PHOTOS: Kimmel Center’s SEI Spring Cocktail Party

The Kimmel Center hosted the SEI Spring Cocktail Party to welcome international artist Long-Bin Chen to Philadelphia for the spring exhibition of the West Collection’s “The Composers.”

The exhibit is made up of busts of some of the world’s greatest classical composers, created entirely out of the pages of books. The artist told me he chose books he believes each composer would have read. For instance, Chopin’s head comprised a lot of children’s reads, and Strauss’s noggin was full of women’s empowerment books, like Our Bodies, Ourselves, which was a very controversial page-turner published in the ’70s. On top of that, with the push of a button, each sculpture plays an excerpt of the composers’ work courtesy of The Philadelphia Orchestra.

See photos from the exhibition launch party below.