It’s the 26th anniversary of the Philadelphia Open Studio Tours (POST) and to celebrate, its creative community is planning an artistic journey you won’t want to miss.
POST is a program of The Center for Emerging Visual Artists (CFEVA), and it’s Philly’s largest self-guided tour. In 2025, this citywide celebration will feature detailed experiences, plus, hands-on workshops, gallery exhibitions, live demonstrations, artist talks, receptions, and special events.
It’s been a tradition every fall season since 1999, and 2025 is similar to its predecessors with a behind-the-scenes look into the creative processes of local artists spanning visual media in painting, drawing, ceramics, mixed media, photography, metalworking, and much more.
This year in total will boast over 250 artist studios and creative workspaces, covering over 26 Philly neighborhoods.
The first weekend (Oct. 11-12) will focus on studios east of Broad Street, while the following weekend (Oct. 18-19), will tackle the studios west of the cutoff. The East edition will find stops in Center City East, South Kensington, Fishtown, North Philly, Northern Liberties, Old City, Port Richmond, The Northeast, Queen Village, Bella Vista and South Philly. The West iteration, on the other hand, will focus on Center City West, Chestnut Hill, Mount Airy, East Falls, Roxborough, Manayunk, Fairmount, Francisville, Germantown and West Philadelphia.
Each studio will be open from noon to 6 p.m. on their designated days, and participants can use the online and print maps provided by CFEVA to guide their tours. Each stop on POST will feature red balloons and branded posters outside of their locales to help with distinction. While there, Philadelphians can check out those hands-on workshops, gallery exhibitions, live demonstrations, artist talks, special receptions, and much more.
POST 2025 also hosts some stand-alone events over the course of the two weekends that are worth checking out, like an Artist Talk with Brooke Lanier (Oct. 12) and a special showcase at Blick Art Materials with Shannon Cronin and Sammy Rivera (Oct. 11 and 12, noon to 6 p.m.) The studio tours will also feature a few different running exhibitions that are on display for an extended period of time. One, a CFEVA Exhibition at The Sonesta Philadelphia Rittenhouse Square (featuring Keith Sharp and Kate the Earthling) will be highlighted in the hotel’s lobby from Oct. 18-19.
As a program of the Center for Emerging Visual Artists, POST creates promotional opportunities for Philadelphia artists while increasing awareness of the quality and quantity of visual art in our city, a release notes. Today, CFEVA’s programming serves more than 400,000 artists and audience members annually.
To find out more on this year’s Studio Tours and other information regarding CFEVA, visit cfeva.org
