Eric Pryor became President and CEO of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in January 2022 — the first Black person to lead the institution founded in 1805 as America’s first and oldest art museum and school. He has since departed the role and returned to his own studio practice. Common Ground, the new two-person exhibition at Moody Jones Gallery in Jenkintown, is the place to see what that return looks like. It runs June 26 through July 31, 2026, with an opening reception on July 2 from 5:30 to 8:30 pm.
Eric G. Pryor: From PAFA to the Studio
Eric Pryor trained as a painter — BFA from Wayne State, MFA from Temple’s Tyler School of Art in 1992 — and spent the intervening decades leading institutions including the Harlem School of the Arts and PAFA before returning to canvas. His abstract and mixed-media work draws from rhythm, movement, music, and African diasporic aesthetics. The layered symbolism and cultural memory that run through his studio practice have been with him since the beginning; the administration was the arc, not the work.
His mentor was Al Loving, the New York abstract painter. His mother ran a gallery in Detroit until she was 93. Before he ran PAFA, Eric Pryor was a painter looking for the intersection of his own identity and the African American artistic tradition. Common Ground suggests that search — now on the other side of a significant institutional chapter — is still ongoing.
Ernani Silva and the Work He Brings to Common Ground
Ernani Silva was born in Rio de Janeiro and grew up on a hill in a settlement originally populated by African runaway slaves. He began painting at fourteen and has spent more than 40 years developing a practice rooted in Candomíblé spirituality, Brazilian cultural memory, and the rhythms of music — he plays multiple instruments and always has music on while he works. His media include acrylic, collage, and recycled materials; his palette runs toward opaque, saturated color and dense, lyrical figurative energy.
The pairing between Eric Pryor and Silva is earned. Both artists draw from music as a generative force. Both work in the African diasporic tradition from different geographies — Eric Pryor from the African American experience, Silva from Brazil’s African and indigenous roots. The exhibition title holds: there is common ground here that isn’t simply thematic but procedural, rooted in how both artists actually make work.
What does Eric Pryor make when he is making only for himself? The Common Ground exhibition at The Moody Jones Gallery is where that question gets answered. The opening reception is July 2 from 5:30 to 8:30 pm. That’s a good evening to drive to Jenkintown and find out.
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