Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Rina Banerjee at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Originally published in Art in America’s January 2019 issue. â—Šâ—Š Rina Banerjee’s midcareer retrospective at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), “Make Me a Summary of the World,” feels like a serendipitous pairing of an artist’s corpus and an exhibition space—even though Banerjee’s sculptural installations, brimming with sundry […]

Norman Lewis at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Originally published in Art in America’s July 2016 issue. â—Šâ—Š Norman Lewis (1909–1979) was an energetic participant in the Harlem Renaissance and one of the only African-American painters who associated himself with the Abstract Expressionists. While he founded the Spiral Group (active from 1963 to 1965) with Romare Bearden, Charles […]

William Emlen Cresson’s Caricatures

I contributed an essay on William Emlen Cresson’s exhibition caricatures for the catalogue of Expanding the Audience for Art in the 19th Century at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The show was co-curated with colleagues and friends under the guidance of Michael Leja, and mounted at the Arthur Ross Gallery […]