Essays and reflections on art history, artist communities, cultural movements, galleries, art schools, public art traditions, and the creative spaces that shape how artists and audiences experience art.
After writing about First Friday in Philadelphia, I found myself thinking about how that same idea travels. Philadelphia’s Old City First Friday has its own history, its own people, and its own emotional weight for me. But the larger idea of an art walk is bigger than one city. Across the country, artists, galleries, small […]
There are some traditions that become so woven into a city’s identity that it is hard to imagine they ever had a beginning. Philadelphia’s First Friday is one of them. For anyone who came of age in the city’s art world, especially in and around Old City, First Friday was never just an event on […]
For more than a century, the University of the Arts in Philadelphia stood as one of the city’s most important creative institutions. Located in the heart of Center City along Philadelphia’s Avenue of the Arts, UArts helped shape generations of painters, sculptors, performers, designers, musicians, filmmakers, writers, educators, and cultural leaders. For artists like Emily-Kate […]
Long before Philadelphia’s First Friday gallery scene became a regular part of the city’s cultural rhythm, a group of artists decided to build the kind of space they needed. That decision became Vox Populi, one of Philadelphia’s most important artist-run contemporary art galleries and collectives. Founded in 1988, Vox Populi grew out of a simple […]