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.
“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.
“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.
“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.
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.
Caproni Brothers, “The Boxer at Rest”, 19th century Painted plaster cast from the original bronze which was produced between the late fourth and second centuries BCE
Lisa Brice “Untitled”, 2025 Pigment and natural water-soluble binders on linen
Jeffrey Gibson, (l to r) “Power, Power, Power”, 2017, “People Like Us”, 2014, and “You Can Feel It All Over”, 2015, Repurposed punching bags, glass beads, artificial sinew
Rashid Johnson, “Self-Portrait Laying on Jack Johnson‘s Grave”, 2006, Durst Lambda print mounted on panel
Approaching the front steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, you will find people of all ages and backgrounds taking photos with the statue of Rocky out front, often imitating his famous pose. Through a variety of works from antiquity to the present day, Rising Up looks at the history of this statue, the meanings attached to monuments, and the allure of boxers and boxing culture.
From the museum about the exhibition:
Blending the worlds of art, sports, and popular culture, Rising Up takes on the life of monuments by exploring the meanings and mythologies of the Rocky statue. The exhibition looks to the statue of the most famous Philadelphian who never lived as a way to better understand our complex and vital relationships to our public monuments.
The statue first appeared on-screen in the Oscar-winning Rocky film series. The third installment, Rocky III (1982), featured the dedication of a monument that celebrated the boxer as both an underdog and a hero. The movie-made statue was placed outside the actual museum during filming, a dynamic blurring of art and life that continues to this day. Since that introduction, and through the statue’s departure and prolonged absence from the museum grounds to its prodigal return to the steps, the statue has sparked debate over its aesthetic value and its role in the city. Today, the power of the Rocky statue as a monument stems from its ability to summon public participation.
From antiquity to modernity, Hollywood to contemporary art, Rising Up spotlights both popular narratives and undertold stories surrounding the Rocky statue. Each gallery offers a response to the exhibition’s central question — why do millions of people visit the Rocky statue at the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art each year? — and further explores the relationship between art, boxing, and civic identity. It offers a renewed context to consider the statue through works and artifacts that reflect on the deep legacies of boxing monuments across time.
Rising Up marks the first time that the Rocky statue has been displayed inside the museum, explored alongside Philadelphia’s landmark boxing culture and multigenerational artists’ interpretations of sport and society. At its core, the exhibition looks at how monuments are made — by artists and by us — through the lens of the Rocky statue and the ways people engage, debate, and gather around this site of memory.
This exhibition closes on 8/2/26.
As you approach the Calder Gardens building, you will first notice the gardens and, if you visit in spring, the flowers. Once inside you’ll find a selection of Alexander Calder‘s works, including a few of his paintings. The space is organized in a way that never feels crowded, encouraging visitors to look at the work from different angles or watch how some pieces move with the slightest change in the air around them.
For the month of July, Philadelphia residents can visit Calder Gardens and the Barnes (which is located across the street) for free.
About Calder Gardens from their website:
Calder Gardens is a new art institution dedicated to Alexander Calder (1898–1976), one of the most acclaimed and influential artists of the 20th century. Building on the artist’s enduring legacy, it is conceived as a place where an evolving interplay between art, architecture, nature, and programming encourages contemplation and self-discovery.
Set within a landscape featuring more than 250 varieties of plants in gardens conceived by Piet Oudolf, Calder Gardens’ 18,000-square-foot building, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, houses a rotating installation of artworks by Calder. Spanning the artist’s 50-year career and diverse bodies of work, the objects on view respond to architectural moments rather than art historical narratives. This selection of artworks slowly changes over time, echoing the natural rhythms of the seasons. Some will remain for years, while others are only on view for a few months, creating an ever-changing environment that encourages close looking and repeat visits.
In dialogue with Calder’s own experimental practice, programming at Calder Gardens presents performances, sonic experiences, screenings, lectures, and other events that connect the artist’s legacy of innovation to contemporary art. Emphasizing mindfulness and environmental awareness, Calder Gardens is a space that foregrounds the interconnectedness of all elements of life. Straying from fact-based learning, Calder Gardens offers daily walks that encourage personal introspection as visitors move through the building.
Calder Gardens is located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in the heart of Philadelphia, a city with deep connections to the Calder family across several generations. It extends this lineage to the present day and joins Philadelphia’s rich artistic and cultural communities.
Old televisions and clock radios are given a second life in the interactive sculptures in Emily Francisco‘s exhibition, Alchemical Signal Flow at The Delaware Contemporary. The exhibition also includes videos and documentation of some of Francisco’s other projects, and a few cyanotype prints.
From the museum:
What is a signal? We often think of cell phone reception, or a message sent through a digital app. A signal means many things in this exhibition, it references the transfer of physical data and digital data (ones and zeroes) that happens within technology. A signal can also be social, like how you dress, what brands you buy, or what you throw away. Emily Francisco combines old and new technology to help us rethink how we live with new and changing technology. To many, the mechanics of a harpsichord (a keyboard instrument) and organ are as magical as an MP3 player. Francisco embraces that magic and makes alchemy of blending old and new, low and high tech.
Francisco uses cheap everyday technology and discarded, obsolete (or no longer produced) devices. By doing so, she disrupts signal flows from user to speaker. This action challenges our expectation of call-and-respond and challenges our sense of time. Someone once owed every piece of discarded tech. One could have even been yours. She asks us to think about what these personal objects mean to us at the end of the day. What do they mean to us?
Through her work, she brings together the memory, nostalgia, and aspiration these objects hold, attempting to give them new purpose.
This exhibition closes 8/2/26.
At the Museum for Art in Wood in Philadelphia, BA Harrington‘s Suite Américaine and Viola Bordon‘s Muliebrity, both present works influenced by history and created from a feminist perspective. Harrington adds inventive additions to her expertly crafted furniture pieces, while Bordon’s intricate textile triptych (pictured below) examines the feminine associations in icons of freedom and liberty.
From the museum about Suite Américaine:
The daughter, granddaughter, and sister of carpenters, artist BA Harrington carries craft lineage into contemporary practice. Part of a growing, intersectional cohort of women-identifying woodworkers, Harrington learned her trade, like many before her, by reproducing furniture forms of the past. Suite Américaine holds a reverence for the history of American furniture making, but is inflected with a contemporary feminist imagination.
This body of work references late-seventeenth through early-nineteenth century dower chests, writing desks, and sewing tables, which were designed specifically for women but historically made by men. However, where these objects once stored and concealed the labor and craft skill of women, Harrington opens them. The objects expose, activate, and celebrate their rich interiors, with linens and quilts spilling out of their wooden casings. The use of French in the exhibition’s title, Suite Américaine, is both a nod to the eighteenth-century term for a furniture set and a phrasing that allows the artist to feminize the word “American.” Similarly, the work on display acts as a feminist intervention on historic furniture, using video activations and collaborations with fellow artists to deepen the discussions around these works.
In this exhibition, Harrington not only remakes the original forms with her own hands, asserting her technical skill, but also highlights the revolutionary potential of furniture to self-actualize the creative endeavors of women.
Suite Américaine is a part of Radical Americana, a series of exhibitions organized by a consortium of Philadelphia’s extensive collection of arts and cultural institutions that celebrate how today’s artists are continuing the city’s unique and rich legacy as a center for creativity and civic engagement. To learn more about the other participating artists and organizations, please click HERE.
To watch the Gallery Talk with BA Harrington and Viola Bordon, click HERE.
Viola Bordon, “Muliebrity”
About Viola Bordon’s Muliebrity:
Since the American Revolution, the Roman goddess Libertas has served as a personification of the nation’s ideals, including ever shifting definitions of freedom and enfranchisement. Exemplifying the contested meanings of Libertas, the 1886 dedication of the Statue of Liberty coincided with national discord over the boundaries of freedom, sparked by the end of Reconstruction in the South, legislative debates over immigration, and the growing movement for women’s suffrage.
Drawing from archival research at the American Historical Society, textile artist Viola Bordon examined the invention and evolving meanings of “Lady Liberty” as a fragmented icon of American identity. The resulting triptych, Muliebrity, takes its title from a term Bordon uses to articulate a distinctly feminine form of power-one aligned with endurance, fertility, and embodied knowledge, and inspired in part by poet Sujata Bhatt’s Muliebrity, which describes a woman whose daily labor is suffused with quiet, almost mystical authority.
Sewing found fabric swatches into her quilt through the process of appliqué, Bordon presents a kneeling Lady Liberty surrounded by wilderness. With its visual affinity to late Medieval and early Renaissance depictions of Mary Magdalene, the artist’s patchworked portrayal invites us to consider how this figure of womanhood is repeatedly mobilized to serve the symbolic needs of patriarchal institutions.
To celebrate the World Cup, the museum is also showing Keun Ho Peter Park‘s soccer ball sculpture for Flow State. It was made using two woods, cherry and maple, which are native to the Philadelphia region where several of the games are being played.
From the museum:
Soccer — known globally as futbol — has long inspired artistic expression. Its accessibility has made it one of the world’s most beloved sports, played by hundreds of millions across cultures, generations, and levels of competition. The FIFA World Cup, held every four years, is a global spectacle that draws billions of fans who rally behind their favorite players and nations. Yet at the center of this phenomenon is a single object: the ball itself.
In World Cup 2026: Flow State, Philadelphia-based artist Keun Ho Peter Park presents a sculptural portrait of the soccer ball. Inspired by the evolving forms of official World Cup match balls, Park explores how each design reflects the identity and aspirations of its host nation while conforming to FIFA’s exacting standards. A woodworker, furniture maker, and sculptor, Park celebrates this iconic object through a sculptural work that brings together his artistic languages of alternative coopering and pattern carving.
Flow State also traces the cultural histories embedded within World Cup tradition. As a youth in Seoul, Park witnessed the 2002 FIFA World Cup, co-hosted by South Korea and Japan, when the tournament — and its official Fevernova ball — served as a powerful symbol of diplomacy and cooperation. The 2026 World Cup similarly commemorates a moment of international partnership. Referencing the official match ball, Trionda, whose tripartite design represents the three host nations of Canada, Mexico, and the United States, Park reflects on soccer’s capacity to create connections across borders while sustaining local identities. The two woods selected for the work — cherry and maple — are native to the region surrounding Philadelphia, itself a host city for the 2026 World Cup.
All three of these exhibitions close on 7/26/26.
The Recap returns to Substack with a focus on art shows, music, and America on its 250th birthday.
Check it out here!