The Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art (SAMA) is celebrating the work of more than 40 artists in the PAFA community.

SAMA is a community art museum that operates the nation's longest-running museum satellite system with four museum facilities in the southwestern Pennsylvania cities of Altoona, Johnstown, Ligonier, and Loretto. Tradition and Innovation: Recent Work by Alumni and Faculty of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is on exhibition in the Sullivan Gallery at SAMA’s Loretto campus.

Scott Dimond, SAMA’s Curator for Visual Arts, said the exhibition brings a contemporary twist on traditional and realist painting.

He points to the work of artist Jennifer Baker. He said the painter reminds him PAFA's Thomas Eakins.

“She does some very interesting paintings of Northern Liberties; they way she paints them is very arresting,” he said. “The subjects are very commonplace but the way she paints them makes you take notice. I told her, ‘If Thomas Eakins painted buildings then he would paint like you’.”

Dimond chose from more than 100 artists for the exhibition but said space was the biggest factor in culling down the list.

“It’s such a great school. Everything is really first-rate,” he said. “There is a painting by Garth Herrick, Apoutheon. It’s a figure painting and that’s one of a kind. It’s a favorite of mine. It's amazingly painted you have to come see it,” he said.

Tradition and Innovation: Recent Work by Alumni and Faculty of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is on exhibition through June 9^th.

PAFA Alumni On View