Sep 032026
 

Cynthia Daignault, “Light Atlas”, 2014-2016, Oil on linen (detail)

Light Atlas, a painting series by Cynthia Daignault, was on view at Akron Art Museum in 2024.

From the museum:

In 2014, Cynthia Daignault began driving north from her home in Brooklyn, New York. She turned west in New England and south at the Pacific Northwest, and she kept going until she had traced the entire outer perimeter of the continental United States. Having calculated the necessary distance, the artist stopped about every twenty-seven miles to make a sketch so that she could record a total of 360 images, representing the full circle of her journey. After five months on the road, she returned to her studio and created the paintings of Light Atlas. In each picture, Daignault placed the horizon line at the center, helping to suggest a continuous narrative and a collective portrait of the country. Having intentionally set out in the spring, she aimed to capture a mood of optimism and rebirth.

This series is currently on view as an installation at Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, NY. The 360 landscape paintings, will be on view until November 1st. On Saturday, September 12th, you can create a landscape painting with her for the site’s Second Saturday Workshop, and on Sunday she will be discussing Light Atlas for their Sunday Salon lecture series.

Daignault’s recent series, based on Yosemite National Park‘s iconic Tunnel View, is on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston until January 2027. For these paintings she used “the “mediated consciousness” of digital images, to meditate on our urgent and evolving relationship with the American landscape”.

For more about this series, this interview, from the museum’s website, provides more background on many of the conceptual ideas she is exploring with this work.

 

Installation view, Cynthia Daignault: Valley, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, 2026-27. Photo by Mel Taing (Image via the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston website)

Aug 282026
 

As part of their programming for the nation’s 250th birthday, Delaware Art Museum is showing the work of local artists in their current exhibition, The People’s Gallery. It is a non-juried exhibition which allowed artists at all levels to contribute work.

It’s a fantastic opportunity to see what this community of artists has created and to purchase local art. Check it out before it closes on 9/6/26.

Aug 262026
 

Paintings by E. Lizé

The members of this year’s Artist-in-Residence Cohort (ARC) at The Delaware Contemporary, Mo Berrouet, E.Lizé, and Celeste M. Rodriguez, each explored an element of the self for their culminating exhibition, Self, Realized.

This exhibition was curated by Amber M. Chacana, the first ARC curator-in-residence, and closes on 8/30/26.

Paintings by E. Lizé

E. Lizé’s series is titled Familial World.

E.Lizé is a musical artist and trained visual artist, who paints portraits and scenes dedicated to the Black experience. E.Lizé’s goal is to bridge the gap between predecessors and successors in order to remain a catalyst in preserving Black culture and Black history. E.Lizé is dedicated to archiving and preserving cultural and artistic history. She has a strong interest in tangible history and what it means to inherit it.

Inspired by the women who raised her, E.Lizé created these portraits as a way to honor their legacies and their lives (so far). In doing so, she created a personal archive, marked by her own perspective and care for her family.

Paintings by Mo Berrouet

Mo Berrouet‘s series of work is titled Emotional World.

From the museum:

Mo Berrouet is a visual artist based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with a BFA from West Chester University. Her work explores themes of mental and physical health, personal narrative, and the complexities of the human experience, expressed through a variety of mediums including painting, sculpture, ceramics, and photography.

Berrouet delves into the world of her emotions and how they exist within her body, and how her body exists in relation to her emotions. While her subject matter is personal, the emotions and feelings within them resonate with others. For Berrouet, our collective human experiences inspire her.

Work by Celeste M. Rodriguez

Celeste M. Rodriguez chose Cultural World for this body of work.

From the museum:

Celeste M. Rodriguez is a Puerto Rican-American artist born and raised in Camden, NJ. She received her B.A. in Painting from Rutgers University-Camden. Her work examines the complex relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States through visual storytelling, addressing themes of colonialism, cultural erasure, and resilience. Utilizing video, painting, drawing, sculpture, and collage. She confronts exploitation while honoring Puerto Rican strength. She views art as personal and political, and through her art, reimagines a future for Puerto Rico rooted in dignity and self-determination.

Aug 262026
 

“Calla Lilly Cloud”, 2024, Acrylic and mediums on stretched linen support

In John Breakey‘s paintings for Passing Each Other, at The Delaware Contemporary, he uses flowers and skies to explore the passing of time.

His statement about the work:

Foreground flowers and background sky move at their own pace and span of life.

Together, composed for specific periods within the day, combined to express captured growth and deliberate movement.

A cloud’s soft color shifts throughout time; they can’t seem to sit still.

And what about the flower? Each blossom evolves, invisibly slow. By days, but finite.

Flowers being what they are, fall.
Clouds, how quickly they can pass.

Like the years, the more one has.
This is my current work; a series that mixes different forms of time.

In the work above, Yellow Calla Lillies (2026) he reorders the panels to explore these ideas even further.

He says this about the painting:

I have an engraving by Aki Kuroda in the studio that speaks quietly to me: Flower X, 2004. Simplicity and grace packed into eight by ten inches. It served as a challenge to make this rendition of lillies more simple. Not graphic, not hard edged like Kuroda’s work but a new version of the work to the immediate right.

There was a deliberate choice to flip the left and right panels: these works are about time.

Two kinds.
Faster as the clouds pass.
Slower; a flower’s young green pigments before moving to dark.

Reordering the panels was my way of asking if moments are what we think they are.
Is how we account for time spent as linear as a best guess recall or something else?

This exhibition closes 8/30/26.

Aug 212026
 

“Gigantica und der Messerschmitts”, 1965, Acrylic on panel in artist’s frame

“Bird Toy”, 1965, Acrylic on panel in artist’s frame

These paintings were on view in Gladys Nilsson: Honk! Fifty Years of Painting at Matthew Marks Gallery in NYC in the early part of 2020. Nilsson was one of the original members of the Hairy Who, a group of Chicago artists who exhibited together in the mid-1960s.

Now in her 80s, her first museum retrospective, Gleefully Askew, is currently at Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento and features paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints from her six decade career. This exhibition is on view until 11/29/26.

For more information, Artforum recently published a great profile of Nilsson in their Summer issue.

Aug 202026
 

Philadelphia artist Jim Houser created this mural, Wide Open, in 2019 for Mural Arts Philadelphia.

From Mural Arts:

Wide Open by artist Jim Houser features a design that speaks directly to the artist’s view of Philadelphia. Located in the Northern Liberties neighborhood, the mural’s themes include the concept of brotherly love, family and friends, a love of skateboarding and music, and the complex interaction of danger and beauty. The struggle of loss, hope and pride in where one lives intertwine in this striking mural.

His mixed media paintings, seen below, were also recently on view at Philadelphia’s Paradigm Gallery.

Work by Jim Houser at Paradigm Gallery in May of this year

You can find his most recent work on Instagram.

Aug 132026
 

“Lightning Strike Lamp”, 2025

Top: “Piano Shelf”, 2014, Lacquered mahogony, steel ; Bottom: “Wave Cabinet”, Lacquered Baltic birch, steel, glass

“Occupy Chair”, 2012

“IMAGINE Neon”, 2025, Neon tubing

Detail from wall of AI generated drawings behind “IMAGINE Neon”

Mixing art, design, and politics, Sebastian Errazuriz‘s exhibition Double Take at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is a lot of fun. On one side of the room a neon bolt of lightning repeatedly flashes against the wall, while on another neon letters alternate between “IMAGINE” and “AGI” (Artificial General Intelligence) illuminating AI-generated drawings based on his original sketches. There’s also uniquely designed furniture, lamps made using taxidermy chickens, chairs referencing the Occupy Movement, objects incorporating Greco-Roman statue head reproductions, and more, all encouraging visitors to think about nature, technology, and the world around them.

From the museum:

Sebastian Errazuriz (Chilean, born 1977) twists our typical expectations and experiences of using furniture, lighting, and everyday objects. Embracing humor and appropriation, his limited edition and one-of-a-kind pieces often have a subtext that goes beyond form or function, offering personal narrative, a political message, or cultural commentary. This mid-career survey presents over twenty years of a multi-hyphenate practice that gives design a conceptual, Surrealist slant.

Works featured in the exhibition span art, craft, design, and technology. His “kinetic” furniture, constructed from the early 2010s, is characterized by moveable parts – doors, drawers, and shelves that are repositionable, creating new configurations. Other works take nature as a source of inspiration or make new and surprising use of found objects, including vintage watches and taxidermy fowl. Also on display are furniture, mirrors, and other objects that the designer creates by scanning original Greco-Roman antiquities that are then digitally-manipulated and recast in poured marble. A newly commissioned fluorescent light explores Errazuriz’s fascination with, and apprehension about, the potential impact of Artificial General Intelligence on artists, designers, and culture more broadly.

The diverse works on view convey imagination and wit, while also bewildering those who encounter them. The pieces are meant to be lived with, but, at the same time, are provocations with an air of mystery around their function and meaning. Attesting to Errazuriz’s expansive definition of design, the works in this exhibition suggest alternate ways of seeing, thinking, and living.

The show is on view until 8/16/26.

 

Aug 062026
 

Leonard A. Harmon, “Untitled”, c.1980s, Oil on masonite

Leonard D. Harmon, “Last Copper Moon”, 2025, Acrylic, spray paint, oxidized copper shavings, paper on wood panel

Leonard D. Harmon, “Last Copper Moon”, 2025 (detail)

Delaware Art Museum‘s Living Indigenous showcases and celebrates Indigenous communities and artists in multiple locations in the museum. The exhibition is part of the museum’s programming for the 250th anniversary of the United States.

Developed in partnership with the Nanticoke Indian Museum, one room dedicated to works created by Indigenous artists includes paintings by Leonard A. Harmon and his nephew, Leonard D. Harmon.

From the museum and artist about Last Copper Moon (pictured above):

Leonard D. Harmon notes the rich artistic legacy that precedes him. He explains, “I draw inspiration from my ancestors to infuse a modern twist into traditional arts.” This painting references the architectural forms his uncle, Leonard A. Harmon, was creating in the 1980s. A copper moon, or total lunar eclipse, is a sacred Indigenous occurrence, and the images Harmon includes refer to associated rituals.

The exhibition continues upstairs with two different series of portraits of members of Delaware’s Indigenous communities– Will Wilson‘s Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange (CIPX) and Andre’ L. Wright, Jr.’s Indigenous Faces of Wilmington. In 2022 the museum invited Wilson to continue his CIPX project in Delaware and facilitated a photoshoot of citizens of the Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware (The Original People) and the Nanticoke Indian Tribe (The Tidewater People). That same year the museum also commissioned Andre’ L. Wright, Jr. to create a project showcasing diverse Wilmingtonians, two of which are pictured below.

Two portraits by Andre’ L. Wright, Jr. from his series “Indigenous Faces of Wilmington”

Living Indigenous is on view until 8/23/26 and the museum is free to visit every Thursday from 4-8pm.

Aug 042026
 

In Miguel Horn‘s 2021 artwork ContraFuerte, his figures, made from aluminum plates, appear to be holding up a bridge between two buildings. Located on Cuthbert Street, an alley off of 18th Street in downtown Philadelphia, it was created as part of the city’s Percent for Art program.

For additional information on the work, check out this article from WHYY.

 

Jul 292026
 

Jenny Holzer was born today, July 29th, in 1950. Pictured in this post are some of her famous Truisms, when they were on view at Akron Art Museum.

Her latest exhibition, Wrong Answers, is currently at the Serralves Museum in Portugal, closing November 1st.