Art Shows – Page 4 – longlistshort

Florida Artists- Permanent Collection- Elisabeth Condon at Tampa Museum of Art

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Florida Art Shows, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Tampa

Apr 032026

“American Pastorale”, 2016, Acrylic, latex, glitter on linen

“American Pastorale”, 2016 (detail)

American Pastorale, by Elisabeth Condon, part of the Tampa Museum of Art‘s permanent collection, is currently on view in the museum’s group exhibition Avant Garde: Remarkable Women in the Permanent Collection.

From the museum about the work-

The foliage growing near her Tampa studio, traditional Chinese scroll painting, vintage fabrics, and wallpaper samples inspire Elisabeth Condon’s paintings of tropical flora. She often isolates an object or pattern from these source materials and incorporates it as a central image or texture in her paintings. In American Pastorale, a chrysanthemum anchors the painting. To create various layers in this work, Condon applied color with expressive brushwork and poured paint directly onto the canvas. The artist’s palette of intense reds, oranges, and pinks, as well as cooler blues and greens, evokes Florida and Southern California’s vibrant landscapes. Iridescent glitter adds texture and luminosity to the surface.

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.

Flashback- Kay Rosen at Sikkema Malloy Jenkins in 2024

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters

Mar 202026

Kay Rosen‘s painting Spring (2021), was part of the 2024 group exhibition Healing at Sikkema Molloy Jenkins in NYC. You can currently see this work as part of John Cage and Kay Rosen at Krakow Witkin Gallery in Boston. The exhibition opens 3/21 and runs until 5/9/26.

From Krakow Witkin Gallery about the exhibition-

The current exhibition arranges works from the past 15 years by Kay Rosen with works from 1983 by John Cage. While not an obvious aesthetic or conceptual pairing, the juxtaposition of works hopes to provide more nuanced understanding and appreciations of both artists’ approaches to observation, appreciation, chance, choice, and control.

And about the painting-

SPRING, like many of Rosen’s works, strives for efficiency and economy. It finds a way to enhance the meaning of spring without adding a word. It cannibalizes one of its own body parts, the letter N, turning spring into sprig, five little green shoots. SPRING is another one of those found works that almost makes itself. Her intervention is merely a small excision of a letter, leaving behind a new word that that suggests hope.

Pennsylvania Art Shows- Arden Bendler Browning at Philadelphia International Airport

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

Mar 052026

Nonstop (2107) by Arden Bendler Browning was commissioned by Philadelphia’s Percent for Art Program and is on view at Philadelphia International Airport.

From Art at PHL about the work-

Philadelphia artist Arden Bendler Browning is known for creating large-scale, highly energized, gestural paintings inspired by her urban surroundings. Browning’s paintings are mostly abstract, yet include hints of realism with the suggestion of architectural structures, roadways, telephone poles, and green spaces. Browning’s paintings envelop the viewer with their scale, intensity, and sense of movement. Her imagery is derived from photos taken while traversing the city. The photos enable her to see the city from various vantage points and, as she has described, “jump through time and space.”

Browning’s paintings visually capture that sense of timelessness as she often conveys a disorienting landscape where colors and shapes collide and overlap, where only glimpses of reality come into focus. She speaks of the urban environment as “a vast sea of fluctuating boundaries arguing claim to the demarcation of space.” This statement also describes Browning’s work as she depicts the urban landscape using an amalgam of colors, shapes, and painterly marks adrift and influx.

Browning has said, “Nonstop is multifaceted and dense, full of action, and vibrancy in unexpected places with pockets of space and clusters of commotion. It is just like Philadelphia.”

Browning is currently part of the group exhibition, The Landscape: Lost and Found at Ellen Miller Gallery in Boston, on view until 3/28/26.

Flashback- Nick Cave at Columbus Museum of Art

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Columbus, Conceptual Art, Dance, Fiber Arts, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Ohio Art Shows, Performances, Sculptors / Sculpture, Video and Film, Washington D.C.

Feb 272026

Pictured is one of Nick Cave‘s Soundsuits, created using found fabrics and metal and wood toys. It was on view at Columbus Museum of Art in 2024.

From the museum about the work-

Nick Cave’s Soundsuits are sculptural costumes, some of which were made to be worn, others to remain stationary. Although these suits often appear whimsical and joyful, they also respond to suffering and injustice. Cave created his first suit in response to the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers in 1991, an event that focused attention on discriminatory policing and racial profiling. Reflecting the artist’s lived experience as an African American man, the Soundsuits camouflage the wearer’s body, concealing markers of race, gender, and class.

In the Art21 video below you can see some of his Soundsuits in motion. He studied with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and that influence can be seen here as well.

Art 21-Nick Cave in Chicago- Season 8

Cave’s latest exhibition, Mammoth, recently opened at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C. and will be on view until January of 2027.

About that show from SAAM-

In Mammoth, Cave remakes the museum’s galleries into an immersive environment marked by the crafted hides and bones of mammoths, a video projection of the long-dead animals come to life, and hundreds of transformed found objects—from vintage tools to his grandmother’s thimble collection—presented like paleontological specimens on a massive light table. By showcasing the ordinary and often forgotten bits and pieces of the world we live in, Cave’s work shines light on what we value and how we make meaning together. It evokes the lives and cultures we have lost, as well as the magical possibilities of a universe created through imagination and the humblest of materials.

Focused on the fundamental connections between people and their environment, Cave asks how we can begin to make sense of our relationship with a landscape that continues to evolve. How might we adapt, persevere, even thrive? As the contemporary world increasingly challenges what it means to be human, Cave envisions a space of both grief and possibility.

Delaware Art Shows- “Imprinted: Illustrating Race” at Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Delaware, Drawing, Painting / Painters, Printmaking, Wilmington

Feb 262026

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.

Pennsylvania Art Shows- “Henri Rousseau: A Painter’s Secrets” at Barnes Foundation

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

Feb 192026

“Woman Walking in an Exotic Forest”, c. 1910, Oil on canvas

“The Sleeping Gypsy”, 1897, Oil on canvas

Henri Rousseau: A Painter’s Secrets at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia provides a fascinating look at the self-taught painter’s career. Rousseau’s variety of subjects, from portraits and flowers, to the jungles he never experienced in person, were in part a response to what was popular and might sell. But the unique, and sometimes mysterious, paintings also show an artist unafraid to paint the world in his own distinct style.

From the foundation about the exhibition-

Born in 1844, Henri Rousseau became an artist in his forties, while he was working as a customs officer at the toll gates of Paris. From 1886 his paintings were regularly shown at the annual Salon des Indépendants, where anyone who paid the entrance fee could exhibit. He kept clippings of his reviews, good or bad. What mattered to him was being noticed, and though his paintings were mocked by many, by the end of the 19th century he had become a celebrity. Notoriety, however, did not lift his always meager standard of living.

Rousseau taught himself to paint and was celebrated as a “naif,” which at the time meant uneducated, simple, and honest. In reality, he had received a good basic education and was aware of art history and the art of his time. His acquaintances included Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso, and he knew successful “academic” artists too. Moreover, he was not always trustworthy; he joined the army in 1863 to avoid going to prison for embezzlement, and in 1908 he was found guilty of passing false checks.

This exhibition sets out to show how strategic Rousseau was in pursuing earnings and recognition as an artist, as well as the intensity with which he committed himself to painting. It also seeks to reveal the surprising complexity of his painting technique. His self-belief overrode his failures, and the impact of his work ensured art market success, but only after his death in 1910. By the mid-1920s, Dr. Albert C. Barnes was buying Rousseau’s paintings for prices comparable to those of Matisse and Picasso.

Below are a few more selections-