Moore College of Art & Design Presents Immersive Multimedia Installation "Michelle Lopez: Pandemonium"

PHILADELPHIA (September 11, 2025)—Moore College of Art & Design will present the two-pronged installation Michelle Lopez: Pandemonium from October 3 to December 6, 2025. Supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Pandemonium will appear concurrently at The Galleries at Moore and the Fels Planetarium at The Franklin Institute, connecting the two institutions along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway as part of a new partnership announced earlier this year. A premiere performance and opening reception will take place on Friday, October 3, at 5:30 pm.

Pandemonium propels ideas central to Lopez’s decades-long career—calamity, violence and precarity, along with social and art historical critique—while bringing them into new, expansive forms. Known for her three-dimensional work, Lopez extends her toolkit to include mechatronics, animation, sound and VR film to capture the riotous beauty of a rising tornado in a 360-degree video format. Commissioned by Moore, the video was filmed specifically for the Fels Planetarium and will be shown with 8K projection equipment. Lopez considers the tornado as both a devastating natural phenomenon of unstoppable climate change and as a symbol of the swelling media landscape of disinformation.

Around the corner, The Galleries at Moore will present selected sculptural works by Lopez that demonstrate her deep ability to bring precarious forms to life. Seeming to teeter on collapse or imply imminent changes in atmosphere and perception, these works will be juxtaposed with the Pandemonium film, which will be projected onto a hovering disc that offers an alternate experience of the maelstrom. 

Developed by the artist over a ten-year period of ideation, research and production, Pandemonium stems from deep collaborations with curators, engineers, animators, musicians, and production teams.  

Performances on October 3 will feature a robot designed in collaboration with a team of graduate students and professor Mark Yim, Asa Whitney Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. To incorporate elements of live performance, Lopez also worked closely with composer Joshua Hey and sound designer and musician Eugene Lew, as well as with choreographer Susannah Yugler. A custom-built simulation machine was filmed on the Tacony grounds of RAIR (Recycled Artist in Residency) Philly as part of the process of creating the tornado. 

Pandemonium is curated by Cole Akers, Curator & Associate Director of Special Projects at The Glass House and Erica F. Battle, Curator, BATTLE Projects, in collaboration with Gabrielle Lavin Suzenski, Rochelle F. Levy Director & Chief Curator of The Galleries at Moore.  

In addition to the support from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Pandemonium has been produced through research and production funding from Guggenheim Fellowship, The University of Pennsylvania University Research Foundation, University of Pennsylvania Undergraduate Research Mentorship Program, The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design Fine Arts Department, and the Knight Art + Technology Expansion Fellowship.

Related Programs  

The following programs will be held to celebrate and amplify Michelle Lopez: Pandemonium: 

Premiere Performance

• Date: Friday, October 3, 2025 
• Location: The Fels Planetarium, The Franklin Institute, 222 N. 20th Street, Philadelphia PA 19103 
• Admission: Advance registration required to reserve your spot for one of two performances. 
• Times: 
  • 6:30 pm (check-in at 6:00 pm) 
  • 7:30 pm (check-in at 7:00 pm) 
• Each 30-minute performance will feature an immersive screening, accompanied by a live score.

Exhibition Reception and Preview 

• Date: Friday, October 3, 2025 
• Location: The Galleries at Moore College of Art & Design, 1916 Race Street, Philadelphia PA 19103 
• Time: 5:30-9:00 pm  
• The Galleries at Moore and The Franklin Institute are within two blocks of each other on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Guests can view the exhibition at The Galleries at Moore any time between 5:30 pm and 9:00 pm; directions between the two sites and details for the event will be provided upon registration. 

Weekly Screenings of Pandemonium at Fels Planetarium 

• Location: Fels Planetarium, The Franklin Institute 
• Dates and times: Thursdays and Saturdays at 4:00 pm on the following dates:  
  • October 4, 9, 11, 16*, 18, 23, 25, 30* 
  • November 1, 6, 8, 13, 15*, 20, 22 
  • December 4, 6 
• Admission: Free with admission to The Franklin Institute; no admission required for screening only. Entry is at the ground-level entrance on 20th Street, beginning at 3:30 pm.
• Screenings on October 16, October 30 and November 15 will feature a special talk with the artist and/or curatorial team after the film concludes.  

Vinyl DJ Set

• Experience the audio selections of Occasional Sound & Music Service (Eugene Lew, Anthony Elms, and Lauren Downing) that draw inspiration from Pandemonium, during The Franklin Institute’s Science After Hours: Celestial Sips.
• Date: December 5, 2025
• Location: The Franklin Institute 
• Admission: Advance tickets for Science After Hours are required.    

A Conversation with Michelle Lopez and Anne Ishii

• Artist Michelle Lopez is joined by writer and musician Anne Ishii, to dive into the creative choices behind Pandemonium that have expanded upon recurrent themes in Lopez’s work.  
• Location: The Galleries at Moore 
• Date and time: November 5, 5:30 pm 

Making Pandemonium: Artistic Collaborator Roundtable 

• Join the interdisciplinary collaborators who contributed to the making of Pandemonium to learn how a complex, 360-degree work on a vast scale is envisioned and realized.  
• Location: Graham Auditorium at Moore College of Art & Design 
• Date and time: To be announced