David Kettner Panel Discussion

Having formally studied literature (B.A. Temple University) and painting (B.F.A. Philadelphia College of Art; M.F.A. Tyler School of Art), Neff has been working with photo-based images and installations since 1981. Her work was recently featured in the Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibition, “New Grit: Art & Philly Now,” as well as in “The Windows,” a 2021 installation at Bridgette Mayer Gallery. Neff has been the recipient of several awards, including: John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Memorial Fellowship; Pew Fellowship in the Arts; National Endowment for the Arts Grant; Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship; and Leeway Foundation Artist Grant. She has been awarded residencies at Fitler Club, Philadelphia; Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest, Clermont, KY; Monte Azul Center for the Arts, Costa Rica: MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH: Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; and La Napoule Art Foundation, France. Neff is a Resident Critic in the MFA Program at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. From 1989 – 2002, she wrote reviews for Artforum International and continues to write independently.

Sid Sachs has been the Director of Exhibitions at the University of the Arts since 1998. His major exhibits include “Conspicuous Display,” “Pop Abstraction,” “Yvonne Rainer,” “Invisible City,” and “Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists.” The latter won the AICA for the Best Thematic Museum exhibition while ARTnews declared it the decade’s seventh most influential worldwide. Other projects include Alex Da Corte, Rosalyn Drexler, Ron Gorchov, Ken Lum, Matt Mullican, Thomas Nozkowski, Jack Pierson, Tal R, John Stezaker, Lenore Tawney, Robert Watts and Lebbeus Woods. Sachs has written for Art in America, Arts, American Ceramics, Burlington Magazine, Metalsmith, and The New Art Examiner and lectured at The Brooklyn Museum, Hauser & Wirth, Lafayette College, Parsons School of Design, PAFA, the Sheldon Art Museum, Tufts, and UPenn.

David Kettner was born in 1943 in Sunman, Indiana. He received his BFA from Cleveland Institute of Art in 1966 and his MFA from Indiana University in 1968, the same year he joined the faculty at the University of the Arts, teaching with Edna Andrade, Larry Day, Eileen Neff, and Warren Rohrer, among others, until retiring in 2012. Early group shows included two iterations of “Made in Philadelphia” (1974, 1980) at the ICA (Philadelphia). Kettner’s first one-person exhibition, “Six Self Portraits,” was presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1976, followed the same year by a solo show at the State University of New York (Albany). In the following decade, Kettner’s work was featured in one-person exhibitions at the Morris Gallery (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1981) and Marian Locks (1985).  Examples of his analytical drawings were selected by Laura Trippi, Roberta Smith, and James Elaine for three juried “Works on Paper” exhibitions at Arcadia (1990, 1991, 1999, respectively). More recently, Kettner’s collages were featured in a two-person exhibition at Gross McLeaf (2015), a three-person show (“Under the Spell of the Image”) curated by John Stezaker (The Approach, London, 2019), and “Second Nature,” juried by Eileen Neff at the Woodmere Art Museum. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, the RISD Museum, and Rutgers University (Camden).

Richard Torchia is director of Arcadia Exhibitions, a position he has held since 1997, before which he was the inaugural curator of the Levy Gallery at Moore College of Art & Design. He has organized solo exhibitions and projects for artists such as Ai Weiwei, Tacita Dean, Olafur Eliasson, William Larson, Quentin Morris, and Paula Winokur, along with numerous thematic group exhibitions. Since 2017 he has overseen the archive of writer and artist Pati Hill (1921–2014) housed at the University. In addition to independent publishing projects, including an index of Philadelphia-based artist-run spaces, Torchia has maintained an artistic practice employing optical devices.