Exhibitions in Philadelphia
October 2026
October at a glance: 9 exhibitions opening, 5 closing, and 31 more on view across the city.
Opening in October
An Endless Meeting: Featuring New Red Order2 OctVox Populi · Free
New Red Order's "Give it Back: Crimes Against Realty (Office Edition)" is a real estate office and recruitment station encouraging the rematriation of land to Indigenous people.
An Endless Meeting: 變 SLOW BURN2 OctVox Populi · Free
Eight artists and collectives work through memory, grief, queer kinship and transformation in installation, performance, video, sound and painting, drawing on fènghuáng mythology.
An Endless Meeting: Still Taking Minutes2 OctVox Populi · Free
Curated by Logan Cryer, an interview-based show about how Philadelphia artists build, sustain and leave collectives, with new work by Aaron Terry, Ollie Goss, Gregory Donnell Parker and catia colagioia.
An Endless Meeting: Featuring Caroline Woolard2 OctVox Populi · Free
Caroline Woolard's installation brings together works from "A Stone Holds Water" (2020) and "Art of Gravity" (2026).
An Endless Meeting2 OctVox Populi · Free
Vox's autumn project on collective process, artistic labour and the politics of working together, spanning exhibitions, a curatorial residency, public programmes and a print publication.
An Endless Meeting: Collective Process, Artistic Labor, and the Politics of Working Together2 OctVox Populi · Free
New Red Order, Kameelah Janan Rasheed and Caroline Woolard each approach collaboration, shared knowledge and collective action through distinct forms.
PAW Patrol: Adventure Play7 OctPlease Touch Museum
Children join the PAW Patrol pups on rescue missions around Adventure Bay: launching alerts from the Lookout Tower, driving rescue vehicles, serving at Porter's Cafe and climbing Jake's Mountain.
The Photo Review: Best in Show 202610 OctWoodmere Art Museum
Prizewinning pictures from The Photo Review's 41st International Photography Competition, juried by Sarah Kennel of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Marcel Duchamp10 OctPhiladelphia Museum of Art
The first North American Duchamp retrospective in over fifty years: more than 300 works across six decades, from painting and sculpture to film, photography and the readymades.
Closing in October
Wild Sight: Thomas Chimes on the Edge of the Rational4 OctWoodmere Art Museum
Philadelphia painter Thomas Chimes (1921–2009) summoned Hermes, Pan and the Cyclops to push against rational thought; the show reads "wild sight" as both subject and way of looking.
Workshop of the World: Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia11 OctPhiladelphia Museum of Art
Philadelphia's answer to the Arts and Crafts movement after the 1876 Centennial, with needlework, Enfield Pottery ceramics and furniture by Wharton Esherick and Samuel Yellin.
Van Gogh's Sunflowers: A Symphony in Blue and Yellow11 OctPhiladelphia Museum of Art
Two of Van Gogh's Sunflowers hang side by side: the 1888 canvas on loan from the National Gallery, London, and the museum's own 1889 version.
- In This Community12 Oct
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Work by the emerging and established artists who rent PAFA studios, hold shop memberships and take Continuing Education critiques, the working community around the Academy.
I Dream a World: Philadelphia's Young Artists Imagine the Future25 OctWoodmere Art Museum
Philadelphia schoolchildren respond to Langston Hughes's poem "I Dream a World" with art imagining a more compassionate future, made with Global Philadelphia Association.
Also on through October
Jesse Krimes: Elegy Quiltsto 1 NovThe Fabric Workshop and Museum · Free
Krimes stitches donated clothing from incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people into quilts about memory and loss, including Riverside, a new commission made with Mural Arts Philadelphia.
Frankenstein Pop-Upto 7 NovMütter Museum
The museum's popular Frankenstein pop-up returns for spooky season, on view on select Saturdays from September through November.
Creating a City of Medicineto 31 DecMütter Museum
250 years of Philadelphia's impact on how Americans have learned, taught, practised and experienced medicine, told through the College's own archive.
The Philly Killerto 31 DecMütter Museum
Summer 1976: as Philadelphia threw America's Bicentennial party, a deadly unidentified pneumonia struck. The true story of Legionnaires' disease.
Kati Gegenheimer: We've Only Just Begunto 31 DecPennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
A Morris Gallery monographic show in which Gegenheimer's vivid paintings and mixed-media works treat love, familial and romantic, as an aesthetic and political structure rather than a sentiment.
Marketing Medicine: The Art of Selling a Cureto 31 DecMütter Museum
Two centuries of medical trade ephemera show how jingles, patient testimonials and celebrity endorsements taught medicine to sell itself.
Creative Processing: Art in Therapyto 31 DecMütter Museum
How making art became a formal clinical practice, from 1940s pioneers to today's 8,000 credentialled art therapists — and the work patients made along the way.
Revolutionary Botanyto 31 DecMütter Museum
Marking America's 250th birthday, this show traces the origins of American pharmacy and botanical medicine in the city that called itself the birthplace of American medicine.
- Pennsylvania's Founding: How a City and a Colony Shaped America's Civic DNAto 3 Jan
National Constitution Center · Free
Free show with Drexel University on how Penn's 1681 "holy experiment" and the planned city of Philadelphia shaped American civic habits, with Atwater Kent artefacts and student-built map and timeline interactives.
You Stretched Diagonally Across It: Contemporary Tapestryto 3 JanThe Fabric Workshop and Museum · Free
Works by around two dozen international artists treat tapestry as a conceptual space, weighing authenticity, slow labour against technological speed, and how to depict vastness.
The Declaration's Journeyto 3 JanMuseum of the American Revolution
Over 120 artifacts, including six historic printings of the Declaration of Independence, trace how its promise of liberty travelled the world from 1776 to today.
Arc of Promiseto 10 JanWoodmere Art Museum
Marking America's 250th anniversary, this show traces how Philadelphia artists have imagined "America" as an idea, from the founding era to the present.
Noguchi to Asawa: Designing Postwar Americato 10 JanBarnes Foundation
Sculpture and design by six Japanese American artists — Isamu Noguchi, George Nakashima, Leo Amino, S. Neil Fujita, Kay Sekimachi and Ruth Asawa — whose work reshaped modern American design after WWII incarceration.
Listen with Your Eyes: A Moe Brooker Retrospectiveto 17 JanWoodmere Art Museum
Woodmere's first retrospective of Moe Brooker (1940–2022), from 1960s realism to rainbow patchwork abstractions swept with calligraphic marks, plus sculpture, weavings and personal material.
Sky Hopinka: Red Metal Dustto 18 JanBarnes Foundation
A site-specific installation of 11 new video, photography and text works by Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band), interrogating American histories and Indigenous homelands in the Annenberg Court.
Rodin's Handsto 31 JanRodin Museum
Fifteen bronzes and plasters, many rare or unique to Philadelphia, trace Rodin's obsession with the expressive hand, from The Cathedral and The Hand of God to Two Hands.
Botany of Nationsto 14 FebAcademy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University
Retells the Lewis and Clark expedition through Indigenous ecological knowledge, pairing the Academy's historic Lewis and Clark Herbarium specimens with contemporary Native voices.
Native Plants on the Parkway: A Botany of Nations Gardento 14 FebAcademy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University
An outdoor living demonstration garden on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway planted with species native to Northeastern North America, extending the Botany of Nations story outside.
- From the School Collectionto 15 Feb
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Plaster casts and cast drawings spanning more than 140 years, showing how classical models have underpinned training at America's oldest art school since 1805.
Proof Testing: The PrintLab Artist Residency at Brandywine Workshop and Archivesto 15 FebPennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Eight interdisciplinary artists pair finished prints with the working materials behind them, showing the PrintLab residency as an incubator for traditional printmaking and emerging technologies alike.
The Condition of Being Nearto 21 FebInstitute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia · Free
Group exhibition on solidarity across Black, African and Chinese diasporic networks, with video, installation, prints and archival works by nine artists.
Wilmer Wilson IV: SKIRL!to 21 FebInstitute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia · Free
ICA's inaugural R+D residency: Wilmer Wilson IV takes the eastern gray squirrel as a lens on American ecologies and colonial history, in installation, sculpture and performance.
Waste Scenes: Maia Chao and Fred Schmidt-Arenalesto 21 FebInstitute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia · Free
A two-channel video made during a residency at a Philadelphia recycling centre, staging performative vignettes choreographed by discarded materials.
To Be Continued...to 8 MarPennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Unfinished paintings, sketches and studies from PAFA's permanent collection, treating incompletion not as failure but as evidence of experiment and material process.
- Fred Wilson: THE MASTER PLAN or In Between the Big Bang and Modern Art Is the Restroomto 4 Apr
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Twenty-two photogravures reproducing the floor outlines of major museums' visitor maps, questioning the museum as a neutral repository and how its architecture shapes what we see.
- In This Academy: Selected Works from the Permanent Collectionto 26 Apr
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Prominent American artists who studied or taught at PAFA, from traditional realism to contemporary practice, tracing the visual languages the school has produced since 1805.
A Nation of Artiststo 5 JulPhiladelphia Museum of Art
The museum's America-250 centrepiece: over 1,000 works tracing three centuries of American art making, drawn from its own collection and the Middleton Family Collection.
- A Nation of Artiststo 5 Sept
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Reopening the Historic Landmark Building for PAFA's 220th anniversary: over 1,000 works from the late 18th century to today, including 100+ pieces from the Middleton Family Collection.
Open Video Call 2026to 12 SeptInstitute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia · Free
ICA's relaunched biannual platform for moving-image work by Delaware Valley artists, screened on the mezzanine across a fall and a spring season.
Entryways: Saif Azzuzto 12 SeptInstitute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia · Free
Yurok artist Saif Azzuz fills ICA's Sansom Street windows with abstract graphics drawn from research into Philadelphia's natural history.
Seeking Profit and Power: Philadelphia, China Trade, and the Making of Americato 3 JanIndependence Seaport Museum
Around 150 rarely seen objects trace how the young United States, cut off from British trade after the Revolution, turned east to China and built itself into a global economic power.
Stay in the loop on Philadelphia
A short note now and then when something new opens worth your time.