The story
History
19th century
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts was founded in 1805 by painter and scientist Charles Willson Peale, sculptor William Rush, and other artists and business leaders. Its first building on Chestnut and 10th Streets in Center City Philadelphia was designed by John Dorsey and opened in 1806. The academy opened as a museum in 1807 and held its first exhibition in 1811, where more than 500 paintings and statues were displayed. The first school classes held in the building were with the Society of Artists in 1810.
The academy had to be reconstructed after the fire of 1845. The new building by architect Richard Arthington Gilpin opened in 1847 and was demolished in 1870, following damage by a storm. The leaders of the academy then raised funds to construct a building more worthy of its treasures. They commissioned the current Furness-Hewitt building, which was constructed from 1871. It opened as part of the 1876 Philadelphia Exposition. The Chestnut Street site was leased to the vaudeville entrepreneur Robert Fox, who opened Fox's New American Theatre there in 1870.
In 1876, former academy student and artist Thomas Eakins returned to teach as a volunteer. Fairman Rogers, chairman of the Committee on Instruction from 1878 to 1883, appointed Eakins a faculty member in 1878, and promoted him to director in 1882. Eakins revamped the certificate curriculum to its current format. Students in the certificate program learned fundamentals of drawing, painting, sculpture, and printmaking, including relief, intaglio, and lithography, for two years. For the following two years, they conducted independent study, guided by critiques from faculty, students, and visiting artists. Notable alumni from this time include George Agnew Reid, a Canadian painter who was drawn to the program because of Thomas Eakins' radical approach to teaching. Reid studied at PAFA from 1882–1884.
The 1844 board of directors' declaration that women artists "would have exclusive use of the statue gallery for professional purposes" and study time in the museum on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings began an incremental step of inclusion of women in the academy. In 1860, female students were allowed to take anatomy and antique courses, drawing from antique casts, and they were afforded access to the academy's library and gallery. Life classes, the study of the nude body, were available to women in the spring of 1868 with female models; male models were added for study six years later. This came after much debate on whether it was appropriate for women to view the nude male form.
In 1878, Catherine Drinker, at the age of 27, became the first woman to teach at the academy. In 1895, one of her pupils, her younger cousin Cecilia Beaux, became the first female faculty member at the academy to instruct painting and drawing.
20th century
From 1890 to 1906, Edward Hornor Coates served as the tenth president of the academy. In 1915, he was awarded the academy's gold medal. In 1921, painter John McLure Hamilton, who began his art education at the academy under Thomas Eakins, described the contributions Coates made during his tenure:
The reign of Mr. Coates at the Academy marked the period of its greatest prosperity. Rich endowments were made to the schools, a gallery of national portraiture was formed, and some of the best examples of Gilbert Stuart's work acquired. The annual exhibitions attained a brilliancy and éclat hitherto unknown... Mr. Coates wisely established the schools upon a conservative basis, building almost unconsciously the dykes high against the oncoming flow of insane novelties in art patterns... In this last struggle against modernism the President was ably supported by Eakins, Anschutz, Grafly, [Henry Joseph] Thouron, Vonnoh, and Chase... His unfailing courtesy, his disinterested thoughtfulness, his tactfulness, and his modesty endeared him to scholars and masters alike. No sacrifice of time or of means was too great, if he thought he could accomplish the end he always had in view—the honour and the glory of the Academy. It was under Mr. Coates' enlightened direction that was fulfilled the expressed wish of Benjamin West, the first honorary Academician, that "Philadelphia may be as much celebrated for her galleries of paintings by the native genius of the country, as she is distinguished by the virtues of her people; and that she may be looked up to as the Athens of the Western World in all that can give polish to the human mind."
Harrison S. Morris, managing director from 1892 to 1905, collected contemporary American art for the institution. Among the many masterpieces acquired during his tenure were works by Cecilia Beaux, William Merritt Chase, Frank Duveneck, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Childe Hassam, and Edmund Tarbell. Work by The Eight, which included former academy students Robert Henri and John Sloan, provides a transition between 19th- and 20th-century art movements.
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21st century
In 2010, the academy acquired the Linda Lee Alter Collection of Art by Women, including nearly 500 works by female artists, from collector Linda Lee Alter. Artists in the collection include Louise Bourgeois, Judy Chicago, Louise Nevelson, Kiki Smith, Kara Walker, and Philadelphia artists Barbara Bullock and Elizabeth Osborne. In 2012, the academy featured the collection in the exhibition The Female Gaze: Women Artists Making Their World.
1876 opening notes
The book A Century After, picturesque glimpses of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania includes the following on the 1876 opening:
The newly-built Academy of Fine Arts will bear comparison with any institution of its kind in America. It has a front of one hundred feet on Broad Street and a depth of two hundred and fifty-eight feet on Cherry Street. Its situation, with a street on each of its three sides, and an open space along a considerable portion of the fourth, is very advantageous as regards lighting, and freedom from risk by fire.
It is built of brick, the principal entrance, which is two stories high, being augmented with encaustic tiles, terra-cotta statuary, and light stone dressings. The walls are laid in patterns of red and white brick. Over the main entrance on Broad Street there is a large Gothic window with stone tracery. The Cherry Street front is relieved by a colonnade supporting arched windows, back of which is the transept and pointed gable.
Beyond the entrance vestibule is the main staircase, which starts from a wide hall and leads to the galleries on the second floor. Along the Cherry Street side of the Academy are five galleries arranged for casts from the antique; and, further on, are rooms for drapery painting, and the life class. These have a clear north light which can never be obstructed.
On the south side, there is a large lecture room, with retiring rooms, and back of these are the modeling rooms and rooms devoted to the use of students and professors.
On the second floor is the main hall, which extends across the building, and is intended for the exhibition of large works of art. This story is divided into galleries, which are lighted from the top. Through the center runs a hall which is set apart for the exhibition of statuary, busts, small statues, bas-reliefs, etc. On each side of this hall are picture galleries, which are so arranged in size and form as to admit of classification of pictures, and which can be divided into suits where separate exhibitions may be held at the same time.
The art collections of the gallery are considered the most valuable in America. They comprise the masterpieces of Stuart, Sully, Allston, West, and others of our early artists, the Gilpin gallery, fine marbles, and facsimiles of famous statues, as well as a magnificent gallery from the antique.
The building is now considered one of the most notable buildings in Philadelphia and one of Furness' greatest works. In 1971, the building was named to the National Register of Historic Places. Four years later, in 1975, it was designated a National Historic Landmark.
In 1976, the building's exterior and interior was refurbished to coincide with its centennial and with the United States bicentennial. The restoration work was conducted through Day and Zimmerman Associates, and headed by Human Myers.
In 2019, architectural firm DLR Group completed another renovation on both the Furness-Hewitt and Hamilton buildings to accommodate growth within the institution's fixed site while maintaining the buildings' historic details.
From Wikipedia’s article on Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4