PAFA presents A Fine Arrangement: The Art of Still Life

On view through April 12, 2015

PHILADELPHIA (November 7, 2014) - The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) presents A Fine Arrangement: The Art of Still Life, on view through April 12. The exhibition brings together nearly 90 works from PAFA, the Woodmere Art Museum, and contemporary works from artists with ties to both PAFA and the Philadelphia region.
 
Many of the artists included in the exhibition were trained at PAFA, including Charles Demuth, Charles Lewis Fussell, and John Peto. Other artists not only trained but also taught at PAFA, including Arthur B. Carles, Ben Kamihira, Jimmy Leuders, Elizabeth Osborne, and Franklin Watkins.
 
The exhibition's curators, Jan Baltzell and Michael Gallagher, are also artists and PAFA faculty members. For them, still life continues to be a relevant art form that grows and combines with other subjects, concepts, and media to engage a diverse range of artistic practices.
 
In the Western tradition of academic art, the still life evolved from an early supportive role as a symbolic device in figurative painting into a significant genre unto itself. More than merely an art of imitation, still life offers the possibility to engage topics and subjects including religious and allegorical symbolism, landscape, architecture, narrative, and abstraction.  
 
Today, still life is a teaching tool and an area of exploration for independent advanced students in PAFA's School of Fine Arts, and a distinct genre collected by PAFA's Museum.
 
A Fine Arrangement is on view in the Annenberg Gallery and the School of Fine Arts Gallery in the Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building. It is being presented in conjunction with Peter Blume: Nature and Metamorphosis.

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ABOUT PAFA
Founded in 1805, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is America's first School of Fine Arts and Museum. A recipient of the 2005 National Medal of Arts presented by the President of the United States, PAFA is a recognized leader in Fine Arts education. Nearly every major American artist has taught, studied, or exhibited at PAFA. The institution's world-class collection of American art continues to grow and provides what only a few other art institutions in the world offer: the rare combination of an outstanding Museum and an extraordinary faculty known for its commitment to students and for the stature and quality of its artistic work.