What does it mean to be an American? This question has been especially urgent for the last decade as democracy is on the chopping block. Our national future feels troublesome. This uncertainty was on my mind as I viewed A Nation of Artists, a major new exhibition celebrating America’s 250th…

The first thing to understand about A Nation of Artists at PAFA is that it is not simply an exhibition to be seen. It is an exhibition to be entered, followed, questioned, and slowly unpacked. Presented in conjunction with the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Middleton Family Collection, the…

PAFA alum Njideka Akunyili Crosby unveils her Obama portrait. Explore her work and see what’s possible through PAFA’s Certificate programs.

Representational and realist art methods take center stage in PAFA’s (pafa.org) Bodies and Souls exhibit. Over 120 works from the Kohler collection highlight themes of visibility, autonomy and embodied experience across identity, relationships and connections to home. Here, curators Robert Cozzolino…

On April 12, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts will reopen its Historic Landmark Building after two years of renovation. It will do so with “A Nation of Artists,” an exhibition that tells a sweeping story of American creativity.

Moments like this invite more than celebration. They ask…

"Some say that the greatest piece of art in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is the building itself — PAFA’s lavish Victorian structure at Broad and Cherry Streets.

These days, much of its interior is unrecognizable.

PAFA’s grand staircase inside the 1876 building remains…

“In Philadelphia, John Middleton is known as the baseball guy with some very baseball ambitions. The managing partner of the Phillies has boldly declared his intention to make the team one of the winningest ever.

In another realm, though, Middleton has already achieved a distinction — as one of the…

"Much has been written about Henry Box Brown’s body. The 33-year-old enslaved man from Virginia was 5′10″ and around 200 pounds in the spring of 1849 when he forced himself into a wooden box not much bigger than an oven. It was addressed to the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia…

"The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has named a new curator of historical American art. Lea C. Stephenson, a specialist in 18th and 19th century American art who was partially trained in Philadelphia, comes to PAFA’s museum...

Stephenson, who is finishing up her doctorate in art history at the…

Jesus appears perturbed. In Albert Van den Berghen’s Ecce Homo (c. 1886-1889), on view in Making Strange: Sacred Imagery and the Self, Christ narrows his eyes, surveying those clamoring for his crucifixion. This is not the patient stoicism believers have come to expect.

Which is exactly the point.…

"Casual observers would be forgiven if they thought the longest-running art museum and school in America had given up the ghost. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts announced in January that it was ending its college degree program, and a few months later it closed its historic landmark…

"Hailing the Ferry, Daniel Ridgway Knight’s richly hued rural scene of two women standing beside a river, is one of the stars at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Widely reproduced and recognized, the 1888 canvas is the kind of work that art museums strive to own: a beloved friend that…