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Permanent Collection

The galleries of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts house one of the finest collections of American art in the world. Between the elegant Victorian historic landmark building and the contemporary Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building, visitors are provided with a chronological survey of American art ranging from the Colonial period to the 21st century.


In the historic landmark building, the Washington Foyer houses the Academy's earliest masterworks such as Gilbert Stuart’s George Washington (The Lansdowne Portrait) (1796), Charles Willson Peale’s The Artist in His Museum (1822) and two enormous canvases by Benjamin West. The main galleries house works by distinguished alumni including Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, Cecilia Beaux, Maxfield Parrish, Robert Henri, Charles Sheeler, John Sloan, and Arthur B. Carles, affirming the Academy's critical role in training and promoting some of the most renowned artists in America.


The Hamilton Building’s galleries, including the Fisher-Brooks Gallery; the School of Fine Arts Gallery: Gift of the Women’s Board; the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Gallery; the Tuttleman Sculpture Gallery; and the Academy’s School Gallery, hold the institution’s post-World War II works. On view are works by modern and contemporary artists such as Leon Golub, Jim Nutt, Robert Ryman, H.C. Westermann, Alice Neel, Jess, Betye Saar, Adolf Gottlieb, and Elizabeth Murray.


In addition to the permanent collection, the main galleries are also devoted to special exhibitions, drawing from museums and private collections around the world.


Harnett, Peto and their Accomplices: Trompe l'oeil Paintings from the Collection
Through August 31, 2008
Historic Landmark Building, Gallery 11

Among the treasures of the Academy's historical collection are numerous examples of the virtuoso realist genre known as "trompe 'loeil," French for "to fool the eye." These pictures were often referred to as "deceptions" because the artist's skill at rendering surfaces and three-dimensional objects was so convincing that it was thought to fool some viewers into thinking they were seeing the "real" thing rather than paint on canvas.

This installation showcases twelve of the Academy's 19th-century trompe l'oeil paintings, including four paintings by one of the most prominent practitioners of this genre, John Frederick Peto (1854-1907). While this genre is typically associated with the 19th century, and particularly the late-19th century, the installation includes one work by a twentieth-century artist: a 1957 painting by John Wilde (1919-2006) in the trompe l’oeil tradition.

Works in the installation include paintings by Ben Austrian (1870-1921), De Scott Evans (1847-1898), John J. Eyers (active 19th century), Richard La Barre Goodwin (1840-1910), William Michael Harnett (1848-1892), John Frederick Peto (1854-1907), Alexander Pope (1849-1924), Andrew John Henry Way (1826-1888), and John Wilde (1919-2006).

 
School of Fine Arts Gallery: Gift of the Women’s Board

The Pennsylvania Academy's exhibition space devoted to showing the work of students, alumni and faculty.

 

Located on the second floor of the Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building, this gallery is open during museum hours and is free with admission.

 


Robert Ryman: Philadelphia Prototype, 2002

Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building, second floor west gallery, ongoing


Robert Ryman (born 1930) is widely considered the foremost Minimalist painter in a movement associated more with objects than with paintings. Minimalism implies the modernist goal of distilling art to its formal essence by eliminating illusionistic pictorial space. While Minimalism is often associated with the machine made—especially in the sculpture of Donald Judd or Richard Serra—Ryman’s work is distinguished by the importance he places in unique surfaces brought about through the painter’s touch. He uses texture, mark making and viscosity as essential elements in a highly-refined examination of the optical and material properties of painting. Since the 1960s, Ryman has explored the myriad possibilities of the color white as it is exposed to variations of scale, type of paint, surface texture, support, and installation strategies. Ryman has always insisted on the importance of the relationship of the painting to the wall, by either attaching it very closely using unusual anchoring devices, like metal brackets, or in the case of the Academy’s permanent installation, Philadelphia Prototype, 2002, using paint itself as a method of attachment.


The serial, large-scale Philadelphia Prototype is a remarkable achievement in Ryman’s career. It consists of ten buff-colored vinyl sheets attached to the wall with white acrylic paint. In the execution of the work, the panels are attached to the wall with multiple pieces of adhesive tape, placed perpendicular to the four edges of each panel at irregular intervals as well as vertically. Once the panels are mounted they are each painted in a succession of multidirectional strokes; the brush is made to exceed the edges by roughly one inch all around, creating a halo or border of pigment on the wall. When all the tape is finally eliminated, it leaves behind areas that reveal the various layers of pigment down to the vinyl. Ultimately, the panels are held to the wall by the adhesive properties of the paint alone. Reducing painting to pure surface—dispensing with a painting’s “objectness”—has been an ongoing goal for Ryman, and something he achieves with Philadelphia Prototype on a seamlessly integrated architectural scale.