Philadelphia artist Rebecca Rutstein has her most comprehensive solo exhibition to date at the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College — a mid-career survey called Universal Nature that runs June 16 through November 24, 2026. The Rebecca Rutstein Berman Museum exhibition brings together fifteen years of paintings, sculpture, video, and textile work alongside a new body of pieces made during a 2026 expedition to Greenland.

What’s in Rebecca Rutstein’s Berman Museum Exhibition

The Rebecca Rutstein Berman Museum show opens with Flow as its immediate visual statement — a monumental suspended sculpture made from hundreds of nickel-plated steel discs hung just above eye level in the museum’s main atrium. The discs shift and catch light in response to air currents, visualizing the dispersal of trace elements through ocean currents in a system that connects deep-sea hydrothermal ecosystems to the oxygen production that sustains life at the surface. The work is large enough to inhabit rather than simply observe.

The exhibition also includes large-scale paintings — among them Brine Forest and Shape Shifter — alongside the new Greenland body of work. For that series, Rutstein traveled to the Arctic in 2026 in dialogue with scientists from the Ocean Memory Project, collecting sea ice brine in the field and using it directly as a painting medium. The paintings depict the internal architecture of Arctic sea ice — its brine-filled channels and the microbial life they contain — made from the substance itself.

Universal Nature is accompanied by the first monograph dedicated to Rutstein’s practice — a significant scholarly milestone for a Philadelphia artist whose work has been shown internationally. The publication features an essay by the Michener Art Museum’s chief curator, Laura Turner Igoe, an interview with Philadelphia gallerist Bridgette Mayer, and an introduction by National Magazine Award-winning journalist Susan Casey.

The September 17 Reception and How to Get There

A public reception is scheduled for Thursday, September 17, from 6 to 8 pm and is free and open to all. The Rebecca Rutstein Berman Museum show runs through November 24 — the museum is at 601 E. Main Street in Collegeville, PA, about 30 miles from Center City Philadelphia. Additional public programming will be announced later this summer.

The survey is one of the more substantive institutional commitments to a Philadelphia artist this year, and a mid-career survey of this scope — with an accompanying monograph, new work made in Greenland, and a five-month institutional run — is worth the trip to Collegeville. September 17 is a good reason to go.

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Allan Lane

Philadelphia born and bred, Allan Lane is the Publisher and Editor in Chief of digital magazines. He launched his first publication, SportBikes Inc Magazine in 2010, followed by dosage MAGAZINE in 2019. Recently, Allan launched his third online publication, Club For Man. As a journalist, Allan covers fashion, lifestyle, culture, art, and motorcycles.

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