile says having the barricades in his work kind of “emerge and submerge into the landscape” maybe speaks to “the rise and fall of political action.”
“It could also be a rising need of understanding our potential in our voice, to come together,” he says.
“We all have the right to engage in public space,” says Cohen. “That is our power.”
“Bar None” is on view through October 26, 2025 in Maja Park along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
For more information:
Association for Public Art – ‘Art on the Parkway’
Nicolo Gentile – “Bar None”
Maja Park
N. 22nd Street & Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Philadelphia, PA 19130
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