Lastgaspism: Art and Survival in the Age of Pandemic is an exhibition based on the book of the same name. Lastgaspism is a collection of interviews, critical essays, and artist portfolios that consider matters of life and death having to do with breath, both allegorical and literal. Bringing into mutual proximity the ecological, political, public health, and spiritual crises of our time, this book considers the compounding nature of these events and their impact upon one another. Whether seen in the police choke murders that gave rise to the “I Can’t Breathe” slogans of the movement for racial justice, the life-taking and life-remaking COVID-19 pandemic, the white supremacist revolts propelled by fear of demographic suffocation, or the climate emergencies that have instituted near-permanent chaos, the act of gasping for breath is starkly exposing the either/or that stands before us: either we breathe or we die

Errors and Omissions surveys Linda Bond's work over these almost 20 years of U.S. conflict, both foreign and domestic, since September 11, 2001. In 15 bodies of work and over 70 pieces, Bond chronicles wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Kavanaugh hearings, the Syrian refugee crisis, drone warfare, the 2nd amendment and gun violence... the list goes on. While her content is inherently provocative, she does not force her audience to come to a particular decision. Rather, she uses her studio practice as a method to understand these conflicts on a personal level...

Breathing Room features prints, drawings and photographs by Amina Ahmed, Maria Dumlao and Yamini Nayar. Curated by Aisha Kahn and Atif Sheikh. Presented in collaboration with Twelve Gates Arts.

In advance of Native American Heritage Month, Drexel University will present (S)Heroes Among Us, a public art event that will be streamed on the Twitch channel of Drexel’s Pearlstein Gallery on Friday, Oct.18, 2020 at 1 p.m.  Three Philadelphia-area artists, Priscilla Bell, BUSTA and Leon Rainbow, will paint murals to the sounds of a deejay informed by native music (artist name TBA[S1] ) at 3401 Filbert Street in the yard of the gallery. 

Each mural will celebrate a female leader in an Indigenous community, from activists and matriarchs to icons. The event will be livestreamed on the gallery’s Twitch channel, and the murals will remain on display through the fall, with additional programing around the work to be announced. 

The event will stream for free and is presented in tandem with the gallery’s partners, the Westphal College Diversity Equity & Inclusion Council and We Are the Seeds, a project of CultureTrust Greater Philadelphia supporting diverse cultural practices...

Brendan Fernandes' solo exhibition – We Want a We – showcases a diverse blend of performative, sculptural, and photographic works from the past five years, marking the artist's first retrospective in Philadelphia. For We Want a We, Brendan Fernandes will work with Drexel's Dance Department to re-vision previous improvisational dance structures and to create new site-specific works that respond to the architecture of the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery.

What Might This Be? The Art & Science of Rorschach Inkblots examines the link between inkblot art and inkblot science by exploring the history of inkblots, their use in psychology and their relationship to symmetry, ambiguity and the nature of the Rorschach task....

STONEWALL@ 50 celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots which took place June 28–30, 1969. The show gathers 50 LGBTQ* Philadelphia area artists in the largest show of LGBTQ* art in Philadelphia history. The Stonewall Riots marked a pivotal moment in the struggle for queer liberation in the USA. STONEWALL @ 50 includes painting, drawing, photography, video, sculpture, fiber work, and installation, with performances by Wit López, Vitche-Boul Ra and a tableaux vivant by Jonas Dos Santos at the opening reception. 

In an attempt to disrupt notions of principality and authorship, ​Assemblage is interested in works created collectively. How do we identify the most important voice—whose voice gets amplified and under what circumstances. Whom are we addressing and how do we wish to be addressed? How does this disrupt or challenge the status quo (or not)? Contemporary culture most often places value on authoritative individual (master) voices—when often those voices rely upon the work of others to exist. In an attempt to...

Created by North Carolina-based art team Joelle Dietrick and Owen Mundy, The Speed of Thinking is the title of a mobile game about global trade and an exhibition of the collaborative artwork from which the project evolved.  

The Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection (FHCC) of Drexel University’s Westphal College of Media Arts and Design will present a retrospective exhibition of work by renowned fashion designer James Galanos. James Galanos: Design Integrity will celebrate the artistry of James Galanos, considered by his peers to be one of the greatest and most creative of American designers of the 20th century. 

The exhibit will place his work in the context of American fashion from the post-war period through the 1990s and...

Opening Thursday May 3rd

The Pearlstein Gallery and Bowerbird are pleased to present SOUND MACHINES, an exhibition that explores the interplay between sound and object, performance and sculpture, and our changing experience of sound in an age of digital reproduction. The centerpiece of the project will be an performer-activated, large-scale kinetic sound sculpture, Zwei Mann Orchester (Two Man Orchestra), conceived by late German-Argentine composer, artist, and filmmaker Mauricio Kagel (1931-2008). Originally...

This winter the Pearlstein will show the work of 3 artists. Sculpture by Lewis Colburn, drawings and paintings by Anda Dubinskis, & drawings by Mark Stockton.

By examining several years of each artists’ work the show will explore the intellectual and technical characteristics that distinguish their daily working routines; what draws them into in their studios, excites them, and keeps them there. Studio work is how artists spend their days. This show looks at three artists and how their experiments, frustrations, discoveries and digressions eventually grow into cohesive bodies of work.

The Expanded Caribbean: Contemporary Photography at the Crossroads features work by 16 artists with projects based in several different nations and communities neighboring the Caribbean Sea.  The exhibition brings together images that document, interrogate, challenge, and otherwise engage the meaning of place in an area with a rich history as a target of exploration and conquest, voluntary and forced migration, trade, travel, and tourism. Responding variously to cultural, historical, mythological, and personal aspects the region, artists initiate dialogues about how events of the past inform contemporary experience in a continually shifting and evolving environment.

 The exhibition is accompanied by a quality print and electronic catalog that includes images of all works as well as contextual scholarly essays by Dr. Mimi Sheller, Professor of Sociology at Drexel University, and Dr. Susanna W. Gold, Curator. This publication was supported in part by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

Curated by Maori Karmael Holmes 

For the past 40 years Bob Gruen has captured the essence of Rock and Roll in his photos. From the Ramones to Led Zeppelin, Blondie to Bowie, Bob Dylan, Joan Jett and the Rolling Stones, Bob Gruen’s Rockers is an insider’s look behind the scenes at the lives of culture icons. But Gruen is no paparazzo; his candid photographs are wild and intimate family portraits of electric subculture. Rockers brings you on tour with stadium headliners, bears witness to the rise of Punk, and shines a light on the private lives of Gruen’s friends John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

“125 Years: Drexel & the City” will showcase themes of exploration, invention and conversation using artifacts, images and stories that celebrate the history of Drexel’s urban setting.  Anthony J. Drexel built his institute of art, science and industry at the heart of a vibrant district where rail yards, factories and warehouses operated in close proximity to the Powelton and Mantua neighborhoods. Then, Philadelphia was the “workshop of the world” and the Drexel Institute would be “central to the best of the working population of a great industrial city.” How have we changed? The exhibition will transform the Pearlstein Gallery into the “neighborhood,” a place where visitors will be able to engage and discuss Drexel’s changing relationship with its neighbors.  Faculty, staff, and students (undergraduate and graduate) from Westphal as well as the college of Arts and Science, and the Dornsife Center, are curating the exhibition, and will be involved in key programming with residents of Powelton and Mantua.

We are pleased to present a solo exhibition of installation, sculpture and drawings by 2015 Pew Fellow in the Arts Caroline Lathan-Stiefel. Her expansive and delicate pieces turn everyday materials into seemingly weightless, wonderful objects. Playful and meticulous, Lathan-Stiefel's installations are reminiscent of textile, incorporating sewn elements of plastic, wire, string, fabric, pipe cleaners and fishing weights. For this exhibition the artist expand her processes to include welding, aluminum casting and bent neon.

The Clay Studio and Drexel University’s Leonard Pearlstein Gallery have joined forces to curate an exhibition celebrating the work of ceramic educators in the Greater Philadelphia Area. Teaching artists have been invited to display various works that exemplify the wide range of ceramic artwork within the region. Join us for an exceptional commemoration of our city’s inspiring artistic instructors.

Join us for an exhibition of all new works by Philadelphia based artist Jesse Krimes. Deus ex Machina explores the hidden mechanics of power using ordinary objects and found materials transformed into precariously balanced systems.

Highlights from the Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection featured select artifacts from the museum-quality collection of more than 14,000 notable garments, accessories and textiles, one of the finest and oldest research collections in the nation.

Lauren Fensterstock'’s work is housed in collections across the world. Her recent exhibitions include a solo show at the John Michael Kohler Art Center, The Contemporary Austin (formerly Arthouse- The Austin Museum of Art) and the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design, among others.

The Architecture department organized a show of award winning former student work as a celebration of the 25-year anniversary of the Michael Pearson Architecture Prize. This prize honors Michael Pearson, a 1988 architecture graduate, who passed away in 1989.

Philadelphia artist Bill Walton died in early 2010. As an artist, teacher and friend he left behind a dedicated group of fellow artists. This exhibit consists solely of his work that was given, traded, or, in some cases bequeathed, to those artists.

Featuring the work of installation artist Jeremy Holmes from Ithaca, NY, this solo exhibition consist of a continuous, site-specific wood installation designed for the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery.

The exhibition, which is hosted by Drexel University’s Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design in collaboration with Philadelphia’s Pentimenti Gallery, features abstract wall pieces constructed of wood and vinyl, a mural of translucent packing tape, textured wall hangings created from sponges, an installation of laced red twine and other works from artists Margery Amdur, Mark Khaisman, Derrick Velasquez and Nami Yamamoto.