Cheryl Harper - Independent Curator

Hired as an independent curator for The Borowsky Gallery at The Gershman Y in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1996, Harper became staff curator in 1998 and grew the mission of the gallery from regional shows to major presentations of national and international art. She also initiated a photography space, The Open Lens, as a second gallery at the Y. Harper left the Galleries at the Gershman after the 2003-4 season, and since 2005, has been doing independent projects.

October 3-November 15, 2008 Global Warming at the Icebox, Crane Arts Building, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Sponsored by Philadelpha Sculptors Cheryl Harper and Leslie Kaufman, project co-directors. Cheryl Harper, guest curator. Five invited and ten juried artists installed works that ranged from humorous presentations to serious approaches to problem solving. The International artists were from Germany, Taiwan, Quebec, Toronto, Israel, and Ireland. American artists represented New Orleans, West Virginia, Puerto Rico, and Tennessee, and as close as Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York City. Philadelphia Museum of Art Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Adelina Vlas worked with Harper to select the juried artists. Reviewed by Edith Newhall in the Philadelphia Inquirer on October 19, 2008. For more details and catalog visit Philadelphia Sculptors.

November 3-December 22, 2006. Projects Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Henry Bermudez: Fragmented Dream, Cheryl Harper, Guest Curator. This new body of work incorporated intricately cut painted canvas, creating lacelike biomorphic mythological forms that were mounted on Pointillistic backgrounds or presented as traceries against a gallery wall. A Venezuelan painter, Bermudez represented his country at the Venice Biennale in 1986. A restless itinerant traveler, his latest residency was in Philadelphia. Reviewed by Edith Newhall in the Philadelphia Inquirer on November 24, 2006, among others.

May 2-August 15, 2004. Borowsky Gallery at The Gershman Y in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Subtle Nothings: Extraordinary Nuance in Multi-Media Works curated by Cheryl Harper, part of The Big Nothing, a city-wide project organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. The show included the work of Meredith Monk, Liz Phillips, Ray Rapp, Antenna, Andy Holtin, David McQueen, and Chris Vecchio. Reviewed by Libby Rosof.

February 15-April 15, 2004. Borowsky Gallery at The Gershman Y, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Meditation/Mediation an installation by Daniel Rothbart, a globe-trotting artist who placed prayer bowls in unusual settings begging not for alms but for interaction with the objects.

Cheryl Harper
Independent Curator
contact Cheryl Harper	Cheryl Harper's undergraduate degree in Art History is from Drew University. She holds both a BFA from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art, and an MFA from the University of Delaware. Harper completed the two-year Museology program at the University of Illinois, encompassing all areas of museum study including registration methods, grant writing, exhibit planning, and connoisseurship.

	Hired as an independent curator for The Borowsky Gallery at The Gershman Y in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1996, Harper became staff curator in 1998 and grew the mission of the gallery from regional shows to major presentations of national and international art. She also initiated a photography space, The Open Lens, as a second gallery at the Y. Harper left the Galleries at the Gershman after the 2003-4 season, and since 2005, has been doing independent projects.

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	October 3-November 15, 2008 Global Warming at the Icebox, Crane Arts Building, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Sponsored by Philadelpha Sculptors Cheryl Harper and Leslie Kaufman, project co-directors. Cheryl Harper, guest curator. Five invited and ten juried artists installed works that ranged from humorous presentations to serious approaches to problem solving. The International artists were from Germany, Taiwan, Quebec, Toronto, Israel, and Ireland. American artists represented New Orleans, West Virginia, Puerto Rico, and Tennessee, and as close as Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York City. Philadelphia Museum of Art Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Adelina Vlas worked with Harper to select the juried artists. Reviewed by Edith Newhall in the Philadelphia Inquirer on October 19, 2008. For more details and catalog visit Philadelphia Sculptors.


	November 3-December 22, 2006. Projects Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Henry Bermudez: Fragmented Dream, Cheryl Harper, Guest Curator. This new body of work incorporated intricately cut painted canvas, creating lacelike biomorphic mythological forms that were mounted on Pointillistic backgrounds or presented as traceries against a gallery wall. A Venezuelan painter, Bermudez represented his country at the Venice Biennale in 1986. A restless itinerant traveler, his latest residency was in Philadelphia. Reviewed by Edith Newhall in the Philadelphia Inquirer on November 24, 2006, among others.

	September 1-October 29, 2006. Projects Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Caleb Weintraub...with the bathwater, Cheryl Harper, Guest Curator. An emerging painter, Weintraub's show consisted of collage paintings of insolent babies and menacing toddlers. He incorporated craft materials such as fake fur and sequins in his mixed media paintings. Reviews and features included "Worlds Within Worlds" by Leslie Kaufman for Inside Magazine (Winter, 2006), Art Knowledge News, and Philadelphia Weekly, "Heat and Why it Matters "by Roberta Fallon (9/27/06).

	May 2-August 15, 2004. Borowsky Gallery at The Gershman Y in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Subtle Nothings: Extraordinary Nuance in Multi-Media Works curated by Cheryl Harper, part of The Big Nothing, a city-wide project organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. The show included the work of Meredith Monk, Liz Phillips, Ray Rapp, Antenna, Andy Holtin, David McQueen, and Chris Vecchio. Reviewed by Libby Rosof.

	December 10, 2003-February 10, 2004. Borowsky Gallery at the Gershman Y in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Curated by Cheryl Harper. Two videos, a small world by American artists Sanford Biggers and Jennifer Zackin and I Clean Richard’s House and He Cleans Mine by Israeli artist Doron Solomons, challenged perceptions of racial differences. A small world was a reinstallation of the project by Biggers and Zackin at previous The Whitney Biennial. Reviewed by Roberta Fallon, on December 10, "Double Take" in Philadadelphia Weekly.

	February 15-April 15, 2004. Borowsky Gallery at The Gershman Y, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Meditation/Mediation an installation by Daniel Rothbart, a globe-trotting artist who placed prayer bowls in unusual settings begging not for alms but for interaction with the objects.

	April 28-June 30, 2003. Galleries at the Gershman Y, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A Happening Place, funded by the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, a grant program administered by The Pew Charitable Trusts. This project documented groundbreaking exhibitions at the Gershman Y in the 1960s including the second Pop Art show in the United States in 1962. Among artists in the exhibition: Robert Arneson, Robert Breer, Christo, Dean Fleming, Geoffrey Hendricks, Roy Lichenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Ed Ruscha, Lucas Samaras, Robert Watts, and William T. Wiley. A full color catalog with essays and checkists of historic exhibitions of the 1960s and early 1970s accompanied the project. Numerous reviews.

	2002-3 season. Galleries at The Gershman Y, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Projects included a show investigating the influence of children and childhood on the work of Art Speigelman in Not Just for Grown-ups Anymore, co-curated with Natalia Indrimi. See link for details and installation photos. Review by Sam Adams “All Ages Art” in City Paper on October 3, 2002. Another highlight was Perspectives in Portraiture, featuring the photography of Rita Bernstein, Larry Fink, Judy Gelles, and Michael A. Smith. Reviewed by Edward Sozanski of the Philadelphia Inquirer on Friday, March 7, 2003.

	May 10-July, 2002. The Borowsky Gallery at the Gershman Y. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Six regional artists allowed their work to be touched in Not For Your Eyes Only, expanding the horizons of audience for the artists and enriching the experience of art for visually impaired audiences. A CD audio tour and Braille catalog were available for visitors. Feature with photos by Tom Gralish for the Philadelphia Inquirer on Tuesday, May 14, 2002.

	January 1-March 5, 2002. A multi-site exhibition of contemporary Israeli art titled LandEscapes . It included four solo exhibitions at three Philadelphia institutions: Drexel University, Moore College of Art, and The Gershman Y. The project was co-curated by Cheryl Harper and Israeli independent curator Tami Katz-Freiman. Reviewed by Edward J. Sozanski for the Philadelphia Inquirer on February 1, 2002 and January 25, 2002.

	March 15-May 10, 2001. Galleries at The Gershman Y, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The first of a series of exhibitions of Israeli contemporary art featured at the Gershman Y was supported by the New York and Jerusalem Israeli cultural ministries; the project led to contacts with Israel’s most innovative artists and curators. The first Israeli exibitions curated by Cheryl Harper were Nir Hod’s Heroes’ Tears and Orit Raff’s Behind Closed Doors. Featured review by Edward J. Sozanski in the Philadelphia Inquirer on April 13, 2001.

	In the Fall of 2000, Harper became staff curator at The Gershman Y. Other critically recognized shows at the galleries have included Vincent Feldman’s City Abandoned; The Figure as Vessel; and Invented Landscapes: Ideal and Imagined. Reviews by Edward J. Sozanski of the Philadelphia Inquirer on February 16, 2001, Roberta Fallon of the Philadelphia Weekly on January 31, 2001.

	In 1999, under Harper's initiative, the entrance lobby of the Gershman Y was transformed into a gallery devoted to photography. Exhibitions in the inaugural season of The Open Lens Gallery included Kabbalah in Black and White: The Photography of Leonard Nimoy and Charmaine Caire’s Plastic Genome Project.

	In 1998, Harper was appointed Curator of The Borowsky Gallery. Exhibitions included: Small Worlds, Bigger than Life: An Exhibition Where Size Matters (1998) Review by Robin Rice in Philadelphia City Paper in February 26-March 4, 1999 issue. Variations on an Inspiration: Neoclassicism Revisited (1998) Review by Edward J. Sozanski of the Philadelphia Inquirer on October 9, 1998. The Banquet: In Celebration of Outrageous Appetites (1999) Reviews: Edward J. Sozanski, Philadelphia Inquirer, January 28, 2000; Robin Rice, Philadelphia City Paper, February 10-February 17, 2000, among others. The Art of Hirschfeld (1999) Featured article in Philadelphia Inquirer by Thomas J. Brady on May 3, 1999. The Shadows of Shoah (2000) Earlier exhibitions Harper curated for the Y included The Nature of Form, TimeLine, and Sacred Spaces.