News

"Falls of Niagara" by William Russell Birch

Landscapes Are Not Neutral, but Rather Perspectives of Power

The waterways depicted in "From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscapes of the Early American Republic" are most well-known by their current Euro-American names, but are situated in the homelands of the Lenape people. “Some visitors to PAFA may have heard of the contemporary 'museums are not…
More
Perspectives
Dr. Anna O. Marley

Dr. Anna O. Marley, PAFA Curator of Historical American Art, Named a 2020 Fellow of the Center for Curatorial Leadership

Curator Dr. Anna O. Marley, has been named a Center for Curatorial Leadership Fellow for 2020. This prestigious fellowship provides curators with classes taught by Columbia Business School Professors, emphasizing interdisciplinary approaches to self-knowledge, leadership, and the social…
More
Press Release
Madison Greiner (PAFA-Penn BFA '19) working in her studio

Madison Greiner '19: A New Scholarship Gives Painter Another Year of Study

After receiving the Raymond D. & Estelle Rubens Travel Scholarship, Madison Greiner (PAFA-Penn BFA '19) is able to spend an extra year studying at PAFA. “Now that I have this almost surprise year I want to take advantage of things that I was more hesitant to get involved in before,” she said.
More
Perspectives
Taylor Freeman (BFA '22) in Lenfest Plaza

Taylor Freeman '22: Sculptor Gains A Community of Mentors

Sculpture student Taylor Freeman is looking to his PAFA professors for guidance as he embarks on a career as an artist. “I really like Steve Nocella, he is my favorite teacher. He’s taught me a lot about welding and plaster sculpture and bronze pours. I want to learn all of that stuff and soak it up…
More
Perspectives
The painting "Skaters" by Gari Melchers (top right) at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is a near twin to one looted by Nazis and recently recovered by the FBI at an upstate New York museum. / Image: Heather Khalifa (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Philadelphia Inquirer | Painting looted by Nazis has a twin at PAFA—and another in Virginia

When the federal government recently announced that a painting stolen by the Nazis in 1933 from the family of a Berlin publishing tycoon had been recovered from the Arkell Museum in upstate New York, Anna Marley, curator at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, did a double-take. The painting…
More
Press Coverage
Andrew Snow (MFA '20) in his studio

Andrew Snow '20: Turning Parking Tickets into Self-Portraits

Second-year MFA student Andrew Snow is turning memories tossed aside by others into art. Discarded Philadelphia Parking Authority tickets become self-portraits for Snow: “It’s playing off of memory and kind of the ghost of a memory.”
More
Perspectives
Elizabeth Colomba, "Riding Places" (2019)

PAFA Recognized as a Pioneer in Collecting Art by Women

PAFA singled out for its leadership in collecting artwork by women by a new survey of 26 major American art institutions from In Other Words / Artnet News.
More
Press Release
Professor Renee Foulks talks with students

The Museum as Classroom: PAFA’s Museum Inspires Student Voices

“All of art history is here for us. It’s this huge banquet of guilty pleasures, and you can take from Tarbell, you can take from Eakins, you can take from everybody,” said PAFA drawing chair Renee Foulks.
More
Perspectives
Jesse Castor (BFA '22) in the stone library

Jesse Castor '22: Student Finds Their Medium in Foundation Year

Printmaking major Jesse Castor (BFA '22) uses her art practice to center herself. The manual work required for printmaking allows Castor to be grounded in her work.
More
Perspectives
installation view of AHDF

New York Times | Seeing the Past from the Future

Artists look to the past, think about historical points of reference and reframe them for the contemporary moment.
More
Press Coverage
Landscape Evening, by Paul Weber Pennsylvania Academy purchase, by subscription

Preserving the Past

With works dating back to the 1790’s, time was not on the side of conservator Mary McGinn when she began preparing for PAFA’s current exhibition, From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscapes of the Early American Republic.
More
Perspectives
Marie Watts "Skywalker/Skyscraper (Allegory)," (2012)

Philadelphia Inquirer | PAFA acquires 13 works for its permanent collection, more than half by women

Building on its efforts in recent years to expand its acquisition of works by women and artists of color, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has announced that it has recently acquired 13 artworks, more than half by women.

More
Press Coverage

About PAFA

Founded in 1805, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is America's first school and museum of fine arts. A recipient of the National Medal of Arts, PAFA offers undergraduate and graduate programs in the fine arts, innovative exhibitions of historic and contemporary American art, and a world-class collection of American art. PAFA’s esteemed alumni include Mary Cassatt, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Thomas Eakins, William Glackens, Barkley L. Hendricks, Violet Oakley, Louis Kahn, David Lynch, and Henry Ossawa Tanner.