Anndee Hochman

Philadelphia

Freelance Journalist at The Philadelphia Inquirer

freelance journalist & teacher; writer of The Parent Trip for the Philadelphia Inquirer

Articles

Philly arts organizations speak up after the Trump administration…

1 week ago | broadstreetreview.com | Anndee Hochman

A $40,000 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant to Philadelphia Young Playwrightspromised to pay for a dozen teaching artists to work with 200 public school students—residencies that are about to conclude for the 2024-25 school year. A $15,000 NEA award was to finance the end-of-year show—including the salary and travel costs for a director from France—for students at Circadium School of Contemporary Circus in Mt. Airy, the country’s only accredited circus college.
New accessibility options at Ensemble Arts open doors to audiences…

2 weeks ago | broadstreetreview.com | Anndee Hochman

Jaci Brown, who is Deaf and lives in Trenton, used to schlep to Broadway for ASL-interpreted performances, making plans months in advance, if she wanted to truly enjoy a musical show. When she attended shows closer to home with her hearing friends, she knew she wasn’t getting the whole story. “I would be sitting there, watching it, thinking: the show is good, but I’m not getting the lines, the content of the story.
The Museum for Art in Wood presents The Longest Distance Between Two…

2 weeks ago | broadstreetreview.com | Anndee Hochman

It’s a giraffe, right? The figure stands sentry at the opening of woodworker/illustrator Katie Hudnall’s delightful, mind-bending exhibition, The Longest Distance Between Two Points, at the Museum for Art in Wood. Like other three-dimensional pieces in the show, this one is fashioned of salvaged wood, string, springs, and hardware. It has a long, thin, arc of a neck and a delicate isosceles of a face. It stands on three balletic legs, as if dancing on point. And it’s not alone.
Germantown couple’s art meets activism at iMPeRFeCT Gallery - The Chestnut Hill Local

3 weeks ago | chestnuthilllocal.com | Anndee Hochman

Plenty of kids doodle, draw and dabble in art, then drop those pursuits as they grow older. Karen Singer and Peter Handler never stopped. The Germantown couple, activists who believe that art can build awareness and connection, have been making things all their lives. Singer, 70, works in ceramics, creating large-scale tile installations for nonprofits and other institutions, along with individual pieces.
Can you pass this quiz on the first 100 days of Trump’s second term?

4 weeks ago | broadstreetreview.com | Anndee Hochman

1) Which of these did Donald Trump promise (or threaten) in the first 100 days of his administration?
Blind filmmaker David Y. Block is finally telling his own story

2 months ago | broadstreetreview.com | Anndee Hochman

For years, David Y. Block made short documentaries about other people’s struggles. How Sweet the Sound followed John Sutton, a blind man who, for decades, sang in the Suburban Station concourse, drawing appreciation and small change from passers-by. Who Said You Can’t Dance highlighted competitive wheelchair dancers. And Gift Horses showed how riding and grooming horses can be a balm for people with autism or those recovering from grief.
Philadelphia Magic Gardens presents Lost Landscapes: The Skin of the…

Feb 12, 2025 | broadstreetreview.com | Anndee Hochman

Seeing the other sideThe building, sold to a developer in 2022 and slated for demolition despite a five-year effort to save it and the mural, remains shuttered and vacant. And “The Skin of the Bride”—at least, the pieces that a crew from Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens (PMG) managed to chisel off intact—resides in 60 bankers’ boxes in a South Philly warehouse.
If it "didn’t accomplish anything" last time, why do I keep marching?

Feb 10, 2025 | broadstreetreview.com | Anndee Hochman

It was billed as a rally to “choose love.” More specifically, an action organized by the New Sanctuary Movement, other immigrant-advocacy groups, and local faith communities to defend Philadelphia’s Sanctuary City policies. It was a chilly Saturday: a high of 36 degrees in the occasional sunlight that poked through a scrim of clouds.
The Museum for Art in Wood presents La Famiglia

Jan 7, 2025 | broadstreetreview.com | Anndee Hochman

The exhibition is called La Famiglia. But it could easily, and cheekily, be titled Family Trees. In this collection of turned-wood figures and faces—both whimsical and profound—artist Mark Sfirri pokes at questions of likeness and difference, ancestry and environment: Are families forged from a common root, a set of shared experiences, or a series of accidents and choices? The work says yes: all of the above.
A new take on cooking with Margaret Eby's You Gotta Eat

Nov 14, 2024 | broadstreetreview.com | Anndee Hochman

Not more than you can chewEby has been there. “I am a person who has been to culinary school,” she said in a recent interview.