Pennsylvania Art Shows- “It’s A Wrap 2” at Philadelphia International Airport

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Fiber Arts, Illustration, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Feb 132026
 

Currently on view at Philadelphia International Airport, It’s A Wrap 2, brightens a section of the airport with art work and installations by several local artists.

Included in this post are works by Nicole Nicolich (pictured above), Tim Eads of Tuft the World, Olivia Chiaravalli, and on the ceiling tiles- work by Miriam Singer and Eurhi Jones.

From the airport about the exhibition–

This exhibition features work by Philadelphia area artists who were invited to create unique architectural interventions within the Airport terminal. Using yarn, fabric, felt, found objects, tape, paint, wheat paste, and wood, the artists applied their work to the ceiling tiles, columns, rockers, walls, walkway, and windows. They have visually transformed this location into an immersive and experiential art-filled passageway.

The artists responded to the existing architectural elements to create an unexpected visual experience and an engaging space for people to pass through. It is a form of urban interventionism where art activates the built environment with the intention to see a public space in a new and creative way.

Work by Tim Eads of Tuft the World

Olivia Chiaravalli, “Brick by Brick”

Miriam Singer, “Dreamliner”

Eurhi Jones, “Tinicum”

Pennsylvania Art Shows- “Jawn 8” at Philadelphia International Airport

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia, Public Art
Feb 132026
 

Anuj Chandra Shrestha, “Sumud”

If you have a layover or arrive early to Philadelphia International Airport, make sure to take some time to check out some of the art on display.  Works like the murals in this post, are part of the airport’s Exhibitions Program.

About Art at PHL:

The Airport’s Exhibitions Program is a nationally-recognized, award-winning visual arts initiative.

In 1998, Philadelphia International Airport established an Exhibitions Program – a visual arts initiative to humanize the Airport environment, provide visibility for Philadelphia’s unique cultural life, and to enrich the experience of the traveling public.

The Exhibitions Program is responsible for organizing and presenting rotating exhibitions that are located throughout the Airport. The exhibits change throughout the year to provide a variety of educational and cultural programs. This forum for presenting visual arts attests to the Airport’s commitment to supporting arts and culture.

The Exhibitions Program provides millions of visitors from around the world access to a wide variety of art forms by artists and arts institutions from the Philadelphia area.

The artists in this post- Anuj Chandra Shrestha, Lale Westvind, Steve Teare, Olivia Fredricks, and Amze Emmons are all part of the exhibition, Jawn 8. Jawn, a slang term local to Philadelphia, is defined as- “a placeholder word that may refer to a thing, place, person, or event, substituting for a specific word/name”. For even more on the word jawn, check out this article on Atlas Obscura.

Lale Westvind, “They Grew The Garden”

Steve Teare, “The Art Museum Games”

Olivia Fredricks, “The City is Our Playground”

Amze Emmons, “Philly Birdsong Onomatopoeia”

 

Pennsylvania Art Shows- “Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

 Animation, Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Ceramic Art, Collage, Conceptual Art, Design, Drawing, Glasswork, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia, Photographers / Photography, Printmaking, Sculptors / Sculpture, Video and Film
Feb 062026
 

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.

Pennsylvania Art Shows- “Jerrell Gibbs: No Solace in the Shade” at Brandywine Museum of Art

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania Art Shows
Jan 292026
 

“Boys Planting”, 2021, Oil on canvas

“The Last Night”, 2020, Oil and acrylic on canvas

“Quiero Amor”, 2019, Oil on canvas

“Nous Visited The Seine, But Did Not Swim”, 2022, Oil on canvas

“The Senses”, 2021, Oil and oil stick on canvas

The paintings in Jerrell Gibbs‘s solo exhibition at Brandywine Museum of Art, No Solace in the Shade, are alive with colors and movement, capturing moments in time both real and imagined.

From the museum about the show-

“Jerrell Gibbs: No Solace in the Shade” surveys the first decade of contemporary Baltimore artist Jerrell Gibbs’s (b. 1988) career and marks his first one-person Museum exhibition. A painter with astonishing creativity, Gibbs’s dynamic, large-scale figurative paintings explore facets of Black life, including family, friends, and community. His highly personal approach creates a narrative that centers everyday moments in Black life, representations of which have been excluded from art history until recent decades. Throughout his body of work, Gibbs transforms scenes of ordinary life into monumental moments while exploring themes of identity, reflection, and belonging.

Across his career, Gibbs has challenged the near invisibility of Black life in American art. He does so by celebrating identity and culture with profound compassion and insight, often weaving in elements of his own upbringing. Several works featured in the exhibition represent people from his own life. Old family photographs are also an inspiration in his creative process, prompting Gibbs to explore questions of identity and the passage of time. Gibbs conveys the joy, liveliness, and contemplation of Black life in positive representations. Shifting away from menacing racial stereotypes present in previous depictions of Black life in art (particularly images of Black men), Gibbs’ paintings show Black people living, not just surviving.

This exhibition closes 3/1/26.

Artists Birthdays- Édouard Manet

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, Cleveland, Ohio Art Shows, Painting / Painters, San Francisco
Jan 232026
 

“Berthe Morisot with a Muff”, c. 1871–72, Oil on canvas

Last week was Berthe Morisot‘s birthday and today it is her friend, brother-in-law, and fellow Impressionist, Édouard Manet‘s birthday. He was born on January 23rd, in 1832, and painted the portrait of her pictured above. It is part of the Cleveland Museum of Art‘s permanent collection.

From the museum about this work–

This painting depicts Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot, who met Édouard Manet at the Musée du Louvre in Paris in 1868. This portrait vibrates with vitality. Morisot wears a coat and stylish hat from which wisps of her dark hair escape. Manet’s wide brushstrokes and cross-hatchings evoke the sketchy quality of Morisot’s own paintings, likely Manet’s nod to his subject’s identity as an artist.

He made nine portraits of her in oil, watercolor, lithography, and etching during 1868–74. Initially artistic colleagues and friends, they became family in December 1874 when Morisot married Manet’s younger brother, Eugène.

The painting is currently on loan to San Francisco’s de Young museum for their current exhibition Manet & Morisot, on view until 3/1. Organized by Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art, the show will move to Cleveland on 3/29/26, and will run until July 5th.

About Manet & Morisot from the Cleveland Museum of Art–

Manet & Morisot is the first ever major exhibition dedicated to the artistic exchange between Édouard Manet, often referred to as the father of modern painting, and Berthe Morisot, the only woman among the founding members of the Impressionist movement. Unfolding over a period of roughly 15 years, between 1868 and 1883, theirs was perhaps the closest relationship between any two members of the Impressionist circle. As friends and colleagues—by turns collaborative and competitive—they collected one another’s work. Morisot posed for some of Manet’s most compelling portraits, several of which will be on view in the first gallery of the exhibition. When she married Manet’s younger brother, their professional connection deepened into a familial bond.

Thirty-six paintings and six drawings and prints borrowed from museums and private collections in the United States and Europe reveal the evolution of a singular friendship between two groundbreaking artists. Visitors will see beach and garden scenes made en plein air (out-of-doors) that demonstrate how Manet borrowed individual motifs and compositional ideas directly from Morisot. Portraits of fashionable Parisian women of the 1880s by the two artists show their different perspectives; Manet’s paintings were inspired by admiration and erotic interest while Morisot’s were informed by lived experience. The exhibition closes with a self-portrait by Morisot painted when she was in her mid-40s, revealing her perception of herself as a professional artist.

Throwback- UK Art Shows- Narbi Price at Vane Gallery in Newcastle

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, British Art Shows, History, Newcastle Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Sound Art, Sunderland Art Shows
Jan 222026
 

“Untitled Club Painting”, 2015, Acrylic on canvas

“Untitled Gutter Painting”, 2014, Acrylic on canvas

“Untitled Black Door Painting (304) “, 2013, Acrylic on canvas

“Untitled Yard Painting (Albert)”, 2015, Acrylic on canvas

These contemplative paintings are from This Must Be the Place, Newcastle-based artist Narbi Price’s 2017 exhibition at Vane Gallery.

From Vane’s website about the exhibition:

Narbi Price’s work involves journeys to specific places that have witnessed a range of events – variously historical, famous, personal or forgotten.

He researches the precise location of a chosen event, ranging from significant moments in music, film and TV, whimsical acts through to places of violence and death amongst others. Working from photographs taken at the site, he makes paintings in the studio focusing on the abstract, formal and painterly qualities of the resultant images.

This process removes the conscious choice of subject matter; he must work with whatever is present at the spot. Whilst clearly photographically derived, the paintings use the language of abstraction to simultaneously acknowledge and disrupt the representational image. The paint is transparent, opaque, glossy, matt, dilute and impasted, often within the same work. As viewers, we are not immediately made aware of the specific histories of the sites and are given space to wonder about the multiplicities of events that might have taken place, an effect heightened by the painting method. Our experience of the work shifts as we become aware of the provenance of the depicted sites.

Below are the stories behind the locations for the paintings in this post (in bold type). All of the paintings in the exhibition can be found on Vane’s website.

Flashback- Ohio Art Shows- “Immersive Spaces from the CMA Collections” at Canton Museum of Art

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Canton, Ohio Art Shows, Painting / Painters
Jan 162026
 

Jerome Witkin– “Lockhart“, 1972, Oil on canvas

Gary L. Schumer– “Interior Landscape”, 1983, Oil on canvas

Sometimes it can feel like the world is too noisy and filled with too much information to take in at once. One way to slow it down is to find moments in your days to connect to something around you- a person, an object, nature, or a work of art.

The two paintings above, Jerome Witkin‘s Lockhart and Gary L. Schumer‘s Interior Landscape, are from Canton Museum of Art‘s 2024 exhibition Immersive Spaces. For the show, the museum used selections from their permanent collection to encourage visitors to spend time engaging with the work.

From the museum’s website about the exhibition:

Have you ever wished you could step inside a work of art?

Art pulls us in by utilizing and activating our senses, and resonates with us based on our personal memories and experiences. In Immersive Spaces, learn how artists, through their imaginations and unique artistic processes, create art that envelops the senses.

Though we may not actually be able to feel or hear the objects and scenes depicted in a painting, artists invite us to use all of our senses when we explore a work of art—encouraging us to imagine the textures, smells, and even tastes of what is depicted. Some painters take this invitation to another level by painting details with such precision that we are tricked into believing what is painted is real.

Scientifically, by fully immersing yourself and “stepping into a painting,” you’re activating a process known as embodied cognition, where mirror neurons in the brain turn the things you see in art into actual emotions you can feel. Studies show that immersive art is beneficial; the more time you spend analyzing a piece of art, the more you are able to stimulate brain functions, which can increase your analytical and problem-solving skills in everyday life. Some studies also show that looking at art can increase blood flow to the brain by as much as 10% — the equivalent of looking at someone you love.

Curated from our Permanent Collection, Immersive Spaces brings together works of art that engage all of our senses and activate our brain functions. How do artists invite us into their paintings so that we can imagine ourselves stepping inside the picture and experiencing it firsthand? Let your senses come alive in Immersive Spaces, and get ready to experience art in a new way!

The museum has their entire collection available to view online, including the paintings above. They have also included artist biographies and sometimes, additional information about the work itself.

Here, Witkin describes the history behind his painting Lockhart, pictured above-

“In my first year at Syracuse University, I was asked to paint the Chancellor of SU at his house. The commission took place in a vast attic of the home. To my surprise, Chancellor Eggers agreed that I could use the space as my studio! That is the setting for “Lockhart.” This is one of my first ventures into painting multiple figures in space. The attractive couple chose their pose – I suggested they stay comfortable – she reading a book and he looking towards her. His legs were angled against the darkness in an interesting way, and Presto! The Pose! The couple was very in love and the title reflects their relationship. The formality of the picture is my naiveté in putting multiple figures in space…I’ve since become more comfortable but that painting taught me a lot about using the figure in space.”

Flashback- Florida Art Shows- Kimowan Metchewais at USF Contemporary Art Museum

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Florida Art Shows, Photographers / Photography, Tampa
Dec 192025
 

While reading through the recently released list of artists selected for next year’s Whitney Biennial, I was very happy to see Kimowan Metchewais on the list. I discovered his work when it was part of USF Contemporary Art Museum‘s 2023 exhibition, Native America: In Translation.

The exhibition included a slide show of Metchewais’s polaroids that was particularly captivating. The images in this post are just a few favorites. For more on the artist, this Aperture article from 2023 is very informative.

Below are a few more selections-

Delaware Art Shows- “Biennial Art+AI” Exhibitions at The Delaware Contemporary

 Animation, Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Ceramic Art, Conceptual Art, Delaware, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Printmaking, Sculptors / Sculpture, Video and Film, Wilmington
Dec 182025
 

Work by Mel Rosen (sculpture) and Stass Shpanin (mural, video, and paintings)

Detail from Stass Shpanin’s “Dance of Birth” animated video

Ceramic sculptures by Mel Rosen

Paintings by Stass Shpanin

The Delaware Contemporary is currently showing three exhibitions as part of its 2025 Biennial  Art + AI programming. This post covers two of them, the third is here.

Construct | Disrupt: Artificial Intelligence as Tool and Material features work by artists Mel Rosen, Stass Shpanin, Sol Kim, and Mark Burchick.

From the museum about the exhibition-

In an age when reality itself feels unstable—filtered through algorithms, fragmented by digital archives, and refracted through competing narratives—artists are increasingly turning to the tools of fiction and speculation not to obscure the truth, but to question how we construct it. Construct | Disrupt brings together the work of Mel Rosen, Sol Kim, Stass Shpanin, and Mark Burchick, four artists who use artificial intelligence, language, and archival material to explore the porous boundaries between perception, memory, and belief.

Across diverse practices—from ceramics, drawing, and painting to video, installation, and text—these artists engage with AI not as a replacement for the hand, but as a provocateur, a co-conspirator, and a mirror to the human imagination. Rather than seeking resolution or certainty, their works open up space for doubt, complexity, and contradiction.

Together, the artists in Construct | Disrupt invite us to consider how we construct meaning in a world where the archive is no longer fixed and where the image can be endlessly generated. The work of these artists does not offer answers, but rather asks: What do we trust? What do we remember? And how do we decide what is worth believing?

About the two artists pictured above, from the museum-

Stass Shpanin engages history as a space of imaginative reconstruction. Working with visual fragments from American folk traditions and immigrant archives, he uses AI to distort and reconfigure the past, generating speculative images that blend glitch, myth, and memory. His paintings and drawings present broken, layered timelines where visual language is both preserved and interrupted. Rather than restoring a singular truth, Shpanin’s work embraces the possibility of many coexisting histories—ones shaped as much by fantasy as by fact, as much by the digital as the ancestral.

Mel Rosen’s practice draws from archaeology, natural history, and personal memory to create objects and images that feel both ancient and otherworldly. Her use of AI image generation allows her to iterate quickly, mutating prompts based on her own drawings and a mental library of organic and cultural references—from Pompeian frescoes and fossils to barnacles and talismans. The resulting images feed back into her ceramics and drawings, where mythic forms and geometric distortions coexist in a suspended cosmology. Rosen’s work suggests that artifacts—whether material or digital—are always evolving, reshaped by time, environment, and interpretation.

Still from the video “Person Enough” by Sol Kim

Sol Kim (video still above) approaches language as a material form, using words to subtly disrupt social and technological systems. Her works often begin with a textual prompt—an instruction, label, or survey—that gives rise to absurd, humorous, or quietly unsettling performances. In The Cookiest Cookie, cookies are judged and destroyed by AI based on their perceived “cookie-ness,” while in Person Enough?, performers attempt to become more legibly “human” to computer vision systems. Through these gestures, Kim reveals the tensions between human nuance and machine classification, exposing the strange logic that governs our interactions with technology—and with one another.

Mark Burchick Installation

Images from Mark Burchick’s “Felt Presence”

Mark Burchick’s Felt Presence explores the intersection of faith, media, and artificial intelligence through the lens of Catholic mysticism. Drawing on archival photographs from the 1917 “Miracle of the Sun” in Fatima, Portugal, Burchick trains AI models to generate photorealistic images of miracles that were never captured on film. Presented alongside historical documentation and witness testimony, these fabricated scenes invite viewers to question the boundaries between belief, evidence, and visual truth—highlighting the unseen technological, institutional, and spiritual forces that shape our perception of reality.

In NOO Icons, Burchick expands this inquiry through an immersive video installation framed like a reliquary. A five-minute rear-projected loop, trained on over 100 images of stained glass Rose Windows, morphs into abstract color fields via AI animation. At its center is a 3D-printed altar piece generated using DreamFusion, a text-to-3D tool prompted to create a “solar monstrance.” The resulting object—gold-finished, internally lit, and housing Lithium batteries—evokes both the Communion host and a technological relic. As Kate Crawford notes in Atlas of AI, Lithium is a sacred yet finite resource driving modern AI. By encasing it in plastic and low-res form, Burchick critiques the planned obsolescence and ecological cost of our AI-powered age, reframing divine presence through the lens of material decay.

In another of the museum’s galleries is- Reimagine | Reveal: Challenging the Algorithmic Gaze featuring work by Danielle Glovin, Stephanie Dinkins, and Leah Modigliani.

About the show from the museum-

The works covering this exhibition theme approach AI not as a neutral instrument, but as a complex cultural system—one that reflects, amplifies, and at times distorts the values of its makers. Through the intersecting strategies of critique, reimagination, and bias exposure, Danielle Glovin, Stephanie Dinkins, and Leah Modigliani probe the systems—algorithmic, archival, social—that dictate what is preserved, who is recognized, and how knowledge circulates.

Together, these artists ask urgent questions: Who trains the algorithm? Whose histories are encoded, and whose are left out? What does it mean to build an intelligence—and who is it built for? In doing so, they model a critical engagement with AI, one that challenges default narratives, centers marginalized perspectives, and opens up space for new possibilities. Their practices call us to reconsider what it means to know, to remember, and to be recognized in a world increasingly shaped by invisible systems of intelligence.

Stephanie Dinkins’ interactive sculpture “Not The Only One (N’TOO)“

Stephanie Dinkins’ “Conversations with Bina48” (back wall) and Leah Modigliani’s AI generated letters for “Cultural Capital”

From Danielle Glovin’s series “Future Generations”

About the artists’ work pictured above-

Stephanie Dinkins’ Not The Only One (N’TOO) and Conversations with Bina48 extend this inquiry into the realm of relational AI, specifically that of minority groups in the tech sector. In N’TOO, an interactive sculpture gives voice to the oral histories of three generations of Black women, creating an AI entity intentionally designed, trained, and aligned with their values and lived experiences. It is a poignant reversal: instead of AI extracting meaning from biased data sets, Dinkins encodes her AI, reorienting the goals of intelligence design toward inclusivity and equal representation.

In Conversations with Bina48, Dinkins engages in an evolving dialogue with one of the world’s most advanced humanoid robots- probing the limits of kinship, consciousness, and identity. The recorded exchanges navigate tensions between human and machine, emotion and algorithm, intimacy and abstraction—underscoring the urgency of developing AI systems coded to reflect the full richness and diversity of human stories, cultures, and embodied experiences.

Leah Modigliani’s Cultural Capital offers a satirical yet incisive intervention into the circuits of artistic legitimacy. Through a fictional archive of AI-generated letters of recommendation and rejection—authored in the mimicked voices of historical critics and curators—Modigliani reveals how the rhetoric of value and genius in the art world is both constructed and recursively reinforced. The project uses generative tools to lay bare the biases embedded in cultural gatekeeping, drawing attention to the ways AI might amplify inherited hierarchies under the guise of neutrality.

Danielle Glovin’s Future Generations presents AI-generated reinterpretations of inherited family photographs, exposing the mechanics of machine vision and the flattening effects of automated classification. By transposing Midjourney text outputs onto her photographs, Glovin literalizes the collision between personal history and digital taxonomy. The result is a visual language at once familiar and estranged—where nostalgia meets simulation, and memory is rewritten through the aesthetics of machine learning.

These exhibitions will close on 12/28/25.

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