The Now After and Curatorial Squad Opening Receptions

Pen + Brush

Join us for the opening reception of our spring exhibitions, The Now After: What We're Left With and In the House: Curatorial Squad!

Pen and Brush

The Now After: What We’re Left WithOn view April 30 through September 12, 2026Featuring work by Lacey McKinney, Amy Hill, Chau Nguyen, V.L. Cox, and Tyvette Symone, alongside The Typewriter Project, an interactive installation by the New York Poetry Society.Participating artists will present work spanning painting, sculpture, photography, assemblage, and installation. Lacey McKinney creates interdisciplinary works that challenge hierarchies of gender and ecology, examining environmental crisis through a feminist lens that reflects on the destabilization and ecological aftermath of human intervention. Amy Hill paints scenes where natural and technological worlds coexist in uneasy balance, questioning what remains of intimacy, environment, and human agency as technological systems increasingly shape daily life. Chau Nguyen investigates the intersections of memory, labor, and Vietnamese history, tracing how images and materials circulate globally while revealing the ongoing cultural and generational aftermath of war. V.L. Cox transforms historical objects such as distressed American flags, segregation era materials, and antique furnishings into assemblage sculptures that confront the enduring legacy of injustice and ask what responsibility remains in the wake of historical oppression. Tyvette Symone translates her lived experience with Bipolar I disorder into symbolic visual language that connects personal mental health with broader cultural turbulence, reflecting the psychological aftermath of contemporary life.The Now After: What We’re Left With confronts our world after impact, after rupture, and after the world we experienced yesterday. What we’re left with, as seen through the eyes of five artists and the Typewriter project, is a new world of reckoning: interrupted hierarchies, ecofeminisms, a little bit absurd, critical of the destructive past, mindful of personal accountability and the roles we all play, while questioning the sustainability and stability of our environment and our mental state.The Typewriter Project is an interactive installation by the <a href="https://poetrysocietyny.org/?gad_source=1&amp;gad_campaignid=1888770847&amp;gbraid=0AAAAADgOuGMztrRXe0aVckhezYhkK9cSW&amp;gclid=CjwKCAjwwJzPBhBREiwAJfHRnWDhndjprWj0E8gQt8xZgVfL0PBA5g-7aj7m6Yp1KrWHM6oFsxyZExoCjr8QAvD_BwE" title="https://poetrysocietyny.org/?gad_source=1&amp;gad_campaignid=1888770847&amp;gbraid=0AAAAADgOuGMztrRXe0aVckhezYhkK9cSW&amp;gclid=CjwKCAjwwJzPBhBREiwAJfHRnWDhndjprWj0E8gQt8xZgVfL0PBA5g-7aj7m6Yp1KrWHM6oFsxyZExoCjr8QAvD_BwE" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">The Poetry Society of New York</a>, that invites visitors to contribute to a collective poem on a 100-foot paper scroll using a vintage typewriter equipped with a custom USB kit that archives every keystroke. Inspired by the surrealist game Exquisite Corpse, the installation captures the collective voice of the city and offers a participatory space within the exhibition for visitors to reflect on what we are left with.Across painting, sculpture, assemblage, photography, and installation, the artists explore themes of historical reckoning, technological impact, environmental instability, and collective mental health, offering reflections on resilience, vigilance, and the responsibilities that emerge in the aftermath of crisis. <a href="https://www.artsy.net/show/pen-plus-brush-the-now-after-what-were-left-with" title="https://www.artsy.net/show/pen-plus-brush-the-now-after-what-were-left-with" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Preview the exhibition on Artsy</a>

Amy Hill, Woman on Zoom, 2021, Oil on canvas, 23 × 22 in

Curatorial Squad: In the HouseInaugural exhibition opening April 30thOur Curatorial Squad is a new curatorial initiative and exhibition on view April 30 through June 30, 2026, in the downstairs gallery at Pen + Brush in New York City. The program brings together curators, art advocates, and cultural leaders to review artist portfolios within the Pen + Brush archive and collectively champion women and gender expansive artists through exhibitions and professional visibility.Curatorial Squad expands Pen + Brush’s artist first incubation model by expanding our peer-based pipeline between artists and curators working across museums, galleries, and independent platforms. Each participating curator commits time to reviewing artists within the Pen + Brush portfolio files, identifying work that resonates with them and contributing a short-written reflection advocating for their selections. Through this process, curators help surface artists whose work merits deeper recognition and contextual visibility.More than a review process, Curatorial Squad expands on our field-based network of peers willing to champion artists and expand the pathways through which they enter exhibitions and broader cultural conversations. Artists identified through the Curatorial Squad process will be featured in tailored exhibitions and integrated into Pen + Brush programming throughout the year, creating a sustained pipeline for discovery and professional advancement.The inaugural Curatorial Squad includes Vida Sabbaghi, curator and Director of Exhibitions at 630 Flushing Avenue and founder of COPE NYC, whose work advances socially engaged art and international cultural exchange through exhibitions, public programming, and institutional collaborations, including projects presented at the Queens Museum; Amy Rosenblum Martín, an independent curator whose practice spans biennials and museum exhibitions and whose career includes positions at the Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and curatorial work with MoMA and MoMA PS1; and Vai Jong Hunken and Alfonso Alday Vergara, co-directors of <a href="https://aldayhunken.com/" title="https://aldayhunken.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Alday Hunken Gallery</a> in Mexico City and Atlanta, whose collaborative program supports emerging and mid-career artists through exhibitions, international collaborations, and participation in art fairs including SCOPE Miami and Atlanta Art Fair.Works lauded by this class of curators will be exhibited from April 30th through June 30th, 2026.

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The Now After and Curatorial Squad Opening Receptions

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