Please join us tonight at 6 p.m. at VOX POPULI
319 North 11th StreetRichard Torchia, Director of Arcadia University Art Gallery, presents

"Toward a History of Artists'-run Spaces in Philadelphia,"

an illustrated talk developed in preparation for a text in to be inlcluded in a forthcoming publication planned as part of Vox's 21st Anniversary.

Richard Torchia is an artist and director of Arcadia University Art Gallery, Glenside, Pennsylvania. Since taking the position there in 1997, he has curated one-person exhibitions and projects by artists such as Dave Allen, Olafur Eliasson, Amy Hauft, Candida Hofer, William Larson, Donald Moffett, Gerald Nichols, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Kay Rosen, and Beat Streuli. Working with a range of regional and international talent, and frequently collaborating with co-curators, he has developed thematic shows addressing issues such as the sited gesture, the peformative figure, the childhood drawings of contemporary artists, and the sea and cosmos as subjects for recent art.

Prior to his tenure at Arcadia he was the inaugural curator of the Levy Gallery at Moore College of Art and Design (Philadelphia) where, between 1987 and 1995, he curated over 40 exhibitions featuring the work of Philadelphia-based talent. In addition to ongoing independent curatorial and editing efforts (including the first issues of "D Magazine" and recent monographs for artists Bill Walton and Tristin Lowe), he has contributed extensive essays for exhibition catalogs on the work of Gabriel Martinez (Samson Projects, Boston) and collaborative team Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller (for their project Pandemonium at Historic Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia). Since 1996, Torchia has been an adjunct professor on the graduate faculty of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and in 2003 initiated a course in curatorial practice that is now a standard offering in the art history curriculum at Arcadia.

Since 1990 he has maintained an active artistic practice employing sited projections (often produced with the camera obscura) at venues in Philadelphia, across the United States, and in Europe.

Image credit: Flier for the 1989 exhibition by MEAT at the C.E.C. in Philadelphia, PA.