The Secret Show
Curated by Emma Hapner, inspired by Rococo secret salons. Held at the Jane Gallery, Philadelphia, PA. Explore our opening events and browse the work.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Era Contemporary x Jane Gallery Presents
The Secret Show: Preview Night x Curator's High Tea
Thursday, February 5, 2026 | 5–8 PM
Jane Gallery, 32 N 3rd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106
Presented by Era Contemporary, with curation by Emma Hapner
Philadelphia, PA — The Jane Gallery presents The Secret Show: Preview Night x Curator's High Tea, an intimate preview evening on February 5 conceived in the spirit of the Enlightenment salon: a gathering devoted to conversation, aesthetics, and the social life of ideas. Presented by Era Contemporary and curated by Emma Hapner, the preview offers first access to a group exhibition that reconsiders Rococo not as historical ornament, but as a contemporary revival, in which beauty operates as protection, pleasure as agency, and intimacy as a form of strength.
The Secret Show approaches ornament as a deliberate, intellectual gesture at a moment marked by fatigue, acceleration, and cultural austerity. Here, excess is not decorative surplus but a language of refusal. Surface, sensuality, wit, and care function as strategies in this art. The laborious beauty of the paintings bring to mind ways of tending to the self and to one another in the face of constraint. Beauty, in this context, becomes both a powerful respite and signal: a protective act and a rebellious form of self-care.
The preview unfolds as a Curator’s High Tea, situating the works within ritual, warmth, and shared attention. This format recalls the historical salon as a civic space—where aesthetic experience fostered dialogue, alliance, and dissent, while offering a counterpoint to winter’s austerity. In Philadelphia, a city long defined by intellectual independence, the gesture resonates with particular force.
The exhibition aligns with a broader international re engagement with Rococo-influenced inquiry, visible in recent and current museum programming. From the Getty’s recontextualization of Pompadour-era decorative arts, to the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Marie Antoinette Style, to contemporary reinterpretations such as Flora Yukhnovich’s work at The Frick, the Rococo is in a modern revival. Rather than reviving Rococo as costume or nostalgia, The Secret Show advances it as a living vocabulary capable of addressing contemporary questions of beauty, power, pleasure, and care.
In the high tea, guests encounter the exhibition as a salon rather than a spectacle: a space shaped by conversation, music, attentiveness, and exchange. Attire inspired by Rococo aesthetics is welcomed as a form of participation, extending the exhibition’s visual language into lived presence and reinforcing the porous boundary between artwork, viewer, and environment.
The preview precedes the public opening on February 6 and affirms Philadelphia’s enduring role as a site where beauty and dissent coexist, especially in winter, when care itself becomes an act of resolve and endurance.
Preview Night x Curator's High Tea: The Secret Show
February 5, 2026 | 5–8 PM
Jane Gallery, Old City, Philadelphia
Presented by Era Contemporary
The public opening will take place during First Friday, February 6, 2026 (5–9 PM), welcoming a broader audience to engage with the exhibition.
The show will up during Jane Gallery's regular business hours for the duration of February.
For press inquiries, tickets images, or interview requests with the curator or participating artists, please contact eracontemporary@gmail.com or visit www.eracontemporary.com.
Featured work above, Girl Talk by Emma Hapner.