Sculpture has been an intrinsic part of the Academy since its founding in 1805. William Rush, one of the three artists connected with the formation of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, was also one of the nation's first sculptors, representative of the American craft tradition aspiring to European fine arts. The Academy holds several notable works by Rush, including a masterful self-portrait.
The kind of art tradition Rush sought to emulate is represented in the collection by his contemporary, Jean-Antoine Houdon, a French sculptor who memorialized several of America's Founding Fathers, and by later 19th Century American sculptors working in a neoclassical style, including Hiram Powers, William Wetmore Story, Randolph Rogers, and Joseph Alexis Bailly. Bailly was the first of the Academy's notable sculpture instructors now represented in the collection. Others include Thomas Eakins, Charles Grafly, Albert Laessle, and Walker Hancock.
With more than 300 works ranging from 1780 to the present, the Academy's sculpture collection is particularly notable for its portrait busts, neoclassical marble sculpture, French-inspired bronze figures, direct carvings in stone and wood and the overall variety of materials and techniques represented. Other major artists represented in the sculpture collection include Augustus Saint-Gaudens, John Quincy Adams Ward, A. Stirling Calder, Gaston Lachaise, Alexander Calder, Chaim Gross, Isamu Noguchi, David Smith, Leonard Baskin, Louise Nevelson, George Segal, Mary Frank, Red Grooms, Siah Armajani and Nancy Graves.