Vertical Display: The Library by Mina Smith Segal

Mina Smith Segal has a drawing exhibition on view at Parkway Central Library through Saturday, October 31, 2026. The show is titled Vertical Display: The Library, and it's tucked into the Art Department of the library, which is at 1901 Vine Street, between 19th and 20th Streets on the Parkway in Philadelphia.

What makes this one a bit different from your usual gallery show is where the work lives. Instead of hanging on the walls, the drawings fill the historic poster stands of the Art Department. They're drawings made from life of the library's own spaces, so as you walk through the room, you're looking at sketches of the very building you're standing in. It's a quiet, recursive kind of thing—the library as both the subject and the frame.

There's a larger context to it, too. The exhibition is part of a long-running series by the Free Library of Philadelphia that shows work created by artists who use the library as a working space. Segal is one of those artists, and these drawings come from her time spent working within the building. It's less about a finished product and more about the act of looking at a place while you're actually in it.

If you want to see it, you've got until Saturday, October 31, when it closes at 5 PM. The Art Department is inside Parkway Central Library at 1901 Vine Street, right between 19th and 20th Streets on the Parkway.