Exhibition Review – Page 2

October 13, 2026October 19, 2026, by Amanda Nedham

Some Other Way: Mythmaking Made Irresistible

Kate McQuillen, Installation View, Echo Resounds

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.

October 12, 2026October 11, 2026, by William Corwin

Searching for the Philosopher’s Stone: Paul Higham’s Data Sculpture

Paul Higham, Installation view of Data Sculpture

In the gallery at Eberle Studios in Homestead, Pittsburgh, we find ourselves transported to the workshop of a modern-day alchemist, Paul Higham, who has been experimenting with the digital creation and manipulation of form for almost fifty years. This is a space in which D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (author of On Growth and Form) would be ecstatic, for everything flows teleologically through space and time: the flight pattern of a fly (Descartes Fly) intersects with the growth of a tobacco plant virus, and the Nike of Samothrace overlaps with segments of the program code for the video game Call of Duty.

October 12, 2026October 11, 2026, 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.

October 9, 2026October 10, 2026, 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.

October 6, 2026October 2, 2026, by Gail Winbury

The Prime of Your Life at Marc Straus

Francis Barth, Bridging, 2024, Acrylic on canvas, 30” x 40”, photo courtesy of Marc Straus Gallery

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.

October 5, 2026October 2, 2026, by Etty Yaniv

Confluence: A Synergetic Vision at UrbanGlass

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

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.

September 28, 2026September 28, 2026, by Taylor Bielecki

Rebecca Morgan at Asya Geisberg Gallery: Traversing the Apocalypse

Rebecca Morgan’s exhibition Painting in the Age of Apocalypse is a bit of a roadmap for viewers. Morgan tackles the question of how to present images in the face of a raging political landscape, how to keep moving forward, and how to maintain oneself and some humor about it all. And most importantly to me, how to open up one’s painting style and allow both the work and the process to support you through this tumultuous and often unbelievable terrain we may find ourselves within. In this exhibition, Morgan engages potent themes from all her eras: sympathy for her rural background, feminist reappraisal of art history, and an unbridled excitement at infusing humor and technical prowess into her critique. Here, Morgan fuses all of these themes well, all the while showing us a fresh, looser style of painting that captures the frenetic energy of the moment.

September 21, 2026September 18, 2026, by Eva Zanardi

AMEN : NEMMEN — The Discipline of Listening

The opening of AMEN : NEMMEN, Vince Briffa’s installation on faith and belief, fell on the first rain of the year, closing out a hundred-and-twenty-day drought and the first completely dry Maltese summer in six years. I had not yet met the island’s infamous heat, and on September 14th, as if the island had been holding its breath, the grip finally let go. The narrow stone bridge into Fort St Elmo and the Chapel of St Anne, the exhibition’s site, act as a conduit through time, folding centuries and space into a single, intimate passage of entry. Fort St Elmo’s honey-hued limestone stood monumental, solemn, and unbothered in the late-summer light, the kind of backdrop that makes an installation about faith feel almost inevitable.

September 14, 2026September 13, 2026, by Anna Shukeylo

Light Lives as an Animal: Melissa Murray’s Nocturnal Ontology

In Light Lives as an Animal at 1053 Gallery, Melissa Murray dives into the darkness of Catskills nights, bringing the magical, haunting world of raw, gorgeous wilderness to life in her extensive solo exhibition. Drawing from her relocation from Brooklyn to the Catskills years ago, Murray shares her fascination with the immersive, nocturnal world of the forest. Darkness to her is not simply a void or a passive backdrop, but a thick, generative medium through which a landscape reveals its independent interior life.

September 9, 2026September 8, 2026, by Sara Aparicio

Latency: Reinventing Photography – MFA Parsons Show

Since its invention in the early 1800s, photography has evolved from merely capturing moments. Over time, photography became intertwined with other traditional art mediums and slowly became a more accepted medium in the fine arts space. Now, with Parsons’ 2026 Photography MFA thesis show, Latency continues to expand what photography can be, literally.