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Academy Archives

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, founded in 1805, is the first art museum and art school in the United States. The records in its Archives were accumulated as a result of the Academy's primary activities: collecting, preserving and exhibiting art; and training artists. Because a great number of important artists have been associated with the Academy - as students, instructors, directors and exhibitors - the Archives is now a unique and highly important research facility, documenting the development of the fine arts and art education in America, as well as the history of the institution itself.

History/Timeline

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts was founded in 1805 by painter and scientist Charles Willson Peale. more >		 Exhibition Listings

During the course of its 200-year history, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has mounted more than 1,000 exhibitions. more >
Publications Listing

The Academy publishes research and reference works on its collection, its numerous exhibitions, more >		 Academy Stars

Many of America's greatest artists have been affiliated with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, more >
The Buildings

On April 22, 1876, while America celebrated its centennial, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts marked more >		 Contact Archivist

Researchers are welcome, by appointment only, on weekdays between 9:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. more >


The Academy is aware of its history, and the value of its archives has long been recognized. Minutes of board meetings held in the early 19th century indicate that committees were appointed to select and secure a storage area for the institution's important papers and to arrange them for convenient reference. This foresight has left the Academy with an almost complete series of records in many areas. In 1976, with the aid of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Academy Archives became one of the nation's first professionally administered museum archives. Included among the Academy's Archives are the following types of records:

Minutes of the board and its committees, faculty, stockholders, and academicians
Annual Reports
Charter, bylaws, and legal papers
Office files of the director, curator, dean of the school; correspondence with artists, collectors, and many others
Financial records
Clipping files, scrapbooks, press releases
School records: student records, complete run of the school catalogues, biographical information on faculty
Exhibition records: catalogues and general records of the Academy's long exhibition history, including the Annuals 1811-1969, special exhibitions 1807 to the present, exhibitions of student work and contemporary local artists
Information on the Academy's historic buildings
Photographs of exhibition installations, school activities, special events, buildings, artists, and administrators
Manuscripts of artists including: Thomas Anshutz, Cecilia Beaux, Arthur B. Carles, Mary Cassatt, Thomas Shields Clarke, Thomas Eakins, Susan Macdowell Eakins, Charles Fussell, Daniel Garber, Jessie Wilcox Smith, William Sartain and many others
Records of art organizations including: Artists Fund Society, the American Academy of the Fine Arts (or Columbianum), Philadelphia Museum Company (or Peale's Museum), Society of the Artists of the United States (or Columbian Society of Artists)


The Archives of American Art, a division of the Smithsonian Institution, has microfilmed most of the Academy's older records and publications (including newspaper clippings). For the convenience of scholars at a distance, the microfilm may be borrowed from the Archives of American Art through the Interlibrary Loan Department of any participating library.

Information Resources for the Academy School

The list below includes publications on the Academy School. There are separate Resource lists for the Museum, the Furness and Hewitt building, and Thomas Eakins.

Bolger Doreen, "The Education of the American Artist," in In This Academy, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1805-1976, pp. 51-74. [PAFA 1976 exhibition catalogue; Chapter 1, pp. 12-48, is a general history of the PAFA by Frank H. Goodyear, Jr.]

Chamberlin-Hellman, Maria, Thomas Eakins as a Teacher, Columbia University Ph. D. Dissertation, 1981. [1 copy in PAFA library].

*[Brownell, William], "The Art Schools of Philadelphia." Scribner's Illustrated Monthly Magazine 18, 5 (September 1879), pp. 737-750

Leibold, Cheryl, "To Assist and Excite: Art Education at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts," in The Unbroken Line: A Suite of Exhibitions Celebrating the Centennial of the Fellowship of the PAFA, 1997, pp. 13-17.

Nygren, Edward J., "The First Art Schools of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts." Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 95, 2 (April 1971), pp. 221-238.

Onorato, Ronald J., The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Development of an Academic Curriculum in the Nineteenth Century, Brown University Ph.D. Dissertation, 1977. [2 copies in PAFA library].

Quinn, Jim, "Still-Life with Nude, Dowager, and Pork-Chop," Philadelphia Magazine (March 1979), pp. 106-115, 212-222.

*Rogers, Fairman, "The Schools of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts." Penn Monthly 22 (June 1881), pp. 453-62.

*[Shinn, Earl], "The First American Art Academy." Lippincott's Magazine 9 (Feb. and March 1872), pp. 143-153 and 309-321.

[Shinn, Earl], as Sigma, "A Philadelphia Art School." The Art Amateur 10 (January 1884), pp. 30-42.

Weinberg, Ephraim, "The art school of the Pennsylvania Academy," The Magazine Antiques (March 1982), pp. 690-693. [special issue devoted to the Pennsylvania Academy].

The articles preceded by an asterisk have been filmed by the Archives of American Art (AAA), see microfilm reel 4320, frames 494-554.


Unpublished resources in the Archives of the Pennsylvania Academy:
School Catalogues (with reproductions of student art after 1907) have been filmed by the AAA as follows:
1856-70 (Broadsides) reel 4320:618-823
1878 - 1906 reel P71:870-1034
1907 - 1939 reels 4320:624 to 4321:555
Minutes of the Committee on Instruction (the standing committee of the board which supervised the School) filmed: 1856-1894 on reel P47:606-812 and 1895-1939 on reels 4335-4337.

Student attendance registers and card files: reels 4316-4318
Register of Student Prize Winners for 1879-1934: reel 4318
Master index to student prizes, by student name, at PAFA (unfilmed)
Miscellaneous essays, notes, faculty minutes, and administrative correspondence (unfilmed)


Other General References:

The Annual Exhibition Record of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1807-1968, 3 vols., 1989, edited by Peter Hastings Falk, with contributions by Cheryl Leibold, Sound View Press. The catalogues of the Annual Exhibitions are filmed as follows:
1811-1906 on reels P41:290-P43:534
1907-26 on reel 4328:8-1566
1926-55 on reel 4329:9-1434
1955-68 on reel 4330:8-282

Nygren, Edward J., Art Instruction in Philadelphia, 1795-1845, University of Delaware Master's Thesis, 1969. [1 copy in PAFA library].

Sellin, David, "The First Pose: Howard Roberts, Thomas Eakins, and a Century of Philadelphia Nudes," Bulletin of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, LXX, Spring 1975 (reprinted with additional material: The First Pose: 1876: Turning Point in American Art; Howard Roberts, Thomas Eakins and a Century of Philadelphia Nudes (New York: W.W. Norton, Inc., 1976).

The Pennsylvania Academy and Its Women, 1850-1920, PAFA exhibition,
May 3 - June 16, 1974 (title page misprinted "1973").

Philadelphia, Three Centuries of American Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1976.

Who Was Who in American Art, Sound View Press, 1985


Newspapers

The Academy's newspaper clipping scrapbooks begin with 1877 and run, with some gaps, to 1964. For 1877-81 few clippings are preserved, and none for 1893-1900. Additional loose clippings acquired at various times are on file for almost every year. The scrapbooks for 1877-1955 are filmed by the AAA on reels P53-54; the years 1956-64 are on reel 4338. Microfilm reader-printer copies of clippings, and of school and exhibition catalogues, are permitted for research purposes only. (No other PAFA microfilm may be copied without permission.) Articles on the Academy School are often found in the months of April and May, i.e., the end of the school year.

Selected Philadelphia Newspapers
Evening Bulletin, April 12, 1847 - 1975
Daily Chronicle, April 7, 1828 - May 1834 (title varies to 1840)
Inquirer, June 1, 1829- (incorporating the Public Ledger & North American)
Philadelphia Evening Item, 1846-1915; (or Weekly Item 1847-97)
North American, March 26, 1839 - May 17, 1926
The Press, Aug. 1, 1857 - Oct. 1, 1920
Public Ledger, March 25, 1836 - April 14, 1934
Evening Telegraph, Jan. 4, 1864 - July 1, 1918
Philadelphia Times, March 1,1875 - Aug. 11, 1902


The Archives of American Art: a branch of the Smithsonian Institution, preserves and makes available to researchers primary documents in American art history. Its materials, and those of many important institutions and collectors, are available on microfilm at: the Washington, D.C. or New York AAA offices; the Boston public library; the De Young Museum in San Francisco; the Free Library of Philadelphia. Microfilm can be ordered, through the Interlibrary Loan system, from the AAA in Washington, D.C.: 202-357-4251. The catalogue of the AAA is available through the Internet; researchers should begin at the AAA website: www.si.edu/artarchives.

The Academy Library, available to students, alumni and staff, is on the third floor of the Samuel M. V. Hamilton Building. In addition to books and periodicals on art, the Library houses the Vertical File, a collection of over 4000 folders of miscellaneous information on individual artists, including exhibition checklists, clippings, and photographs. Research visits to the Academy Archives and Library are by appointment. Archives: 215-972-2066; Library 215-972-2030. Please send inquiries via fax no: 215-972-5564 for the Archives; 215-569-0153 for the Library.


[Bibliography compiled by Cheryl Leibold, Archivist, edited 1999]
Information Resources for the Museum and Collections

Publications

This list includes titles which document the history of the Academy in general, or are specifically about the museum and its history. There are separate resource lists for the School, the Furness and Hewitt building, and Thomas Eakins.

Antiques 121 (March 1982) [special issue devoted to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts]

The Beneficent Connoisseurs, 1974 [exhibition checklist and 3 short essays on major collections bequeathed to the Pennsylvania Academy in the 19th century: Joseph Harrison, Edward C. Carey, and Henry C. Gibson].

Danly, Susan, Light, Air, and Color: American Impressionist Paintings from the Collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1990.
Telling Tales: Narrative Paintings from the Collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1991.
Facing the Past: 19th Century Portraits from the Collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1992.
Falk, Peter Hastings, editor, The Annual Exhibition Record of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 3 vols. (Madison, CT: Sound View Press, 1989). [index to works in the Annual Exhibitions, 1807-1968, with background essays]

"The First American Art Academy." Lippincott's Magazine 9 February 1872, pp.143-153, and March, 1872, pp. 309-322.

Fresella-Lee, Nancy, The American Paintings in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, An Illustrated Checklist, 1989.

Goodyear, Frank H., Jr., In This Academy: The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1805-1976, exhib. cat. [The first chapter is a history of the Pennsylvania Academy.]

Henderson, Helen W., The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, (Boston, L.C. Page & Company, 1911).

James-Gadzinski, Susan and Mary Mullen Cunningham, American Sculpture in the Museum of American Art of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1997.

Pennsylvania Academicians, exhib. cat., 1973.

The Pennsylvania Academy and Its Women, 1850-1920, exhib. cat., 1974.

 

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1805-2005: Two Hundred Years of Excellence (2005), 312 pages; a major publication celebrating the institution’s 200th anniversary. With essays covering the history of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, its buildings, the school and the museum collection.  Also included are 220 color reproductions of works from the collection with a short description of each.


Thistlethwaite, Mark. "Patronage Gone Awry: the 1883 Temple Competition of Historical Paintings." Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 112 (Oct. 1988), pp. 545-78.

Toohey, Jeanette M., "The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts: An Ideal and a Symbol." Pennsylvania Heritage 14 (Spring 1988), pp. 16-23.

Unpublished Resources:

Materials available from the Pennsylvania Academy Archives and in most cases on microfilm from the Archives of American Art (see below).

Annual and Special Exhibition Catalogues
Newspaper reviews and clippings
Exhibition Sales records
Board Minutes and Minutes of the Committee on Exhibitions
Annual Reports
Photographs: Exhibitions, Special Events, Board members and staff
Personal papers of artists associated with the institution
Correspondence of the Director (not available on microfilm)


The Archives of American Art: a branch of the Smithsonian Institution, preserves and makes available to researchers primary documents in American art history. Its materials, and those of many important institutions and collectors, are available on microfilm at the Washington, D.C. or New York AAA offices; the Boston public Library; the De Young Museum in San Francisco; and the Free Library of Philadelphia. Microfilm can be ordered, through the Interlibrary Loan system, from the D.C. office: 202-357-4251. The catalogue of the AAA is available through the Internet; researchers should begin at the AAA website www.si.edu/artarchives.

[Compiled by Cheryl Leibold, Archivist, edited 1999]

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