Exhibition Review by Amanda Nedham

Some Other Way: Mythmaking Made Irresistible

Let me tell you about a complicated woman.

Echo is a shrewd mountain nymph in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. She acts in the service of a god and out of loyalty to her fellow nymphs, but also takes pride in the cleverness she employs to outwit Juno, so Jove can do what he pleases with the forest creatures. She is punished for her cleverness by being condemned to never speak for herself, only to repeat the last words spoken to her. Despite her limitations, she still makes herself clear. Later, when Narcissus declares that he will die before the lovesick Echo possesses his body, she smolders, “…you can possess my body.” A body that will ultimately wither away in a cavern, leaving only a voice that seeks communication and relation; a voice that endures, because these desires endure.

Exhibition Review by Melissa Stern

Hew Locke at P.P.O.W Gallery

It’s hard to describe the magic of entering PPOW Gallery and seeing the flotilla of ships that Hew Locke has hung in the front room of the gallery. Gently moving in the air in response to the gesture of a visitor, these ships- all manner of sailing vessels- move through time, space, and history. 

Pablo Bronstein, Classical Triumphant
Exhibition Review by Michal Gavish

Imagines Antiques, “Clocks” by Pablo Bronstein at Olney Gleason gallery

London-based Argentinian painter Pablo Bronstein draws a fantastic series of porcelain mantel clocks that he invents from period pieces and antiques. He renders each drawing meticulously, building it up with carved decorative extensions into a curious, fantastic object. In Emporium, for example, the pagoda roof ends in elongated curls, with four red dragons whose extremities are exaggerated. At the same time, he distorts these objects in space, partially flattening them into wide geometric projections that make them even more convoluted. The series is fascinating in its originality and in the many historical and contemporary interpretations it invites.

Plumb Line, installation view
In Dialogue by Etty Yaniv

Plumb Line: Irit Baniel and Alexis Granwell at Medium Rare

Medium Rare Project Space in DUMBO opens the season with Plumb Line, a two-person show pairing Irit Baniel’s paintings with Alexis Granwell’s sculptures. The two artists work with different materials and processes, but their work shares a concern with the body, vulnerability, memory, and grief. Medium Rare is an artist-led space rooted in making, looking and conversation. Surrounded by artists and studios, it has close ties to the Brooklyn art community and uses exhibitions, talks and workshops to connect artists with a wider public. In this conversation, co-founder Narelle Sissons discusses the curatorial process, the visual axis linking the two artists, the venue’s origins, and its plans for the year ahead.

Francis Barth, Bridging, 2024, Acrylic on canvas, 30” x 40”, photo courtesy of Marc Straus Gallery
Exhibition Review by Gail Winbury

The Prime of Your Life at Marc Straus

Aging is a paradox. Wisdom and clarity of purpose increase, while deterioration and physical impairments begin to ravage the body. The exhibition and panel, The Prime of Your Life, at Marc Straus Gallery, exemplifies that dichotomy, bringing to bear aging female artists’ dilemmas while celebrating their enduring passion, talent, and productivity.

Nancy Cohen and Anna Boothe Breach, 9 x 27 x 15 inches, Glass, 2026. Third View. 9 x 27 x 15 inches. Photo credit of Edward Fausty
Exhibition Review by Etty Yaniv

Confluence: A Synergetic Vision at UrbanGlass

Artists Anna Boothe and Nancy Cohen met more than twenty-five years ago, and that serendipitous meeting grew into a lasting collaboration. Confluence, their current show at UrbanGlass, features their new body of work. It grew out of joint research and material studies they began in 2024 during a Creative Glass Fellowship at WheatonArts in Millville, New Jersey, where they studied the region’s glassmaking history from the 18th century to the present, with emphasis on how the industry affected the local ecology, waterways, and inhabitants. As Dr. Ferris Olin notes in the exhibition essay, glassmakers settled along the Maurice River for the quality of its sand and its route to market. The industry grew alongside Philadelphia’s pharmaceutical companies and their need for glass containers, which helps explain why scientific glass is prominent in this work.

This Candy Has Teeth, curated by Shuhan Zhang, 2026, image Courtesy of Weicang Wang
Exhibitions by Sherly Fan

This Candy Has Teeth: Can Nostalgia Really Comfort Us?

Is nostalgia really a safe space for us to process the uncertainty of the rapidly changing present? This Candy Has Teeth, curated by Shuhan Zhang, features five Chinese artists, Shengjie Jiang, Weican Wang, Jiaqi Mao, Yukun (Chloe) Ba, and Cindy (Zhaoyue) Chen, who move through childhood, memory, and nostalgia in different ways. Together, their works reflect our current desire for nostalgia, a desire that perhaps reveals just how uncertain the present feels. Yet the more we try to grasp onto the soft, safe, familiar places of the past, the more complicated those memories become. If you really delve back into them, they are also full of discomfort: moments of being forced to accept what happened, and the stiffness of a choke at the throat. As the curatorial text suggests, it is a “sensory misalignment”—an apple is sweet, yet hard to swallow.

Diane Burko, Extraction, A Dialogue of Extremes, Installation Featured Image
In Dialogue by Etty Yaniv

Diane Burko: Extraction, A Dialogue of Extremes at Rowan

Extraction, A Dialogue of Extremes, Diane Burko’s solo exhibition at Rowan University Museum of Contemporary Art, pairs two bodies of work: Arctic paintings based on NSF-funded climate research and works on Amazon mining and deforestation. The show was created as the research grant’s community engagement component. In this interview, curator Mary Salvante discusses how the exhibition came together, the tension between the two series, how the work uses beauty to address climate change, and what the museum hopes visitors take away.