{"id":508621,"date":"2026-01-11T13:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T13:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/508621\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T13:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T13:52:09","slug":"philly-art-museum-curator-dylis-blum-dies-at-77","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/508621\/","title":{"rendered":"Philly Art Museum curator Dylis Blum dies at 77"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Her talents were showcased in 2019 in the exhibition \u201cOff the Wall.\u201d Blum put together a large show about a moment in the 1960s and \u201870s when artists blurred the line between clothes and sculpture, revealing her deep knowledge of the history of experimental textile art.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne of the artists actually crocheted a vacuum cleaner for her sculpture class,\u201d Blum said at the exhibition opening. \u201cOf course you could crochet a vacuum cleaner. Why not?\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>One of her last contributions to the museum before retiring was in 2025 for the exhibition \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/whyy.org\/articles\/philadelphia-art-museum-boom-1940s-art\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BOOM: Art and Design of the 1940s<\/a>.\u201d Blum curated clothes by the French haute couture designer Elsa Schiaparelli whose dresses responded to World War II in ways symbolic and practical.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese very large pockets are something that lasted throughout the war,\u201d she said in an interview last year. \u201cShe called them cash-and-carry pockets. The idea was that if you were burdened with both a handbag and a gas mask, you couldn\u2019t carry both.\u201d\n  <\/p>\n<p>Blum authored several books about historical fashion, including \u201cShocking!: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli\u201d (2003), \u201cRoberto Capucci: Art Into Fashion\u201d (2011) and \u201cPatrick Kelly: Runway of Love\u201d (2021).\n<\/p>\n<p>Blum also contributed to catalogues and scholarly books beyond the Philadelphia Art Museum. Posthumously, she will have an essay in the forthcoming catalog for the museum\u2019s exhibition \u201cWorkshop of the World: Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia,\u201d which is coming in July 2026.\n        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Her talents were showcased in 2019 in the exhibition \u201cOff the Wall.\u201d Blum put together a large show&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":508622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,1448,2830,1311,122441,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-508621","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-pa","10":"tag-pennsylvania","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-philadelphia-museum-of-art","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}