PHILADELPHIA -- Some artists dream of having their work displayed in an illustrious gallery in New York City. For a group of University of Pennsylvania undergraduate fine-art students this is becoming a reality.

An opening reception on June 6 will present the "2002 Senior Thesis Exhibition, Undergraduate Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania" at the Louis K. Meisel Gallery at 141 Prince Street in New York. The show runs through June 19.

Louis Meisel, the father of an undergraduate at Penn's Wharton School, said that during the early years of his gallery in the 1970s he often traveled to student exhibitions around the country looking for a hints of promise in young emerging artists.

He invited the senior class to bring their exhibition to the gallery after its thesis exhibition at Penn's Charles Addams Gallery.

"This will be a way for me to see and contemplate the art of a period and in a way I have never done before," Meisel said. "It will provide the public and the New York art world the same possibility of discovering new talent and will give the artists the early experience and incentive, as well as the credit, of having serious professional exposure to exhibiting in the art world."

Any commission on the sale of an item will be paid forward to Penn's Graduate School of Fine Arts to help defray the costs of next year's undergraduate catalog.

Meisel is considering forming a coalition of galleries to invite graduating classes of numerous fine-art schools to show thesis works in a series of exhibitions in SoHo, Chelsea and uptown galleries in June of each year.

"Twenty galleries each showing the works of about 20 artists from schools of their choice will certainly give a broad and perhaps far more interesting view as to what is going on in the minds of the next generation of artists."

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