Philadelphia has long been a city of firsts. It was here that the Declaration of Independence was signed and here that the nation’s democratic experiment took its earliest shape. As the country prepares to mark 250 years since that founding moment, a new cultural festival in Philadelphia is making the case that art, not just politics or pageantry, should be at the heart of the celebration. ArtPhilly’s inaugural festival, What Now: 2026, which opens tomorrow (May 27) and runs through July 2, is shaping up to be one of the most ambitious cultural undertakings the city has attempted in recent memory.
ArtPhilly, a cultural nonprofit founded in 2024, spent roughly two years sharpening its vision for a cultural happening that could make an impact on a calendar that this year includes six World Cup matches and many, many semiquincentennial events, ultimately commissioning more than 30 new works and forging partnerships with organizations and artists across the city. What emerged is a five-week, multidisciplinary program spread across several neighborhoods, with more than 100 events encompassing the visual arts, music, dance, theater and film.
Behind it are executive director Bill Adair, who previously served as program director at Pew’s Center for Arts and Heritage, and collaborators including the Barnes Foundation’s Thom Collins, Mural Arts’ Jane Golden, writer and Penn professor Lorene Cary and the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance’s Patricia Aden. To develop the project, Adair’s team studied the structures of various biennials and held multiple planning sessions, considering more than 80 potential artists before narrowing the field to 17. Out of their conversations came the festival’s animating question: “Who are we and how is that changing?” The theme What Now functions as both a challenge and an opening, investigating the 250th anniversary of the founding document of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, while also asking visitors to think more deeply about the full weight of American identity—not just its founding promises but the gaps between those promises and the historical record.
One pointed example is Anna Deavere Smith’s documentary play, “The Basil Biggs Project.” Smith (best known to television audiences from The West Wing and Nurse Jackie) built the piece around an ancestor of hers who was paid to inter Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg. In Sail Through This to That, sculptor and textile artist indira allegra explores similar themes at Philadelphia’s Spruce Street Harbor, stretching three schooner sails into a work that traces the parallel stories of Ona Judge, once enslaved by the Washingtons, who escaped to freedom, and Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells, a Black transgender fashion designer killed in 2020. At the Stenton Museum, Trapeta B. Mayson, Philadelphia’s fifth poet laureate, will present a two-part immersive work focused on Dinah, an enslaved woman credited with persuading British soldiers to spare the Stenton House in 1777.
Not all of the festival’s programming looks backward. Filmmaker Glenn Holsten spent months gathering footage from volunteer filmmakers, which he then wove into Patina / Promise, a moving portrait of Philadelphia as it exists today set to screen outdoors at John Welsh Memorial Fountain on June 3 and 10. Nigerian-American artist Odili Donald Odita’s colorful triptych of monumental fabric banners, Freedom is…, will be displayed on the vaulted ceiling of Broad Street Love. The Crossing, a Grammy-winning choir, will premiere a new composition by Opera Philadelphia composer-in-residence Nathalie Joachim. And at the Museum of the American Revolution, composers Laurin Talese and Zeek Burse are developing new music in direct response to the institution’s collection.
Notably, Philadelphia has a history of celebrating the nation’s anniversary with art—the Philadelphia Museum of Art was chartered in 1876, just after the Centennial International Exhibition, as part of the U.S.’s centennial celebrations. Perhaps unsurprisingly, ArtPhilly is thinking long term: rather than treating What Now: 2026 as a one-time event, the organization intends to mount a new edition every three years, with the next installment planned for 2029 and fresh commissions built into each cycle.
Art Travel Guides
-
Six American Artists’ Homes to Visit This Summer
-
48 Hours of Art in Chicago: CXW, Museums and Monuments to Come
-
5 Days of Art in Hong Kong: Ancient History, Contemporary Culture and Endless Contrast
-
Aruba Has Murals and Murano Glass But No Museum… Yet
-
The Best Art in Seattle, from Eclectic Museums to Exciting Community Projects