Sculptures Can Make People Cry
(12/03/25 1:33am)
I’m falling asleep in the back of the dark lecture hall when suddenly, plaster bodies wrapped in plastic packaging fill the screen, instantly snapping me awake.
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The New Age of Superheroes
(11/06/25 8:28pm)
Superheroes used to save the world. Now they’re just trying to survive it. That’s the central theme of the two biggest comic book hits of the last year, Marvel’s Ultimate line and DC’s Absolute universe. These runs exploded in popularity, offering storylines that were easy to jump into and required no prior knowledge of complicated canons and decades of sprawling superhero history. At face value, to any executive, the key to modern–day comic book success seems to be accessibility. But what really makes these books land so well is the way they capture our real–world disillusionment with systems built before our lifetime in stories where fan–favorite heroes wrestle with stolen time, corrupt institutions, and violent extremism. Instead of escape, they offer readers catharsis—forcing us to reckon with the fact that the world we live in was built by forces we cannot change, but can try our best to fix.
I Hate the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Rebrand. You Should Too.
(10/28/25 4:55pm)
Everything is ephemeral. Nothing stays the same. As college students, we’re no strangers to phases of drastic reinvention, be it through choppy bangs, Splat hair dye, or a new nickname. For many of us, we’re trying to find ourselves and be who we believe we ought to be. These aesthetic changes are experiments in establishing identity during a seismic period of our lives.
More Than Geometry
(10/26/25 3:20am)
Mobile Images, an exhibition on Mavis Pusey at the Institute of Contemporary Art co–organized with the Studio Museum in Harlem, is an insightful exploration of the world through the lens of geometric forms and abstractions. It was curated by Hallie Ringle, Daniel and Brett Sundheim Chief Curator of the ICA, alongside Kiki Teshome, curatorial assistant at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
'Hung Liu: Happy and Gay'
(10/03/25 2:14am)
“It’s our National Day. We are happy and gay!” proclaims one line high above the frames of the Arthur Ross Gallery. “When I grew up, we were expected to be happy and gay, by the government, by the Party,” cries out another. Read once, the words sound chirpy. Read twice, they leave a bad taste in the mouth, like a smile that was rehearsed too many times. That is the structure of Hung Liu: Happy and Gay—a promise, then a question.
Local Theater: The New Third Space?
(10/15/25 4:44pm)
“I’m just obsessed with the idea of belonging,” playwright Shay Overstone tells me. “It’s the second most important part of being human.”
Melissa Broder on Obsessive Love and Mental Illness
(10/17/25 7:22pm)
When Melissa Broder’s debut novel The Pisces was published, The New York Times heralded it as “a modern–day myth for women on the verge.” That was seven years ago, when Broder was among the few writers carving a niche with novels that gave voice to the sad girl. Since then, the ‘women–on–the–verge’ genre has only mushroomed (think Miranda July’s All Fours, Otessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, and Mona Awad’s Bunny). The impetus behind the genre—which has its roots in writers like Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, and Clarice Lispector—was an earnest quest to portray the raw reality of mental illness in women. Today, it has devolved into a race for female protagonists to ‘out–weird’ each other, each one exhibiting progressively more bizarre behavior with diminishing emotional reality. Readers who once turned to the genre for comfort in their own struggles are now alienated by its catalogue of cultists and cannibals. Broder’s work, however, continues to stand out for its unflagging wit and poignancy, as well as its adherence to emotional truth over literary clickbait.
Afternoons at the Prado With Goya’s ‘Black Paintings’
(09/10/25 12:44am)
Francisco Goya’s Black Paintings sit in a dim room at the far southern end of the Museo del Prado, across the museum from the stern gaze of his likeness in bronze at the main entrance. After walking through grand halls of romantic historical paintings and light–filled salons of sculpture, entering this small, grey room feels a little like walking through a portal. Suddenly, you’re faced with walls of twisting greys and blacks, the brightest color being the crimson blood spouting from the severed head and wrist of the child in Saturn Devouring His Son.
Refusing the American Dream in ‘The Emperor of Gladness’
(07/24/25 2:29am)
Seeing Ocean Vuong at the Philadelphia stop of his latest book tour feels, in a kind of communal, spiritual affect, like going to church. Ironically, Vuong actually does give his talk in the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, speaking to pews of enraptured readers from beneath an enormous stained–glass window. For those who have hailed Vuong as one of this generation’s biggest literary superstars, the poet–turned–novelist’s words might not be scripture, but they land somewhere close.
Photography Sans Performance
(07/17/25 10:27pm)
Visit a tourist destination, attend a local concert, or dine at any trendy restaurant, and the same ritual plays out: Dozens, if not hundreds, of photos and videos are taken. Some are destined for an Instagram post or TikTok video while others will live quietly in the depths of a camera roll, occasionally visited during random late–night scrolls. In a culture dominated by phone usage and social media platforms, the urge to document is practically automatic. While this compulsion exists, though, a counter–revolution urges people to be in the moment, put away the phone, and experience a moment without documenting it.
Learning About Love Through Fireflies
(07/09/25 6:19pm)
As someone who lives in New York, I am lucky to have Broadway so close to me—it’s really only a 40–minute Long Island Rail Road train ride away. So, when I won lottery tickets to see Maybe Happy Ending over winter break, I jumped at the chance. Alas, I entered the theater knowing only that it’s a love story about robots, not expecting to leave heartbroken and reflect upon my previous perspectives on love—specifically why we choose to love when we know there is only a short amount of time that we spend on Earth.
My Quarter–Life Bible
(07/01/25 3:49am)
Min Jin Lee’s debut novel Free Food for Millionaires paints a portrait of a Korean American community in New York from 1993 to 1997, centering on a recent Princeton University graduate named Casey Han and beginning with the line “Competence can be a curse.”
Art Battle: Inside Philadelphia’s High–Stakes Live Painting Competition
(04/04/25 12:23am)
In the underground level of SPIN Philadelphia, artists gather before their canvases—some trembling as they go over their supplies, others taking pictures with loved ones, and a few glancing at their inspiration images one last time. The atmosphere is tense, yet electric. Each competitor has just 20 minutes to transform a blank canvas into a finished painting, all while dozens of spectators wander the room, watching their every brushstroke. At the end of each round, the audience votes, and after three rounds, a winner is crowned.
Still Moments Pulled From Everyday Chaos
(04/28/25 6:40pm)
Photography is, in one sense, a limitless medium that demands no specific space to practice. In any given location, smartphones effortlessly capture the fleeting moments of the day. Staged: Studio Photographs from the Collection aims for something different. In contrast to the non– fabricated nature of our visual world—where photographers are unable to meticulously sculpt every component of their desired shot—this exhibition showcases objects and portraits of figures photographed exclusively in the studio where the artist takes full control.
Squeezing into Femininity: Christina Ramberg at the PMA
(05/22/25 9:19pm)
Tucked away in a gallery of her own in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Christina Ramberg’s A Retrospective is a masterclass in interrogating perceptions of women. As a part of the Chicago Imagists, her paintings encapsulate the pop culture styles of the late 1960s and draw inspiration from an eclectic range of sources, including flea market dolls, thrift store paintings, and dumpster mannequins that the artist has scavenged for. Leaving faces almost entirely out of her work, Ramberg establishes a mysterious sensuality with focus on hairstyles, hands, midriffs, and shoes, which the artist distorts to encapsulate the sinister expectations placed upon femininity.
Our Personal Poxes
(04/09/25 7:17pm)
The climate change apocalypse in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower is frighteningly tangible. Written in 1993, the novel is presented as a series of journal entries beginning in 2024, which tell the story of Lauren Oya Olamina as she navigates a particularly tumultuous period of American history. Journalists will come to describe this era as “accidentally coinciding climatic, economic, and sociological crises,” literally coining it “the Apocalypse” (or “Pox” for short). Our parable opens on a bleak image of Robledo, Calif., Lauren’s relatively affluent neighborhood. “Relatively” does a lot of work here, as the residents of this Los Angeles suburb scratch out a living behind a massive wall meant to keep out the hungry, crazy “street poor.” In the Pox, fresh water is a treasured commodity, crime is a given, and jobs are nigh impossible to come by. Still, the residents of Robledo cling onto their old lives, dreaming of a return to the good old days even as the nation descends further into anarchy. Families lend each other resources, temporary shelter, and neighborly gossip. All the while, news of pyromania–inducing drugs and growing instability reach the townspeople, who continue to compartmentalize the issue as an outside problem. Meanwhile, we learn that Lauren has been putting together plans for the inevitable collapse of Robledo. We even learn through her journals of the religion she has started to develop, coined “Earthseed.” Each chapter is prefaced by a passage from Lauren’s self–written holy texts. The daughter of a pastor, Lauren chafes under the antiquated rituals and expectations of her father’s faith, instead turning to Change as her God, the dominant power in her universe. At 15 years old, she is already writing passages that refine her vague belief in Change to a holy text, which teaches her future disciples to navigate the Pox without becoming complacent, myopic, or nostalgic. When outsiders inevitably raze her neighborhood, Lauren must brave a world she has prepared her whole life for but never properly known. What’s more, she must do so while hiding a secret: She is afflicted by “hyperempathy,” feeling the sensations, both pain and pleasure, of any living person she sees. While hyperempathy may seem initially like a unique power, it means that as part of the street poor, she must act ruthlessly—killing, rather than wounding, any assailants. A striking feature of the Pox is its normalcy. Butler does not sell us a romanticized view of apocalypse, with joyous last hurrahs, agrarian lifestyles, or rugged–yet–principled survivalists. Her America is filled with the industrial complexes, desperate behaviors, and politics that make the Pox a believable period of history. At chain supermarkets, Lauren must buy such unglamorous things as water purification tablets and tampons (under armed guard, of course). On the road, she must join a growing wave of street poor on the journey north, in blind search of greener pastures without the drugs or droughts of Los Angeles. And in the outlying hills, Lauren must band together with her small group of survivors to fend off wild dogs, criminals, and the odd cannibal.
The Museum as an Environment
(04/18/25 4:00am)
One day before spring break, during which I would be headed to New York and Mexico City—two internationally renowned museum cities—I had to make one last pit stop in my home base. Philadelphia is filled with heavy hitters itself, and I was excited to check out a new one: The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University. I wouldn’t just see the typical dinosaur bones and savanna tableaus, but also one of my true loves, fashion, in the museum’s Ecology of Fashion exhibit. Maybe my expectations were too high after hearing “fashion,” but I have never been more offended by a museum before in my life.
A New Curatorial Vision for Philly
(03/02/25 11:54pm)
There’s a problem in the Philly art scene: Emerging artists have few places to show their work. Divided between DIY spaces focused mostly on giving support to their friends and community and established commercial galleries with an already strong roster, it can feel like Philly just isn’t a welcoming city for artists establishing long–lasting careers in the art world.
The Ubiquity of Yoshitomo Nara
(03/23/25 4:17pm)
In the pantheon of social media iconography, one big–headed girl stands out: the work of Yoshitomo Nara. Perhaps you don’t recognize his name, but Nara’s work of indifferent cherubic girls, simply drawn dogs, and emphatic text has stamped itself on our teenage and young–adult hearts. He’s everywhere—our profile pictures, our clothes, as designs on nails, on our bodies. Nara’s works are images that move us on a daily basis and exhibit the everyday translation of an internet obsession to a symbol for our personalities and lives. What’s most unique and enduring about Generation Z’s love for Nara is not just in visits to galleries and exhibitions: It’s how he influences our style.
Purring Machines: ‘Nature Never Loses’ at the ICA
(02/12/25 1:35am)
The beautiful marvel of the Institute of Contemporary Art is its dynamic, flexible space that transforms with each fresh season. The new spring exhibition brings the essence of a laboratory, playground, and open field to both floors of its gallery. Carl Cheng’s exhibition Nature Never Loses opened Jan. 17, a Friday evening of jovial buoyancy and a bright exchange of energy between the gallery’s walls and its guests.
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