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May 26, 2021 • Caitlin Burns
In the depths of a windowless room on Arcadia University's campus, tucked away in a nondescript space, stands an IBM photocopier recently arrived from Sens, a small town 75 miles south of Paris. The machine of 1970s vintage is a prize. It belonged to artist and writer Pati Hill, a...
May 29, 2020 • Caitlin Burns
The exhibition “Pati Hill: Something other than either” was reviewed in an April 1 Frieze article, “How Pati Hill Photocopied the Impossible.” In the review, Assistant Editor Carina Bukuts praised “Something other than either” for its usage of photocopied images, which evoked themes of women’s...
Feb 6, 2020 • Caitlin Burns
This spring, Germany’s Kunstverein München will present Pati Hill's first posthumous institutional solo exhibition in Europe, conceived in cooperation with the Pati Hill Collection, housed at Arcadia University and overseen by Richard Torchia, director of Arcadia Exhibitions. Hill (b. 1921...
Jun 5, 2019 • Caitlin Burns
On June 3, Arcadia Exhibitions celebrated the opening of the exhibition, “Spencer Finch: As Lightning on a Landscape,” with a discussion between panelists Richard Torchia, director of Arcadia Exhibitions; Judith Tannenbaum, artistic director of the Whitman at 200; and Finch, who also showcased at...
Apr 11, 2019 • Jen Retter
Arcadia’s “Writers Making Books”—an exhibition inspired by Walt Whitman’s hands-on approach to publishing Leaves of Grass—was featured in an Artblog podcast on March 29. On display in Spruance Gallery until April 21, “Writers Making Books” features an international selection of books, whose...
Nov 5, 2016 • Caitlin Burns
The Times Chronicle and Glenside News published a feature story about Arcadia University’s “Exploring Public Art: Legacy, Community, & Innovation” series on Nov. 4. Arcadia’s Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Laura Baldwin and Art Gallery Director Richard Torchia were quoted throughout...
Aug 23, 2016 • Caitlin Burns
The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage recently invited Catherine Morris, curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, to talk about Pati Hill with Richard Torchia, Arcadia University Art Gallery director. Their conversation explores how Hill's use of the copier in the 1970s...
Jan 27, 2016 • Caitlin Burns
The Galleries at Arcadia University are pleased to announce the opening of Student Biennial 2016, on display in the University Commons Art Gallery through Feb. 7. This exhibition is the sixth in a series of student exhibitions at Arcadia juried by an outside curator. This year’s exhibition was...
Jan 9, 2015 • Purnell Cropper
Richard Torchia, director of the Arcadia University Art Gallery, wrote a reflective piece on the death of artist Pati Hill for Artforum.com, the website for the long-running contemporary art magazine Artforum, on Dec. 18. Hill, who died in September, created art using IBM photocopy machines in the...
Richard Torchia is director of Arcadia Exhibitions, where, since 1997, he has organized solo shows for Ai Weiwei, Dave Allen, Francis Cape, Tacita Dean, Olafur Eliasson, Keith Haring, Amy Hauft, Pati Hill, Candida Höfer, Ray Johnson, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Donald Moffett, William Larson, Kay Rosen, and Paula Winokur, among many others. Often working in collaboration, he has organized thematic group exhibitions exploring subjects such as the childhood drawings of contemporary artists, nearly imperceptible art works, the sited gesture, photorealist painting, and contemporary images of the sea and sky. A number of these exhibitions, most accompanied by publications, traveled to venues across the United States and Europe, including the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles); Maine College of Art/ICA (Portland, Maine); the Museum of Contemporary Craft (Portland, Oregon); the Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College (Saratoga Springs, New York); the Victoria & Albert Museum (London); the Royal Hibernian Academy (Dublin); the Galerie der Stadt Tuttlingen (Germany).
Independent publishing efforts include catalog essays for Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller (Pandemonium, Eastern State Penitentiary, 2005), Gabriel Martinez (Samson Gallery, Boston, 2008), Eileen Neff (Locks Gallery, 2011), Winifred Lutz (Abington Art Center, 2012), and Bruce Pollock (Fine Art Gallery, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Vancouver, 2013). Torchia also edited and contributed to the first monographs for Philadelphia-based artists Tristin Lowe and Bill Walton. Working with a team of interns and volunteers, in 2010 he edited an index of Philadelphia-based artist-run spaces (from 1969 to the present) that was included in a publication marking the 21st anniversary of Vox Populi. In 2014 he contributed a text about the presentation of Tacita Dean’s JG to Moving Image Review & Art Journal (MIRAJ) and a tribute to Pati Hill for Artforum.com.
A graduate of Holy Cross College (Worcester, Mass.) with a BA in English, Torchia’s interest in the photocopier led to his first curatorial project, a group survey for the Princeton Art Museum (1983). From 1985 to 1987 he directed City Without Walls in Newark, New Jersey, the state’s oldest artist-run space. He relocated to Philadelphia in 1987 to become the inaugural curator of the Levy Gallery for the Arts in Philadelphia at Moore College of Art and Design, a position he held until 1995 when he received a Pew Fellowship for his photography practice. During his tenure at Moore College he organized over forty exhibitions featuring the work of Philadelphia-based artists, including projects for Kocot & Hatton, Mei-Ling Hom, and Stacy Levy, as well as a retrospective for Philadelphia native William Anastasi. Group exhibitions for the gallery examined subjects such as the relationship between art making and housekeeping, the collection and display of everyday objects, drawing and painting on found surfaces, and the persistence of the monochrome canvas.
Between 1996 and 2014 Torchia served as an adjunct for the graduate program of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Since 2003 he has taught an undergraduate course in curatorial practice offered by Arcadia University’s Department of Visual and Performing Arts.
Since 1990, Torchia has maintained an artistic practice employing the camera obscura as a means to develop site-specific installations. Recent exhibitions include projects at Evergreen House (Johns Hopkins University), Slought Foundation (Philadelphia), and Wave Hill (Bronx, New York), and the Center for Discovery, Harris, New York. His work is included in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the library of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Marquee, a permanent public work realized in collaboration with Greenhouse Media (Aaron Igler and Matt Suib), opened in the fall of 2011.