'A Nation of Artists' Review: Our Country's Creativity
A joint exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts highlights the rich history of American painting, sculpture, design and more.

Philadelphia

American art—definitionally—has had a checkered existence. Early artistic attempts were largely derivative of European art; Native American and folk art weren't taken seriously until recent decades, and decorative objects were deemed "industrial arts" for a long time. Not until the 19th century, with the birth of the Hudson River School, could the U.S. claim a native-born style and, even then, only in the mid-20th century, with the advent of Abstract Expressionism, did American art gain worldwide recognition.

For the nation's 250th anniversary, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art are saying goodbye to all that. In a joint exhibition titled "A Nation of Artists," they explore the subject using similar themes—like labor, westward expansion and global exchange—but different approaches.

At the Philadelphia Museum, an early wall label declares "artists are everywhere among us." Swooping up paintings, sculpture, silver, furniture and everyday objects made between 1700 and the 1950s, it vastly expands the definition of art and mixes disparate objects together in loosely chronological galleries. Butter molds meet oil paintings.

Hendricks

At the Pennsylvania Academy, founded in 1805 as America's first art school, a wide range of paintings and sculptures created (mostly) by its alumni, teachers and exhibitors is displayed thematically, with no narrative. Barkley L. Hendricks's "J.S.B. III" (1968), a bold portrait of a black man in sunglasses, hangs in the same gallery as a 1794 ivory miniature of "Frances Gratz Etting" by James Peale Sr.

At both venues, the curators—Kathleen A. Foster, Alexandra Kirtley and Julia Hamer-Light at the museum and Lea Stephenson and Leah Triplett at the academy—supplemented their collections with about 120 artworks lent by John S. and Leigh Middleton. They include notable paintings like "George Washington at Princeton" (1779) by Charles Willson Peale, "The Shore of the Turquoise Sea" (1878) by Albert Bierstadt and "The Lee Shore" (1941) by Edward Hopper; they push the number of works in the museum's exhibition to about 750 and at the academy's to more than 280. It's a lot, but the shows run through July 5, 2027 and Sept. 5, 2027, respectively, so there's plenty of time to take it all in.

Peale and his museum

The academy's show is installed in its newly renovated landmark building, a Victorian masterpiece designed by the architect Frank Furness of the noted firm Furness & Hewitt. In the rotunda at the top of its grand staircase, one panel is appropriately devoted to "The Artist in His Museum" (1822), a large self-portrait by Charles Willson Peale, a founder of PAFA, of an artistic dynasty, and of an early American museum; one of the most important paintings of its era, it shows him theatrically lifting a curtain on his treasures. Elsewhere are nine works foreshadowing the range of what's to come. Opposite the Peale, another history painting, "Dewey Canyon III" (2003) by Jane Irish, presents a panoply of small images about the Vietnam War. On another panel, Mark Rothko's 1968 "Untitled (Maroon Over Red)" hangs above a red interior, "Le Chambre" (1961), by Raymond Saunders, which is adjacent to a tabletop still life (1887) by a master of them, William Michael Harnett. Another grouping presents portraits, including the expressive nude "Claudia Bach Pregnant" (1975) by Alice Neel.

While some surrounding galleries don't jell as well—partly because their themes bleed into one another—they nevertheless present intriguing arrays. One section on portraits juxtaposes Bo Bartlett's confrontational, meticulous "Self Portrait" (1996), him posed in black near a sunlit window, arm raised across his chin, with Cecilia Beaux's brushy "New England Woman" (1895), also in a sunlit room, but wearing white, her arm making the opposite diagonal. Another theme casts works by Americans who studied, lived or traveled abroad, such as Benjamin West, here in "Death on a Pale Horse" (1817), and John Singer Sargent, with "In a Garden, Corfu" (1909), as international in style, not strictly Euro-derivative.

"Winter Encounter" brings together four paintings of nature, including Rockwell Kent's pristine "Seascape" (1923-25), set before a snowcapped mountain, and Minerva Cuevas's "The End" (2016), a similar scene but dripping with tar, despoiled by man. Winslow Homer's masterly "The Fox Hunt" (1893)—a jewel depicting a fox fleeing from crows in a snowy landscape—merits a separate space nearby. PAFA presents several similar grace notes, as well as some engagingly simple vignettes, like "Picturing Pink Skies."

The Philadelphia Museum's exhibit is more traditional. It's mostly a rehanging of its permanent collection of American art, and part, encompassing the years from about 1650 to 1840, was unveiled in 2021—though it's now infused with the Middletons' Peale portrait of Washington (the original version is owned by PAFA), Thomas Cole's "Schroon Lake" (1840) and furniture.

The densely hung new galleries, containing post-1840s works, remind visitors that the museum has roots in the 1876 Centennial Exhibition, opening afterward as the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art. Furniture, vessels, porcelain, silver and a sampling of household goods populate a display that's nonhierarchical.

A typical gallery, headed "Prosperity, Abundance, and Inequity 1840-1860," presents a fancy white marble mantelpiece, elaborate furniture, Martin Johnson Heade's lush "Orchids in a Jungle" (c. 1871-74) and Severin Roesen's lusher "Flower Still Life With Bird's Nest" (1853). Yet a central vitrine holds a plain stoneware jar (1859) made by an enslaved black man, David Drake, that's inscribed with a biblical verse suggesting universal salvation.

A nearby gallery, hung salon-style, considers the theme of "Nature and Nation." Painters including Bierstadt, Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, Fitz Henry Lane and Robert Seldon Duncanson provide a realistic wonderland of America's outdoors, often in panoramas. It's a stellar display.

Hopper

The museum takes up the Arts and Crafts era, indigenous art, 20th-century landscapes and more. Galleries titled "Speed, Sound and the Machine" and "Modernism Takes Shape" offer classics by the likes of Arthur Dove, Charles Demuth and Charles Sheeler, as well as "Still Life With Peaches" (1927) by Luigi Lucioni and "Composition (Toreador Drinking)" (1942) by Suzy Frelinghuysen, both underappreciated, and an impressive, sculptural oak fireplace and doorway (1935-38) by Wharton H. Esherick.

To many, American art in Philadelphia means two works by the city's own Thomas Eakins—the hyper-realistic "The Gross Clinic" (1875) and "The Agnew Clinic" from 1889. They currently hang at PAFA and at the museum, respectively. But "A Nation of Artists" demonstrates that Philadelphia, sometimes called "the birthplace of America," is a cradle of American art, too.