Pennsylvania Art Shows – Page 3

Pennsylvania Art Shows- “Some American Dreams” at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Ceramic Art, Collage, Conceptual Art, Drawing, Fiber Arts, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia, Photographers / Photography, Printmaking, Sculptors / Sculpture

Jun 102026

Donald Lipski, “Who’s Afraid of Red, White and Blue #37”, 1990, White wool gabardine, made in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum

Rose B. Simpson, “Tonantzin”, 2022, Linen, cotton, clay, and thread, made in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum

(L to R) Rev. Howard Finster, “George Washington Meets Martha Custis, 1984, Pigment on cotton t-shirt; James Luna, “High Tech War Shirt”, 1997-98, Smoked hide, nylon setting, silk suiting, horse hair, metal, shell buttons, bead work with watches and necklace (shell, thermometer, and plastic toys); Hock E Aye VI Edgar Heap Of Birds, “Who Owns History”, 1992, Pigment on cotton t-shirt (all works made in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum)

S.A. Bachman, “Are You Telling Yourself A Little White Lie?”, 1988, Edition of 5, Halftone photographic silkscreen pigment on nylon, made in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum

Pictured are just a few of the many excellent artworks currently on view in Some American Dreams at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. Exploring the concept of America and the American dream, all the works were created by an impressive list of artists who were Artists in Residence at the museum over the past four decades.

From the museum and curator Hilde Nelson:

In her 1986 essay “Waking Up in the Middle of Some American Dreams,” poet June Jordan calls for a multiplicity of American dreams rather than a singular paradigm. For Jordan, those in pursuit of these dreams include:

the white people the black people the female people the lonely people the terrorized people the elderly people the young people the visionary people the unemployed people the regular ordinary omnipresent people who crave grace and variety and surprise and safety and one new day after another.

On the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, this presentation of works from The Fabric Workshop and Museum’s collection explores the complexity of American-ness through lenses of history, memory, and mythology. Made by past Artists in Residence in collaboration with the FWM Studio, the projects reimagine symbols of nationhood and belonging, critique ongoing legacies of inequity, and offer expanded visions of kinship and community.

The works on view represent four decades of making at FWM. They meditate on themes including indigeneity and race, alternative origin stories, landscape and the environment, the construction of historical narrative, memory and resistance, and images of cultural affiliation. Sections of the exhibition invite additional voices, drawing their titles from a chorus of American poets, songwriters, essayists, abolitionists, and historians.

The artists featured in Some American Dreams break down borders and categorical distinctions to propose a polyphony of American dreams shaped by hybridity, friction, and affinity. They ask: what if America is not one project, but many? And how might these Americas be affirmed, resisted or remade, in Jordan’s words, to envision “one new day after another?”

This exhibition closes 6/14/26.

Pennsylvania Art Shows- Macy West at Pink Noise Projects in Philadelphia

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia

May 302026

The paintings pictured above are from Philly-based artist Macy West‘s exhibition 4:5, currently on view at Pink Noise Projects in Philadelphia until 5/31/26.

Her statement about the work from the gallery:

4:5 is a new collection of paintings considering the shorthand, diagramming, and notation that accompanies notetaking and sorting of information. I’m fascinated with perception, how we move through the world with physical bodies, how our bodies mediate our experience, and how we develop additional mediators, symbols, and signals to communicate with each other. Developed within the aesthetic parameters of the notebook, each painting relies on the repetition of form and mark. The grid, the crop, and the mask are recurring compositional strategies which reference ideation, speculation, and learning. The paintings are only 10 x 12.5 inches each, maintaining my preferred 4:5 ratio at the scale of the page.

These works respond to my own need to work through information in my studio, to prepare again and again, to edit, revise, measure, scale up, scale down, transpose, translate, cut, paste, and rotate as I try to make sense of experience: perpetual motion, the passage of time, the constant stream of images, the torrent of news, and the influx of sensory information more generally. For 4:5, many of the paintings begin with a screenprint which, like a notebook, contains and sequences the content, the image on the canvas. The structure is a primary assumption accepted to receive the meaning, which excludes as much as it organizes. My perpetual impulse toward change prevents me from flattening ideas into a single image.

The paintings reference the need for a key or an interpreter when engaging with the generated abstractions.Their meaning exists in their impenetrability, their sense of organization without understanding. They are fragmented in a way that reminds us of breakdown in communication, and the limits of human knowledge. What does it mean to know part of something? How much knowledge is required for understanding? When does position fail to provide context, but instead dilute meaning?

Artist Birthdays- Mary Cassatt

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia

May 222026

Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt was born today, May 22nd, in 1844. The oil painting above, Woman with a Pearl Necklace in a Loge, 1879, can be seen at the Philadelphia Museum of Art as part of their permanent collection.

From the museum about the work:

Cassatt created a series of theater scenes in the late 1870s, displaying an interest in city nightlife shared by many of the Impressionists. This work, showing a woman (often said to be her sister Lydia) seated in front of a mirror with the balconies of the Paris Opéra House reflected behind her, demonstrates the influence of Cassatt’s friend Edgar Degas, particularly in the attention paid to the effects of artificial lighting on flesh tones. This painting was shown in Paris at the fourth Impressionist exhibition in 1879, where it was singled out for much praise.

Artist Birthdays- Salvador Dalí

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia

May 112026

Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí was born today, May 11th, in 1904. The painting above, Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War), from 1936, is part of the Philadelphia Museum of Art‘s permanent collection. It was also included in their recent exhibition, Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100.

From the museum’s website about the work-

Salvador Dalí painted this allegory of self-inflicted carnage while living in Paris in early 1936, on the eve of the devastating civil war in his Spanish homeland between Francisco Franco’s right-wing nationalist forces and the elected Republic. The painting flaunts its flair for gruesome detail. A grimacing colossus towers over a sunbaked Spanish landscape and deliriously rips itself apart. Limbs are switched around and turned upside down, and the body’s trunk is missing entirely. A limp phallic shape draped over the truncated hip is a striking example of Dalí’s soft forms, implicitly referring to putrefaction and death. The scattered beans of the title exemplify the bizarre incongruities of scale to conjure the workings of an unconscious mind. Dalí interpreted the Spanish conflict in psychoanalytic terms, and he included an homage to Sigmund Freud, the initiator of psychoanalysis whose work inspired him to embrace such nightmarish visions, by including a tiny portrait of Freud inspecting the gnarled hand at lower left.

Pennsylvania Art Shows- Cy Twombly’s “Fifty Days at Iliam” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Books, Conceptual Art, Drawing, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia, Writers

Apr 252026

Cy Twombly “Fifty Days at Iliam: Shield of Achilles”, 1978

Cy Twombly “Fifty Days at Iliam”, 1978, oil, oil crayon, and graphite on canvas

“Fifty Days at Iliam: Achaeans in Battle”, 1978

“Fifty Days at Iliam: The Fire that Consumes All before It”, 1978

“Fifty Days at Iliam: Shades of Achilles, Patroclus and Hector”, 1978

“Fifty Days at Iliam: Shades of Eternal Night”, 1978

Cy Twombly was born today, April 25th, in 1928. One of his most famous works is Fifty Days at Iliam, his visual interpretation of Homer’s poem the Iliad. This “painting in ten parts” is currently on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and images of each of the individual works can be found on the museum’s website.

About Fifty Days at lliam from the museum-

The pinnacle of Twombly’s lifelong preoccupation with Greek and Roman mythology, Fifty Days at lliam is the artist’s rendition of the last fifty days of the Trojan War. The monumental series fuses elements of Homer’s epic poem The lliad, probably written before 700 BCE, and Alexander Pope’s translation of that poem from the 1700s.

The artist purposefully misspells the name of the besieged Trojan city as lliam, instead of the Latin llium or the Greek Ilion. The letter “a” stands as a symbol for the Greek warrior Achilles, whose rage sparked by the death of his friend Patroclus propels the end of the decade-long conflict.

Partaking in a long artistic tradition of depicting war, Twombly addresses themes of heroism and aggression, comradeship and revenge, jubilant victory and the mourning of the dead. The ten canvases can be encountered sequentially or experienced as an all-encompassing panorama that gives the sensation of witnessing the battle firsthand.

Twombly’s signature style combines the poignant gestures of abstraction with poetic allusions to classicism. Relocating from the United States to Italy in the 1950s proved decisive for Twombly’s art, which uses raw mark-making to allude to the myths of antiquity.

For a look at Twombly’s life and career, the 2018 documentary Cy Dear, is well worth a watch. The film begins with a discussion of Fifty Days at lliam, which was on view as part of a 2017 retrospective at Centre Pompidou in Paris. It also includes interviews with several of his friends and colleagues– including former assistants, his son Alessandro, art dealer Larry Gagosian, and photographer Sally Mann.

Pennsylvania Art Shows- Noah Davis at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Drawing, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia, Sculptors / Sculpture

Apr 162026

Noah Davis, “The Conductor”, 2014, Oil on canvas

A collection of photographs, notes, documents, and a video (not pictured) are located on a wall at the beginning of the exhibition

Currently at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the retrospective Noah Davis presents a collection of works from the artist’s short but impressive career.

From the museum about the show-

Noah Davis (born in 1983) drew inspiration from every corner of life: photographs dug out of bins in flea markets, books on Egyptian mythology, daytime television, history paintings, early internet blogs. He used these sources to populate his work with a cast of anonymous figures who rest and play and dance and read and swim in scenes that tug between the fictional and the imaginary, the ordinary and the fantastical.

Even as a high school student, Davis had a painting studio, a space near his family home in Seattle that his parents had rented in the hope that he would kindly stop ruining the carpets. He studied film and conceptual art at Cooper Union in New York City before assembling his own motley education among fellow artists in Los Angeles. He slid fluidly between painting styles to present a breadth of Black life, feeling keenly a responsibility to represent the people around him. In 2012, Davis and his wife Karon cofounded the Underground Museum, in the historically Black and Latinx Los Angeles neighborhood of Arlington Heights. There they transformed three storefronts into a cultural center that was free and open to all.

This exhibition, the first museum retrospective of Davis’s work, highlights his relentless creativity from 2007 until his untimely death in 2015, and his devotion to all aspects of a person’s encounter with art. As he put it simply: “Painting does something to your soul that nothing else can. It is visceral and immediate.”

Below are a few selections-

“Isis”, 2009, Oil and acrylic on linen

Artist Karon Davis, Noah’s wife, discussed Isis on the audio tour provided for Hammer Museum’s version of the exhibition.

Below is an excerpt from the transcript-

…Isis is based on a photo Noah took the day I unfurled two large fans, each with cheesy images of an Egyptian king and queen printed on their surface, and painted them yellow with house paint. I threw on my sister’s Naja’s old gold dance leotard from the 80s with sequins lining the hems and tassels that hung off my butt and sparkled like tinsel.

Noah said, “Stand there. You are Isis.” Using the fans as wings, I raised my arms and opened them. He snapped the pic and quickly retreated to paint. Egypt has always held a special place in my heart. When Noah and I met, I was studying ancient myths and history. I had just left my production job in Hollywood and was exploring film projects. Black Wall Street, Black Cowboys, Stepin Fetchit, The Frogs, Egyptian mythology, and so on.

Noah joined me on these journeys through history, and our home became a portal where imaginations could run wild. We exchanged stories, dreams, and techniques of making art. He painted and we lost ourselves in the magical time.

You can see both of us in this painting. Noah’s reflection is behind me in the window of our home. This painting holds so much for me. It is our past, and it is my present, and future in both painting and in life. I am Isis, and Noah is Osiris.

In ancient Egyptian mythology, Isis assembles all the scattered parts of Osiris in order to cast a spell to make him whole again, so he can live forever as a god. Noah is my Osiris. He will live forever through his work. My assignment is gathering these parts of my love and protecting them..

“Pueblo del Rio: Arabesque”, 2014, Oil on canvas

From the museum about the paintings above-

These works were inspired by Pueblo del Rio, a housing project designed in part by Paul Williams in 1941 for Black defense workers in Los Angeles. The projects were built along the concept of a “garden city,” with shared lawns and outdoor spaces designed to promote community, but they quickly degenerated into one of the most impoverished and dangerous areas in the city. In quiet resistance to this reality, Davis reimagined Pueblo del Rio as a place of harmony and accord, where ballet dancers arabesque and a trumpeter plays.

The exhibition also includes Davis’s Imitation of Wealth, pictured below, where he recreated famous works of art.

“Imitation of Wealth” -Davis’s versions of sculptures by Dan Flavin and Marcel Duchamp along with a real On Kawara painting

From the museum-

Davis’s father left him a small inheritance, specifically for fostering community and joy. Davis and Karon rented three storefronts in the Arlington Heights section of Los Angeles, and started devoting themselves to what would become known as the Underground Museum (UM) – an art space, free and open to all — made possible by his father’s legacy. Davis’s paintings of this time reveal a man deeply invested in the question of what he felt had been missing all these years: spaces for “the people around me” to feel recognized and to congregate. The exhibition The Missing Link opened at Roberts & Tilton Gallery in Los Angeles in February 2013.

Davis persuaded his gallery to throw the opening dinner at the UM, which became the museum’s unofficial opening. He served frogs’ legs and champagne, and guests were able to enjoy new sculptures by Karon, as well as their first jointly curated show: Imitation of Wealth. When no museums would lend, Davis decided he would simply make do himself: “What if we just use what we have — like these ugly-ass lights.” The building’s LED strip lights were turned into an imitation Dan Flavin sculpture, while a $70 vacuum cleaner from Craigslist became a knockoff Jeff Koons. The exhibition became a kind of elegy to the bootleg, the title alluding to Douglas Sirk’s 1959 melodrama Imitation of Life, in which the young Black protagonist passes as white.

The museum included one work from their own collection, On Kawara‘s 3. JUNI 2001, in this recreation, with an interesting coincidence-

When he started bootlegging his own artworks, he made a fake On Kawara painting with the date of Oct. 7, 1957, to mark his father, Keven Davis’s, birthday. To honor his original spirit and ambition, we are lending this authentic On Kawara from our collection to join his “imitations” — it’s a special coincidence that the date is Noah Davis’s own birthday. The year 2001 was when he moved to New York to become an artist; a moment that led to everything else in this exhibition.

This exhibition closes 4/26/26.

Pennsylvania Art Shows- Aitor Lajarin-Encina at Pentimenti in Philadelphia

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia

Mar 312026

“Neighbors”, acrylic on canvas, 2025

“Neighbors” (detail)

“Neighbors” (detail)

“Bird and Fish”, acrylic on canvas, 2025

The paintings in Aitor Lajarin-Encina‘s exhibition Flora, Fauna, and Furniture at Pentimenti gallery in Philadelphia contain tiny elements that tell bigger stories. The longer you look, the more your interpretation may change.

From the gallery-

Aitor Lajarin-Encina’s paintings engage in dialogue with global histories of painting and popular image-making traditions, drawing from sources as varied as Baroque art, Constructivism, satirical cartoons, and video games. They function as visual poems, inviting viewers into moments of existential suspense that spark philosophical reflections on life and relationships between people, objects, and the environment.

At first glance, Aitor’s playful, cartoony, oneiric acrylic-on-canvas paintings appear figurative and tightly composed, relying heavily on narrative tension and visual appeal. They unfold as dreamlike tableaux populated by recurring iconographic elements: human figures, horses, celestial bodies, domestic furniture and objects, clothing, parks, cityscapes, plants, and everyday items. Beneath this apparently flat appearance, the surface opens into multiple layers rich with texture—drips, splatters, bumps, and accidents—carefully constructed and physically present in his work.

Lajarin-Encina approaches art as an immediate and intuitive experience, emphasizing its poetic intensity and emotional resonance rather than hidden or symbolic meanings. At the same time, the work offers a critique of a world designed by humans to be “user-friendly,” while simultaneously estranging people from the natural mysteries and wonders of the world.

This exhibition closes 4/4/26.

Pennsylvania Art Shows- Ava Blitz at Philadelphia International Airport

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Glasswork, Installation Art, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia

Mar 262026

Ava Blitz created this glass mosaic, Pink, in 2012 for Philadelphia International Airport. It is part of Philadelphia’s Percent for Art Program.

From Art at PHL-

Philadelphia artist Ava Blitz works in various artistic disciplines including sculpture and photography. In either medium, Blitz is inspired by nature and natural forms. In her sculptural work, she is known to mass similar objects together to suggest continual growth and to emulate the abundance of repetitive forms found in nature. Her sculpture is often large-scale and abstract with minimal detail to capture nature’s basic essence and to encourage the viewer’s imagination. Blitz also photographs nature, usually imagery that she has taken while on walks near her home. The photographs, typically of trees, feature variations of dense, lush foliage. Using digital photography, Blitz is able to heighten the color and alter the imagery to emphasize the beauty and mystery that inspires her artwork.

In Pink, Blitz has incorporated her photography and her interest in nature, abstraction, and repetition to create a glass tile mosaic. She describes the artwork as “playing with the edge between realism and abstraction to create a magical forest or garden – a virtual reality that viewers can enter, explore, and experience on multiple levels.” Seen from a distance, the branches and pink blossoms are recognizable. Yet up close, the tree dissolves into an abstraction of tactile, colorful, iridescent glass tiles.

Pennsylvania Art Shows- Sarah Zwerling at Philadelphia International Airport

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Installation Art, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia, Photographers / Photography

Mar 262026

Sarah Zwerling‘s digital collage Hamilton Street, Philadelphia, is on view at the Philadelphia International Airport as part of their exhibition programming.

From Art at PHL’s website–

Philadelphia artist Sarah Zwerling was invited to create a site-specific artwork installed directly on two interior glass enclosures located in Terminal A-East. Zwerling, whose work often features nature and architectural structures, has combined these influences as she has re-imagined her neighborhood street — an area in West Philadelphia characterized by its abundance of twin homes. Using digital photography, Zwerling focused on the rooflines of the Hamilton Street homes in combination with various trees found throughout nearby Fairmount Park. The imagery lines both sides of the concourse similar to the experience of walking along a narrow residential street like Hamilton. Zwerling has emphasized and altered aspects of the homes and the trees, even adding stylized blossoms and birds to animate the landscape and enhance the overall beauty and sense of wonderment.

Pennsylvania Exhibitions- Philadelphia International Records 50th Anniversary Installation at Philadelphia International Airport

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, History, Installation Art, Music, Musicians / Bands, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia

Mar 062026

If you have time between flights at Philadelphia International Airport, in addition to the many artworks on view, you can also learn about some of Philadelphia’s musical history. An installation dedicated to the 50th Anniversary of the music label Philadelphia International Records is currently on display in Terminal A.