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.
“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.
New Deal Posters
Willie Cole, “Rolanda”, November 5, 1978, Pastel on brown paper bag. This work was created while Cole was a CETA employee in Delaware
Photographs from the 1975 CETA-funded project “CITYSIGHTS/CITYSOUNDS” in Wilmington
Dorothea Lange, “Migrant Mother, Nipomo, CA”, 1936
Clockwise from top left: William Davidson White, “Children in the Tree”,1934; Michael J. Gallagher, “A Man’s Job”, c.1933-1934; Philip N. Yates, “Broken Nets”, 1934; Walter Willoughby, “Winter Landscape”, c. 1933-1934
Helen Farr Sloan, “W.P.A. Theater”c.1935, Oil on board. It depicts a Federal Theater production during the Depression in NYC’s Washington Square Park. These productions were often free or heavily discounted.
At a time when government arts funding and jobs programs are needed more than ever, Citizen Artist at Delaware Art Museum reminds visitors of the positive and long lasting impact of two past initiatives- The New Deal in the 1930s and 1940s, and the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1973 (CETA). Featuring artwork created during these both of these time periods, the exhibition also highlights the important contributions made by artists in their communities.
From the museum about the exhibition:
Citizen Artist highlights diverse artists working for America during 1930s and 1940s Depression-era programs and federally funded initiatives of the 1970s. The New Deal and the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act were catalysts in Delaware and across the nation as economic relief programs amplified the arts, creating new possibilities for creative employment. This exhibition centers artists as historians, storytellers, and visionaries during the Semiquincentennial.
Through the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1973 (CETA), the Department of Labor supported a nation’s worth of art programs on a scale not seen since the conclusion of the New Deal in 1943. Those New Deal artists that outlived the Federal Art Project never forgot the significance of their work for the public, and they took that knowledge to the classrooms and administrative offices where they carried out the rest of their careers. CETA was designed as a jobs program, not an arts program, but Title VI of the legislation funded opportunities for the cyclically unemployed —artists—in public service roles. When CETA arrived in the 1970s, artists and their allies across the nation quickly understood its potential in the context of the legacy of the New Deal.
Citizen Artist is a story about reciprocal support between artists and communities. The exhibition celebrates artists who found lasting success through their participation in fine art programs like the Public Works of Art Project and CETA-funded contemporary art spaces. We also honor the public service work undertaken by tens of thousands of New Deal and CETA-funded artists, especially the painters, puppeteers, and photographers who produced educational resources and performances for children across the nation. Citizen Artist looks back at the intertwined histories of CETA and the New Deal to elevate how artists can and do support the public. By working in graphics offices, writers’ programs, and darkrooms, New Deal and CETA artists created and transformed the physical and cultural infrastructure of the United States.
Included within Citizen Artist is Citizen Photographer, an exhibition of images created by Delaware photographers for the U.S.’s 250th anniversary.
From the museum about Citizen Photographer:
What does it mean to be a Delawarean at the nation’s 250th anniversary? The Delaware Art Museum, collaborating with Wilmington’s Teen Warehouse, the Smyrna Opera House, and the Lewes Public Library, invited residents across the state to engage in civic reflection and contribute to shaping public perceptions of identity through photography. Citizen Photographer is inspired by the federally funded initiatives of the past, such as the Farm Security Administration and the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act. These were times when documenting the nation and the many people who called it home was an earnest endeavor, the means to understand and appreciate our individuality, humanity, and common needs.
At the United States 250th anniversary in 2026, this project offers multiple ways for Delawareans to engage as learners, artists, and citizens contributing to the state’s shared story. Photographers Morris Brown II, B. Proud, and Andre’ Wright, Jr. led workshops across the state and selected the 24 photographs on view. For Wright, Jr., Citizen Photographer is “about perspective, voices, and the stories people choose to tell about where they come from.” Proud reflects how local photographers “captured the many facets of Delaware, from its cities to its farmlands, from its people to its landscapes, revealing why the state truly lives up to one of its nicknames, ‘Small Wonder.'” Morris invites us to “take the time to treasure each photograph and to experience each Delaware love story on exhibit.”
This exhibition closes 7/19/26.
“Alberto Ayala”, acrylic on wood; Portrait of Roberto Lugo’s grandfather; and “Potpourri Boat”, Ceramic sculpture
Art history, American history, and personal history mix in Roberto Lugo‘s exhibition, American Crib: What’s Happening?, currently on view at The Clay Studio. Wandering around the installation you’ll find portraits of Nikki Giovanni and Lugo’s grandfather, Billie Holiday and The Roots on ceramic sculptures, and plenty of places to sit and take it all in – including a graffitied train car.
From The Clay Studio’s website:
Roberto Lugo welcomes visitors into an imagined living space celebrating his Philadelphia roots and cultural heritage. This deeply personal reflection on America’s socio-political landscape celebrates the power of art to communicate. Lugo mixes historical pottery traditions with pop culture, humor, and critical clarity to address complex issues, including cultural identity, mental health, social justice, and the resilience of underrepresented communities.
This exhibition is a part of Radical Americana. A larger multi-location project that brings together art and culture institutions around Philadelphia. Learn more about Radical Americana here.
More than just a retrospective of Lugo’s career so far, “American Crib: What’s Happening?” will be a deeply personal and poignant reflection on America’s socio-economic and political landscape.
And the Lugo’s statement about his work:
My work is intended to be a biographical narrative that tells the many stories of my life. The objects I create speak of personal subjects – my experiences with obesity, racism, and class division. I use the associations with ceramic material and forms of pottery, such as elite fine china and porcelain, to discuss these issues with humor and irony. My strongest concepts are influenced from the juxtaposition of cultural elements in the form of mass media and current events. Using historical ideology within pottery as a vehicle to introduce a modern theme is of great importance because it allows me to add more dimensions to my artwork.
In the video below, also from The Clay Studio’s website, Lugo discusses the work, some of his inspirations, and the installation.
This exhibition closes 7/9/26.
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.
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.
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.
Thea Abu El-Haj, “Architecture of Exile”, 2023, oil on board
Rayan Elnayal, “The courtyard lit up-Al Hoash Nawar”, 2023, digital print
Shira Walinsky’s installation
For This Place Meant at The Delaware Contemporary, artists Thea Abu El-Haj, Rayan Elnayal, and Shira Walinsky each present work that reflects aspects of what home means to them.
From the museum about the exhibition-
This Place Meant explores how three artists think about and imagine home when they are far from it. Each artist explores their lived or past relationship with the place they call home and where they are now. Thea Abu El-Haj remembers the home she once knew, Rayan Elnayal imagines a home she hopes to know, and Shira Walinsky shares the home she knows with new neighbors. If you were forced to leave your home, whether to be closer to family, to find a better life, to escape natural disasters or political trouble, how would you share memories from where you once lived? What parts of that place would you describe: the colors, the smells, the sounds?
We hope you tell them what that place meant to you.
Below are some additional works and the artist bios from The Delaware Contemporary’s website.
Paintings by Thea Abu El-Haj
As a Palestinian American artist, Thea’s work excavates personal and collective narratives of loss, exile, and resistance, even as it celebrates the beauty and joy around us. She is drawn to the imprint of human history on the natural landscape. Growing up in the Middle East, the colors, quality of light, and traces of millennia of human presence continue to resonate through her work, even as the landscapes of the Northeastern U.S. where she has lived her adult life influence what she paints. Buildings and stone walls in the process of decay; light coming through dark and dark through light; the quality of color at different times of day are all sources for her work.
Digital prints by Rayan Elnayal
Rayan Elnayal is a Sudanese artist, designer, and educator based in London, with a background in architecture. In 2020, she transitioned from traditional practice to an alternative one that fosters a more equitable and creative approach to design but also nurtures her artistic pursuits. She is also the co-founder and director of Space Black, a collective of Black professionals in the built environment, dedicated to imagining alternative spatial futures for marginalised communities.
Her pieces invite viewers to step into these imagined spaces and explore them. Her work challenges us to reflect on our personal attitudes toward futurism and futuristic aesthetics, while reminding us that our envisioned future built environments can honour our heritages, communities, and shared joy.
Shira Walinsky is an interdisciplinary artist and teacher. Her work centers on people and places in the City of Philadelphia. She has worked in Philadelphia for 20 years on murals, paintings, photography, films and other public participatory work. The map can be a portrait of places and the face a map of our experiences. She is interested in how the vibrant and the sensory can amplify the stories of people and place. This manifests in bus wraps, films, photography, painting and murals. In 2012 she co-founded Southeast by Southeast with Mural Arts Philadelphia. Southeast by Southeast is a community space co-created with social workers and artists and community leaders for and with refugee and immigrant communities. Shira strives to create innovative projects which elevate the resilience of immigrant and refugee stories.
This exhibition, part of the museum’s Winter/Spring exhibitions, closes on 4/26/26.
Kadir Nelson, “Harlem On My Mind”, 2016, Oil on canvas, Cover for The New Yorker, February 22, 2016
There’s only a few days left to see the excellent and informative exhibition Imprinted: Illustrating Race at Delaware Art Museum.
From the museum about the exhibition–
The Norman Rockwell Museum assembled Imprinted: Illustrating Race with co-curator Robyn Phillips-Pendleton, a professor at the University of Delaware. The exhibition honors Rockwell’s powerful images supporting the Civil Rights Movement, displaying his work within a sweeping historical survey of American illustration that features illustrators including Romare Bearden, Emory Douglas, Howard Pyle, and Loveis Wise.
Illustration has been at the forefront of defining events in the United States, from the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era to the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, moving forward to today. Imprinted examines widely circulated imagery, conceived and published over the course of more than three centuries, which has reflected and shaped perceptions of race across time.
Featuring over 200 artworks commissioned by publishers and advertisers, the exhibition traces harmful and prolific stereotypical representations of race that were historically sanctioned and prominently featured in newspapers, magazines, and books, on trade cards, posters, and advertisements, and on packaging and products. Imprinted also celebrates the concerted efforts of 20th and 21st century artists and editors to shift the cultural narrative through the publication—in print and across digital platforms—of positive, inclusive imagery emphasizing full agency and equity for all.
Norman Rockwell, “Murder in Mississippi”, 1965, Oil on canvas (Unpublished, intended as the final illustration for “Southern Justice” by Charles Morgan, Jr, in Look, June 29, 1965)
From the museum about the Rockwell work above-
In 1963, Rockwell turned his attention to the documentation of America’s most pressing social concerns and the subject of human rights by making works for Look magazine.
In the beginning of 1965, Rockwell began work on a piece about the murders of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman-three young civil rights workers who were in Mississippi to expand voter registration.
He wanted the painting to express his outrage. In a letter to Look art director Allen Hurlburt, Rockwell wrote: “I tried in a big way…to make an angry picture. If I just had a bit of Ben Shahn in me it would have helped.”
Shahn’s portraits of the three activists are also on view next Rockwell’s.
Below is Jacob Lawrence‘s painting, The Brown Angel.
Jacob Lawrence, “The Brown Angel”, 1959, Tempera on gesso panel
From the museum-
In the 1940s and 1950s, Lawrence painted a series of compelling works inspired by nightlife and its social atmosphere. In The Brown Angel, the painting’s sharp, edgy forms convey a sense of unease, perhaps pointing to the mounting racial tensions of the time.
Several of Ahmed Samuel Milai’s series of comic-style historical portraits are also on view.
Ahmed Samuel Milai, “Marie Laveau, III”, 1966, Ink, benday, and conte crayon on board For “Facts About the Negro” by J. A. Rogers, in The Pittsburgh Courier, April 2, 1966
From the museum-
Milai was an editorial and comic strip cartoonist for the Pittsburgh Courier, an influential African American weekly newspaper published from 1907 to 1966. For 30 years, he illustrated “Your History,” a cartoon feature that became known in the 1960s as “Facts About the Negro.”
Designed to celebrate and inspire pride in the accomplishments of people of color across the fields of the arts, literature, education, and science, the series brought Black history to light at a time when such information was not widely acknowledged or shared.
You can find a few more of his illustrations here.
Thanks to the support of The Gilliam Foundation, for Black History Month the museum is offering free admission (including the exhibition), every Saturday in February. The exhibition closes 3/1/26.
Giorgio de Chirico, “Portrait of Guillaume Apollinaire”,1914, Oil and charcoal on canvas
René Magritte, “The Secret Double”, 1927, Oil on Canvas
Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art presents a large collection of works, in a variety of mediums, from the artistic movement. The show takes you through Surrealism’s history and is filled with many inventive and imaginative pieces- including several from lesser-known artists.
From the museum about the exhibition-
Surrealism burst onto the scene in Paris in 1924. French writer André Breton announced the aims of this revolutionary literary and artistic movement in his Manifesto of Surrealism. It started with a question: How, ideally, should we live? Breton observed that, at about twenty years of age, we make the error of trading our childlike imaginations for adult good sense and logic. Yet it’s the imagination that allows access to the innate state of freedom that we all possess. And maintaining freedom, Breton proposed, should always be the highest human aspiration.
Surrealism’s ambitions were broad and bold: its adherents wanted nothing less than a revolution in consciousness. To that end, they explored a method of experimental poetry called automatic writing, comparable to spoken free association, done spontaneously and, as far as possible, without conscious intent. Sigmund Freud’s theories about the role of the unconscious and the interpretation of dreams were an important inspiration. The Surrealists looked to access the unconscious mind to break free from the constraining rationality of the modern world.
Visual artists were part of the Surrealist movement from the start. They took up surprising and often challenging subject matter, imagery, and techniques across many mediums: painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography, book illustration and design, and film. In Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100, we explore how, from the movement’s 1920s beginnings through the 1950s, these trailblazing artists made good on Surrealism’s revolution in consciousness.
The exhibition is split into six categories- Waking Dream which features Surrealism’s beginnings in the 1920s, Natural History, focused on the influence of nature, Desire, Premonition of War, Exiles, and Magic Art, which focuses on the new type of esotericism that emerged within Surrealism in the aftermath of World War II.
Lee Miller’s photographs of natural rock formations
Salvador Dalí, “Aphrodisiac Telephone” 1938, Plastic, metal
From the museum about Aphrodisiac Telephone, one of the artworks in the Desire section–
Salvador Dalí likened the Surrealist object, which uses found items, as a symbolic creation with improbable juxtapositions, comparable to poetry and sexual perversion. He applied this idea in Aphrodisiac Telephone. Its basis is the substitution of a lobster— a real lobster in the sculpture’s first iteration for display in 1938, a factitious lobster in white plastic for the editioned version —for a similarly shaped telephone handset. The title alludes to the lobster’s reputation as an aphrodisiac when eaten.
Max Ernst, “The Fireside Angel (The Triumph of Surrealism)”, 1937, Oil on canvas
From the museum about the Max Ernst painting above, from the Premonition of War section-
Ernst painted The Fireside Angel (The Triumph of Surrealism) to protest the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War as well as the defeat of the Republican side. But this depiction of a rampaging bird-headed beast also served as an allegorical reflection on the nature of evil. Ernst exhibited this painting as The Triumph of Surrealism — a despairingly ironic title given the situation in Europe — at the 1938 International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris.
During World War II many European artists escaped to New York City and Mexico. The Exiles section features works by these artists, as well as Mexican (like Roberto Montenegro pictured below) and American artists whose work could also be seen as part of the Surrealist movement.
Roberto Montenegro, “The Double”, 1938, Oil on panel
The last section of the exhibition Magic Art, focuses on the increase in post-war interest in supernatural themes. There was also a room devoted to the work of artist friends Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, who had moved to Mexico during the war.
Leonora Carrington, “And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur”, 1953, Oil on canvas
Remedios Varo, “Creation of the Birds”, 1957, Oil on Masonite
This exhibition is on view until 2/16/25.