Dates

May 1st to November 22nd 

exhibiting Artist

Janna Gregonis, Naya Lee Chang, Kristen Neville Taylor, Samara Weaver, Jacintha Kruc, & Jonathan Wahl 

Exhibiting location

Cliveden Historic House

Built as a country house for attorney Benjamin Chew, Cliveden was completed in 1767 and was home to seven generations of the Chew family. Cliveden has long been famous as the site of the American Revolutionary War Battle of Germantown in 1777, as well as for its Georgian architecture. New research is unearthing a more complicated history at Cliveden, which involves layers of significance, including the lives of those who were enslaved by and in service to the Chew family. This information broadens the meaning of Cliveden as a preserved historic place, exploring themes and stories of American identity and freedom. Traces of the history of the Cliveden property and its occupants can be found throughout the five-and-a-half-acre woody landscape. 

Cliveden invites and gathers the community, educates students, teachers and public visitors and in a safe space, convenes vital conversations about history, race, culture, class, gender, civics and current events. We preserve this special place for community use and for future generations.

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Special Related Event

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Opening Reception


Saturday, May 9, 2026 | 5pm to 7pm

Join the Cliveden team for the opening reception of Looking Glass, a site-responsive exhibition at Cliveden of the National Trust by six contemporary artists. The historic house will be open for a self-guided walkthrough of art installations throughout the house and grounds. Light refreshments will be served. Free admission. 

Looking Glass

In this exhibition six contemporary artist aim to answer the questions posed by the radical Americana Project in the context of the historic house. These artist will activate the property with a wide range of mediums, both in the home and on the property grounds.

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About the artist

Naya Lee Chang

Naya Lee Chang (b. 2000, Mountain View, CA) is an NYC-based public artist who remixes the built environment with site-specific sculptures that visually riff on existing architecture or infrastructure, and conceptually uncover stories from a place’s real or imagined past. Grounded in historical scholarship yet frequently whimsical and striking in form, Chang's work intrigues busy pedestrians as well as community participants, who will find layers of meaning and opportunities for bodily engagement in her installations.

Artist website

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Sculptural Intervention

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Sculptural Intervention

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Sculptural Intervention

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Research Location

Winterthur Museum, Gardens, and Library

Today’s creativity can be inspired by objects from the past. Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library is a historic mansion featuring one of the most significant collections of American decorative arts in the world. These objects and our library collections help us broadly understand the artistic, cultural, social, and intellectual history of the Americas and everyday Americans in a global context from the 17th to the 20th centuries. As part of the Radical Americana initiative, Winterthur offers an experience to inform or inspire your own creative process, to provide respite and an opportunity to observe the natural world, and to encourage historical research that enhances the contemporary meaning of current work.

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Artist Information

Kristen Neville Taylor

Kristen Neville Taylor is an Philadelphia artist whose diverse practice combines drawing, sculpture, and glass which converge playfully in installation style environments. Her work considers the impact of the stories we tell about nature calling attention to the systems and events that establish definitions and shape public perception of the environment. She is a co-founder of The Green Sun, a multifaceted project focused on the intersection of art and policy as they relate to the history of energy, energy democracy and possible energy futures. Taylor’s work has been shown at Vox Populi, the Woodmere Art Museum and the Philadelphia Art Alliance (Philadelphia), Pacific Northwest College of Art (Portland), Richard Stockton and Rowan University Art Galleries (New Jersey), and Expo Chicago. She has organized several exhibitions including Landscape Techne at Little Berlin, The Usable Earth at the Esther Klein Gallery, and she co-curated Middle of Nowhere in the Pine Barrens. Taylor is the recipient of the Pew Fellowship, Laurie Wagman Prize in Glass, a RAIR Recycled Artist-in-Residence, and a Penn Program for the Environmental Humanities Artist-in-Residence.

Artist website

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Installation Detail

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Installation Detail

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Installation Detail

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Artist Information

Samara Weaver

​I grew up making artwork my whole life. Having an artist for a father can have that effect. In my college years I got both my bachelor's and master's in architecture which further enhanced my artistic abilities and added another layer of reasoning and functionality to my work. Through college I was also able to add other skills to my artistic repertoire, taking oil painting and glass blowing alongside my architecture classes. I use many different mediums, including: paper, watercolor, clay (ceramic), wood, photography, glass, wool (felt), dyes, oil paint, and metal. Using these different mediums allows me to choose the best one for the project I'm working on. If I think there's a better medium or method I haven't tried yet, I'm always up for learning something new!

Artist website
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Artist Information

Janna Gregonis

In my current work I am exploring porcelain as a precious mysterious material. Porcelain was at one time thought to be valued more than gold and received the nick name of white gold, upon perfecting the formula. With the current economic climate I find myself gravitating more towards this ‘white gold’ and pushing it as far as I can to achieve the preciousness that once dominated the aristocracy of the early 18th century. Im enjoying bringing two precious materials together; gold and porcelain to achieve a final piece merging the elegance of materials. Being surrounded by the products of the great porcelain house of europe and antique jewelry in my ‘day’ jobs have confounded into a very interesting piece of jewelry still grounded in the traditional adornment and the merging of history of all things precious.

Artist Website
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Artist Information

Jacintha Kruc

Jacintha Clark Kruc (B. 1986, New Mexico) works and lives in Philadelphia. Kruc’s career in architectural conservation inspires a lot of her art as she explores the way we connect to the world around us and the conversations we have with the past and present. Her work has been exhibited in various solo and group exhibitions throughout the Philadelphia region and New York, including the Woodmere Art Museum, Susquehanna Art Museum, Delaware Contemporary, Pratt WMP, USS Olympia at the Seaport Museum, Philadelphia International Airport, Rutgers University, and Philadelphia's Magic Gardens. She has also been exhibited at A.I.R. Gallery and Kunstraum Gallery in New York, as well as Red Dot at Art Basel Miami, Florida. Kruc was the recipient of the Fleisher Art Memorial Wind Challenge, Jacques McCuiston Dowling Prize, The Justine Cretella Memorial Scholarship, and the Draper Experiment at Delaware Contemporary. Clark earned an Associate’s Degree from Arapahoe Community College, a BFA from Metropolitan State College of Denver, a Post Baccalaureate Certificate from Maryland Institute College of Art, and an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Artist website

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Perspective Detail

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Porcelain Chair Cushion Detail

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Peep Hole detail

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Artist Information

Jonathan Wahl

Wahl holds a B.F.A. in jewelry and metalsmithing from Temple University's Tyler School of Art and an M.F.A. in metalsmithing and fine arts from the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is a member of the Society of North America Goldsmiths. Wahl trained in sculpture, drawing, and jewelry making. This drawing is from his series of charcoals based on late nineteenth-century Victorian mourning jewelry. Wahl is interested in scale and perception and how the viewer relates to "historical objects of jewelry when rendered larger than life.

Artist website

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The Liberty to See

The text is inspired by the letter from an enslaved man of the Chew family named Joseph from December 5, 1804. The letter is preserved in the Pennsylvania Historical Society. In the letter Joesph asks for “the liberty to go see his wife” who had been sold to another owner in Baltimore. His request “for the liberty to go see” was denied. Wahl shortens the saying to read the Liberty to See which he interprets as the Liberty to see the truth now.

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Full Project

Radical Americana

For the Semiquincentennial, The Clay Studio is leading Radical Americana, a series of exhibitions organized by a consortium of Philadelphia’s arts and cultural institutions. Each celebrates how artists today are continuing the city’s robust legacy as a center for art, skill, and civic engagement. The 45 artists researched and were inspired by the art and history of Philadelphia in 1776, and the subsequent commemorations in 1876, 1926, and 1976. The artists' new work will add their voices to current dialogue about our nation’s present and future, inspire civil dialogue, celebrate Philadelphia's diversity, and continue the rich tradition of creativity in our city.

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