A crop of exciting new work emerges from Philadelphia’s arts and culture scene every autumn, including many projects supported by our grantmaking. This season, the calendar includes installations and exhibitions engaging with music and technology, explorations of creative legacies on stages and on gallery walls, and programs considering collaboration and community identity. The advent of fall also brings the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, where two Center-funded productions will transport audiences to different worlds. Find out where you can experience these events and more in our 2026 Fall Arts Guide.
Want upcoming arts and culture events in your inbox each month? Sign up for our newsletter
Immersive Performances
Lunar Retreat
September 6–22
Nichole Canuso | Branching Paths
The growing distance between the Earth and the Moon inspired Lunar Retreat, an immersive piece by Nichole Canuso | Branching Paths performed at Drexel University’s Leonard Pearlstein Gallery during the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. The interactive and multi-sensory performance “invites audiences to wander, witness, and reflect on how we move through care, loss, and transformation—both individually and collectively.” The work was developed by choreographer Canuso, along with ocean explorer and visual artist Rebecca Rutstein, experimental sound designer Bobby McElver, scenic designer Anna Kiraly, and multimedia video designer Kate Freer.
Priority Hoarding: A Retrospectacle
September 10–December 20
Bearded Ladies Cabaret
The literal and figurative baggage of queer performance art company Bearded Ladies Cabaret takes the spotlight in Priority Hoarding, an interactive installation constructed from 16 years' worth of accumulated props, costumes, and ephemera. Developed by Bearded Ladies co-founders Rose Jarboe and Rebecca Kanach (both Pew Fellows), Priority Hoarding is staged in a playful pop-up space dubbed The Hairport, where flight attendants guide travelers from room to room (with an optional Surrey bike ride). On Saturday nights in September, the tour culminates in a lounge space for “in-flight entertainment” from artists including Ursula Rucker, Malgorzata "Gosia" Kasprzycka, and Cherdonna Shinatra. Priority Hoarding ponders personal and artistic legacy, asking, “How do you know it’s time to move on when you don’t know where you’re going?”
Innovations in Music and Technology
Instruments That Talk Back: Celebrating the Legacy of Don Buchla
September 19–April 17
Museum of Music Technology / EMEAPP
The life and legacy of synthesizer pioneer Don Buchla is celebrated in this exhibition and event series at Harleysville’s Museum of Music Technology. The seven-month project will display musical equipment designed by Buchla, from the analog gear he built in the 1960s to his digital products of the 1990s. A robust series of lectures, workshops, and performances will take audiences on a deeper dive into the work of an influential figure in electronic music whose innovations “blurred the line between human and machine.”
ESC -> CTRL -> PLY
October 13–December 12
Leonard Pearlstein Gallery, Drexel University
Looking at video games beyond the lens of mass entertainment, this multi-media exhibition considers their impact as a means of community building, creative expression, and social critique. ESC-> CTRL-> PLY will transform Leonard Pearlstein Gallery to feel more like an arcade with a mix of gaming artifacts as well as VR, installation, and design work on view. The exhibition invites visitors to play games created by independent producers and view gaming from historic and present-day perspectives, “using play as a means of cultural disruption and critical reflection.”
How To Survive
November 19–January 3
The Crossing
A new choral work performed by acclaimed choir The Crossing gets its world premiere through a video installation at The Fabric Workshop and Museum. How To Survive juxtaposes life-size projections of the Crossing’s singers with footage of natural disasters such as tornadoes, earthquakes, and wildfires, considering the effects of weather-related displacement, human-replacing technology, and the role of song in learning and surviving. Conceived, written, and designed by Suzanne Bocanegra, it includes new compositions by Hildur Guðnadóttir, Shara Nova, Julia Wolfe, and Ayanna Woods
Celebrating Creative Legacies
For the Love of Philly
December 4–6
Philadanco!
Two long-tenured institutions will come together in early December for a dual celebration of Philadelphia dance and Philadelphia soul at the Kimmel Center’s Perelman Theater. For the Love of Philly sees Philadanco performing new commissions and remounted works to a soundtrack of classics from the Philadelphia International Records catalog. Alongside a lobby display highlighting the history of both companies and their founders—Philadanco!’s Joan Myers Brown and PIR’s Kenneth Gamble, Leon Huff, and Thomas Bell—the project will spotlight “Philadelphia's artistic soul, cultural memory, and enduring global influence.”
El Anatsui: Prints and Play
December 19–April 25
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Ghanaian artist El Anatsui is renowned for large-scale installations and sculptures made with repurposed and discarded materials, such as aluminum bottle caps and metal graters. El Anatsui: Prints and Play is the first comprehensive museum survey of his printmaking work, which pushes the boundaries of the medium through nontraditional materials and techniques. Curated by contemporary African art scholar Chika Okeke-Agulu, the exhibition provides a fresh perspective on Anatsui’s interplay between two- and three-dimensional objects and his engagement with indigenous West African design traditions. His work also appears in Brandywine Workshop and Archives’ PrintLab (see below).
Want upcoming arts and culture events in your inbox each month? Sign up for our newsletter
Showcasing Artists in Residence
PrintLab
through October 26
Brandywine Workshop and Archives
The multi-year artist residency PrintLab invited eight artists and master printers to work together testing new materials, technologies, and processes. The project resulted in two concurrent exhibitions on view this fall: PrintLab: Material Futures at Brandywine Workshop and Archives, and Proof Testing: The PrintLab Artist Residency at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts’ Anne Bryan Gallery. The exhibitions showcase both creative experimentation and collaborative production in work by El Anatsui, Lavett Ballard, Albert Chong, Willie Cole, Kakyoung Lee, Delita Martin, Jocelyn Akwaba Matignon, and Pew Fellow Didier William.
Soundscapes for Tomorrow: Stage One Residencies
September 26 and October 17
Philadelphia Clef Club of Jazz & Performing Arts
As it celebrates its 60th anniversary and surveys its legacy, the Philadelphia Clef Club of Jazz & Performing Arts also looks to the future with Soundscapes for Tomorrow, an artist residency and concert series staging its first two feature performances this fall. The project brings contemporary composers and multi-instrumentalists to the Clef Club’s facility on South Broad Street in Philadelphia to collaborate with peers and develop new compositions to be showcased in world premiere performances on their main stage. Saxophonist and band leader Tia Fuller debuts her work on September 26, and trombonist Papo Vázquez follows on October 17.
Collaborations in the Community
An Endless Meeting: Collective Process, Artistic Labor, and the Politics of Working Together
October 2–November 15
Vox Populi
Artist collectives are the driving force behind Vox Populi’s exhibition An Endless Meeting, as both creator and subject. The multi-pronged project encompasses exhibitions, performances, workshops, and roundtables involving an array of collaborators including Pew Fellow Maia Chao, who co-developed the conceptual framework with fellow Vox Populi member Logan Cryer. It “explores the politics of collectivity, inviting broad publics to reflect on their own experiences of collaboration.” The six-week-long project is part of the Collective Futures festival, which brings together artist-run organizations to examine collective cultural production.
Unearthing the Stories of Philadelphia Gardening
October 2; November 6–January 27
Pennsylvania Horticultural Society
The past and present of gardening in Philadelphia are explored in this collaboration between the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and the Atheneum of Philadelphia that surfaces the contributions of individuals and communities often overlooked in traditional Eurocentric narratives of gardening. On October 2, landscape designer and horticulturalist Wambui Ippolito unveils a newly designed, permanent public garden at the Atheneum and discusses how gardens reflect Philadelphia's traditions of science, immigration, and civic pride. And from November 6 to January 27, 2027, the exhibition Bouquet of Stories: Celebrating Philadelphia’s Gardening Heritage surveys 300 years of gardening history through rare objects, photographs, and first-hand histories.
Vámonos pa'l monte
September 17 and October 17
Mural Arts Philly
As the country’s Semiquincentennial year approaches its close, Mural Arts Philadelphia takes a perspective on America 250 that centers Puerto Rican culture, migration stories, and themes of resilience. Vámonos pa'l monte is a community-oriented project conceived by artist Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz, with costume designer Kristina Tollefson and partner organizations Taller Puertorriqueño and Norris Square Neighborhood Project. On September 17, the artists and partner organizations will discuss their collaborative process in a roundtable at Las Parcelas Garden in Norris Square. And on October 17, a four-mile processional beginning at Philadelphia City Hall—the culmination of a year of work with residents and cultural workers in Philadelphia’s historically Latinx neighborhoods—will celebrate community and invite the public “to walk together toward a shared future.”
Semiquincentennial Reflections Still on View
Cultural programming for America’s Semiquincentennial year continues into the fall and beyond. Here are four ongoing projects that interpret and interrogate the country’s history for America250.
Let Freedom Ring
Association for Public Art
through September 27, Cherry Street Pier
Before this interactive installation closes, artist Paul Ramírez Jonas will speak about it with the Association for Public Art’s Charlotte Cohen and Monument Lab’s Paul Farber on September 23 at Village of Industry and Art.
In Pursuit: Philadelphia and the Making of America
History Making Productions
through Nov. 2 and beyond, various locations
Community screenings for this ten-part docu-series exploring American history through the lens of Philadelphia continue at the Free Library of Philadelphia, Bryn Mawr Film Institute, and other venues.
The Declaration’s Journey
Museum of the American Revolution
through January 3, 2027
To further explore the Declaration of Independence’s global impact and highlight the research behind the exhibition, the museum will present a two-day convening on the international legacy of the Declaration on September 25 and 26.
The First Salute: An Untold Story of the American Revolution
Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History
through April, 2027
Visit The Weitzman’s website for resources and events around the ongoing exhibition about how a Jewish community living in the Caribbean turned the tide of the American Revolution.
