Pennsylvania Art Shows- “Spaces of Encounter” at Temple Contemporary in Philadelphia

 Architecture, Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Design, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture, Sound Art, Street Art
Jun 252026
 

Curry J. Hackett, “The Gilded Block (Porch)”

mk. “you are so much to me pt. 1.” 2022

A golden inflatable porch by artist Curry J. Hackett welcomes visitors from outside the entrance to Spaces of Encounter, the current exhibition at Temple Contemporary, Temple University’s art gallery. Inside the gallery, Rokh Research & Design Studio founder and PhD student Danicia Monét Malone’s public arts research combines with NYU MA candidate Alyse Tucker‘s art curation to present an interesting selection of artwork, installations, and infographics that explore public art and shared spaces.

From the press release:

… Spaces of Encounter explores public space across North and Latin America and the Caribbean through the lens of public art. The exhibition brings together research and artistic material from Albuquerque; Cartagena; and Indianapolis, examining how people interact with public artworks across different urban contexts. Visitors are invited to reflect on who is welcomed into shared spaces—and who is made to feel excluded.

At the center of the exhibition is a guiding question: What does public space ask the body to believe about safety, care and belonging?

“For Black residents navigating environments marked by surveillance, neglect or misrecognition, aesthetic conditions operate as cumulative exposures that influence how safety, care and civic participation are felt in the body,” says Malone.

Through documentation, archival material and sculptural elements, Spaces of Encounter considers how public art mediates lived experience and contributes to collective memory. One featured work includes preserved fragments of a dismantled Black Lives Matter street mural in Indianapolis, foregrounding the fragility and afterlife of public artworks. Even when removed or destroyed, such works persist through memory, documentation and community impact.

“We’re interested in the afterlife of public art—what remains when the physical object is gone,” says Tucker.

The exhibition is particularly resonant in Philadelphia, a city shaped by one of the nation’s most expansive public art and mural programs. As development continues to transform neighborhoods, Spaces of Encounter offers an opportunity to reflect on how public artworks are preserved, displaced or erased—and what those changes mean for communities.

“Our gallery commissioned Spaces of Encounter to demonstrate Tyler’s commitment to being a beacon for art, architecture and community imagination in North Philadelphia and beyond,” says Temple Contemporary’s Director of Exhibitions and Public Programming Matthew Jordan-Miller Kenyatta, PhD. “By blurring inside and outside, the interior versus exterior, it smartly knits together the intimate, culturally specific meanings with public moments of spectacle that anyone can enjoy.”

This exhibition closes 6/27/26.

Delaware Art Shows– Permanent Collection– Sonya Clark at Delaware Art Museum

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Delaware, Painting / Painters, Wilmington
Jun 182026
 

Sonya Clark, “Whitewashed”, 2017, Sherwin-Williams house paint

Walking around the rooms of the Delaware Art Museum‘s contemporary collection you could almost miss Sonya Clark‘s Whitewashed. Painted onto one of the walls, her version of the U.S. flag uses only shades of white.

From the museum about the artist and the work:

Sonya Clark possesses the ability to deftly assemble works of art both beautiful in creation and weighted with content. Whitewashed is painted directly onto the gallery wall. Visually subtle, the work engages the viewer’s recollections of the United States flag. Whitewashed is made using three Sherwin-Williams house paint colors-Incredible White, Storyteller, and Natural Choice. The shades of white replace the red, white, and blue of the American symbol.

Clark has worked with the American flag, the Confederate flag, and the Confederate Flag of Truce throughout her career. In doing so, she addresses the physical makeup of these objects and the histories, experiences, and access these symbols uncover or veil.

Duane Michals (1932-2026)

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Fashion, New York Art Shows, Photographers / Photography, Video and Film
Jun 122026
 

Duane Michals, “The Spirit Leaves The Body”, 1968, courtesy of DC Moore Gallery

 

“Magritte with Easel”, 1965, courtesy of DC Moore Gallery

“A Letter From My Father”, 1975, courtesy of DC Moore Gallery

Innovative photographer Duane Michals passed away on Tuesday, 6/9/26, at the age of 94. He was famous for both his portraits of famous artists and celebrities, and for more personal work that often included his writing on the prints, something not done at the time.

He continuously worked up until his death, even shooting the campaign, What are Dreams, for Bottega Veneta last year. Featuring actor Jacob Elordi, it includes a short film along with a photo series, both based on a poem by Michals.

Jacob Elordi and Duane Michals in Bottega Veneta’s “What Are Dreams” campaign, photographed by Duane Michals in 2025. Photo courtesy of Bottega Veneta (image via Artnet)

His 2019 exhibition, Illusions of the Photographer at The Morgan Library and Museum included The Spirit Leaves the Body, and A Letter From My Father (pictured above), along with a few handwritten notes in his distinctive style, like the one below on death. Many of his photographs reflected an interest in mortality, but there was also a lighthearted aspect to many others.

For more on the artist, also check out this 2022 interview in Aperture magazine. In it he talks about his work, his partner of over 50 years (architect Fred Gorrée), his dreams, the importance of curiosity, and more. He also had a fun Instagram worth taking a look through.

 

Pennsylvania Art Shows- “MOUTHFUL” at Vox Populi in Philadelphia

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia, Printmaking, Sculptors / Sculpture
Jun 112026
 

Mona Gazala, “Place and Power”, Broken concrete slab, paint, 2024

Closing this weekend, MOUTHFUL, a group exhibition at Vox Populi in Philadelphia, features a unique mix of works exploring aspects of language.

From the gallery about the exhibition:

MOUTHFUL brings together artists working with, around, through, against, beneath, within, alongside language. Featuring over 15 artists engaging a diverse set of techniques and media, the exhibition situates key archival pieces beside new and contemporary works: flags, impossible shots, concrete slabs, worksheets, disco on repeat, and many holes.

MOUTHFUL unearths echoes, rhymes, and dissonances across the past 50 years of cultural production. How and why do artists continue to turn to language as material? How and why do writers continue to turn towards visual practices to investigate language?  What sound does meaning make? What shapes do our mouths take? Curated by Vox Populi’s director, Blanche Brown, MOUTHFUL picks up these familiar questions and shakes them out: see what falls though May 1- June 14th 2026

Featuring: Robert Carey, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, China Rain Chung, Logan Cryer, Catia Colagioia, Jordan Deal, Lucia Garzón, Mona Gazala, Rachel Hsu, Tan Lin, M Slater, Lea Devon Sorrentino, Cecilia Vicuña, Eva Wu, Connie Yu, Janet Zweig

Janet Zweig, “Mind Over Matter”, 1993, Computer, printer, paper, rock, rope, pulleys, basket

From the label for Janet Zweig‘s Mind Over Matter, pictured above:

The computer was fed three sentences:

I think therefore I am – Descartes

I what I am – Popeye

I think I can – The Little Engine That Could

It randomly generates sentences from the parts. Text slowly lifts rock.

Rachel Hsu, “Fetch the Moon from the Seabed（海底撈月)”, Inkjet prints on kozo, two from series

Pictured are two prints from Rachel Hsu‘s Fetch the Moon from the Seabed（海底撈月), a series that was on two walls of the gallery. Click on the image to enlarge.

Written on the information card beside the work:

Fetch the Moon from the Seabed（海底撈月), a long-form poem, investigates yearning and migration through language and translation. Taking the form of a Chinese language-learning workbook, the poem reveals the emotional and physical exertion that speaking a second language and cultural assimilation requires.

Logan Cryer, “How I Understand It All”, 2021-2026, Retired family basketball backboard

The words on the tape read: “If I turn around and speak by showing the back of my head, I am honestly telling you how I understand it all”.

 

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

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Ceramic Art, Collage, Conceptual Art, Drawing, Fiber Arts, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia, Photographers / Photography, Printmaking, Sculptors / Sculpture
Jun 102026
 

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

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

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

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

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

From the museum and curator Hilde Nelson:

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

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

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

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

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

This exhibition closes 6/14/26.

Delaware Art Shows- Lucia Riffel at The Delaware Contemporary

 Animation, Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Delaware, Installation Art, Sculptors / Sculpture, Video and Film, Wilmington
Jun 052026
 

Lucia Riffel‘s current installation, a red sun has water in its eye, at The Delaware Contemporary, explores elements of magical thinking, our relationship to nature, and the desire to leave some mark of ourselves in the world. In the darkened room, looped 3D animations play above small handmade sculptures, and on the floor a video is surrounded by a circle of hand prints in dirt, reminiscent of those left behind on cave walls.

About the exhibition from Riffel’s website:

I started seeing raccoons in July. They would tap on my windows at night and tap inside my walls in the morning. Watching me, sleeping in the room next to me, warmed from the waters I showered in through the thin barrier of the tub. I don’t know what they wanted or what they were trying to tell me, but they wanted to tell me something so badly. I loved them, I feared them, they consumed my thoughts for months. I am both terrified and comforted by how thin the membrane between my life and theirs is. After all, we are both just creatures trying to live.

I am interested in the marks we leave on the world and the marks the world leaves on us. Our existence feels so small, layered between an authoritative takeover and ever-growing climate devastation. But I contradict myself, because I find small things to be some of the most magical. We anthropomorphize, we think the raccoons are trying to tell us something (and maybe they are!), we see ourselves in everything, we find meaning in everything. We leave our little marks anywhere we can to signal to the others that we are here, beneath it all. Despite the horrors, we do persist. I often think about someday someone or something seeing our small, mundane, markings of life and knowing “we were here, we were here.”

I made these tiny bits of ephemera to serve as relics of time spent processing, in communion with bits of nature as it exists now, and moments tucked away at the dawn of whatever comes next.

And from The Delaware Contemporary’s website:

“My work leads one to the place between their mind and screen, space and time, thought and feeling, and into the everyday sublime. I create time loops and capsules – distilling the fleeting and immaterial through installations, animations, and horticulture. Themes of pattern and repetition coalesce both in-screen and in real life, allowing one to look through the mirror of the screen and enter a meditative headspace beyond as well as within. Processing cyclical existence, digital ephemerality, and environmental anxiety, my practice utilizes experiential stimuli to awaken interiority – leaving one in a suspended metaphysical twilight zone.​”

This exhibition is on view until 8/30/26.

 

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

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia
May 302026
 

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

Her statement about the work from the gallery:

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

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

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

Delaware Art Shows- University of Delaware Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition at The Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Ceramic Art, Collage, Conceptual Art, Delaware, Fiber Arts, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Sculptors / Sculpture, Wilmington
May 272026
 

Works by Zoe Elwood

MFA candidates Tim Carr, Ryan Dittmar, Zoe Elwood, Rebecca Giles, Arizol Mendoza, Alyssa Rose Pirolli, and Nasir Young are currently showing their work at The Delaware Contemporary for the 2026 University of  Delaware Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition. The show will be on view until 5/31/26.

The sculptures pictured above are part of  Zoe Elwood‘s installation.

Information from the museum about the artist:

Zoe Elwood (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist from central Utah, currently based in Newark, DE, as they pursue an MFA in sculpture at the University of Delaware (UD). A self-proclaimed “sculpture convert,” the thesis exhibition for their BFA in painting & drawing (Utah Valley University, 2023) featured numerous assemblages of found objects, and one painting. The language of their practice continues to involve all things patinated, favoring the strange familiarity of those that remind of the home. Through such materials Elwood interrogates heteronormative notions of domesticity and discusses queer identity formation within intimate, intolerant spaces. Elwood is a current DELPHI Fellow at UD’s Center for Material Culture Studies and has been the recipient of several other honors, including the Dianne Komminsk Scholarship.

Below are more works from the exhibition and some information provided by the artists and the museum.

Paintings by Nasir Young

Nasir Young (B.1995, Philadelphia,Pa) received his BFA from Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art in 2021; and is currently a MFA candidate at the University of Delaware(2026). Young is currently represented by Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia and had his first two solo shows at the gallery. He has had a multitude of group shows along the east coast. Awards he has received range from was The Raymond D. & Estelle Rubens Travel Scholarship; two illuminate arts grants; an Elizabeth Greenshields grant; and was the second-place winner of the Philadelphia Sketch Club 158th exhibition of small oils. Young was an artist in residence at Davinci Art Alliance Resident; Delaware Contemporary and upland Vermont. Nasir’s primary source of imagery is the everyday scenes of urban inner city life influenced by the shared visual language between places.

Photo Collage work by Ryan Dittmar

Ryan Dittmar is a photographer currently collaging images onto metal forms. His work focuses on memory and what happens to it when it is lost. Dittmar first started with photography in his undergraduate studies at SUNY Oneonta. He examines the ties that photographs have to memory, examining what happens over time when memory fades but the image remains.

Through the process of photography and collage, I collect memories with the camera and re-work the memories with my exacto knife. Steel sheets become the settings for these new scenes to exist. They represent a place in my mind, an open area in which memories are allowed to be reconstructed on. At its most simplest ingredients it is steel, and photopaper. Together these forms create the liminal space that is what I call the void. The place in between presence and memory.

Paintings by Rebecca Giles

Rebecca Giles is a painter who earned her BFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Her paintings focus on photosynthesis and plant cellular structures. She is especially interested in artificial photosynthetic systems. Giles is inspired by microscopic plant life. She has a light microscope in her art studio, and she paints pictures of what she sees through her microscope. She uses her microscope as an art tool to investigate light and color. Giles wants viewers to experience a feeling of overwhelming awe at the incredible vastness of the miniature worlds found within nature. She calls this feeling of awe the microscopic sublime.

Sculptures by Tim Carr

Tim Carr earned his BFA with a concentration in ceramics from Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University in 2024. He is currently pursuing his MFA at the University of Delaware. Much of his practice centers on utilitarian ware, which he expands to engage with personal and conceptual themes, using clay as a metaphor for culture, folklore, and narrative storytelling. Throughout a decade of working with ceramics, his artistic journey began in the communal studios of the Chester County Art Association, where he first developed foundational skills in the medium. His early years at Alfred University deepened his fascination with functional tableware and refined his approach to utilitarian ceramics, with a particular focus on mastering wheel throwing.

Paintings by Alyssa Pirolli

Alyssa Pirolli is a visual artist from New Jersey and is currently an MFA Candidate at the University of Delaware. She attended private art lessons with artist Rebecca Tait at the Studio of Glenn Gables in Laurel Springs, NJ before continuing her training in Philadelphia. Pirolli received her BA from Chestnut Hill College and a Certificate from the Advanced Fine Art Program at Studio Incamminati. Her work is focused on exploring ‘the self’ and the human condition, primarily through portraiture. Community, especially the one she has come to know while pursuing her studies in Delaware, has become a driving force in her current body of work.

Sculpture by Arizol Mendoza

Arizol Mendoza (she/her/hers) is a Mexican-American sculptural ceramic artist born in New Jersey, USA. She obtained her B.A. in Art in 2018 from Rutgers University with a Minor in Psychology and is a current MFA candidate at the University of Delaware (2026). Mendoza began her ceramics career in 2015 while studying at Raritan Valley Community College (Branchburg, NJ). Originally concentrating in Graphic Design, she discovered that the plasticity and physicality of clay— combined with her existing interest in abstract forms opened a door to exploring ceramics as a medium for translating her visions into tactile, three-dimensional forms. Her earlier works explored personal narratives and storytelling through organic forms.

Artist Birthdays- Mary Cassatt

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia
May 222026
 

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

From the museum about the work:

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

Delaware Art Shows- Oscar Eduardo de Paz at Chris White Gallery in Wilmington

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Delaware, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Wilmington
May 202026
 

“The Shape of What Remains”, 2026, Casein, Painted Paper, and Shopping Bag Paper

“Cocooned Reflection”, 2025, Casein, Collage, Blackout Poem,and Acrylic Mediums

“We Learn to Be Guarded”, 2026, Casein, Collaged Drawings, Found Objects and Acrylic Medium

“We Learn to Be Guarded” (detail)

For An American Son, Oscar Eduardo de Paz‘s solo exhibition at Chris White Gallery in Wilmington, he has created a series of works that capture moments from his life growing up as an American born to immigrant parents. The addition of collaged poems and objects adds textures to the paintings that draw the viewer in, while his focus on hands emphasizes the commonalities in his experiences.

From the gallery-

An American Son presents a powerful new body of work by Oscar Eduardo de Paz, tracing his journey from childhood poverty to fatherhood, community, and artistic emergence.

Through his Poetic Symbolic Representation (PSR) approach, de Paz layers figures, objects, archival fragments, and lived memory to reveal how American systems, poverty, policing, immigration, education, and care, shape a life. These paintings move between personal testimony and collective history, offering an intimate and compelling account of American experience through one son’s eyes.

The gallery is hosting a closing reception this Friday evening, 5/22/26, from 5-8pm.

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