The Philadelphia Inquirer | The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is choosing works for its first new permanent exhibition in two decades
In deciding which works to include, 'the number of cards in the deck is set, but how it’s arranged and what cards get put down — that’s important.'
"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 draws visitors back over and over again.
Yet when PAFA opens its new permanent exhibition in 2026, Hailing the Ferry may or may not be part of it. Right now it’s on the tentative list of works expected to be on display.
'But I don’t know if that’s going to end up making the cut,' said Anna O. Marley, who recently finished up 15 years in senior artistic posts at PAFA. 'I love that painting. But you know, we’ve brought so much new wonderful work into the collection in the past 20 years — high academic realism from the late 19th and early 20th century. Is that the most important story that we need to tell?'
Stories — what they say, who gets to tell them — have moved to the forefront of attention at American art museums, and perhaps no walls will be scrutinized as closely as PAFA’s. The new permanent exhibition is the last expected piece in the academy’s controversial institutional retooling, and it should leave the museum sitting pretty for 2026, when the city expects millions of visitors for the nation’s 250th birthday.
PAFA is deciding what goes into a new permanent collection exhibition. What would you choose?
'The art collection at PAFA is better than the American art collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in terms of its breadth and its depth in historical canonical American art. There’s just more of it, right?' said Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, University of Pennsylvania art history professor and faculty director of the Arthur Ross Gallery. For the new permanent collection, PAFA should 'lean into that and showcase the masterpieces that are in it and put them in dialogue with other works that speak to them,' she said.
The new exhibition may not be opening until spring 2026, but the decisions about what’s in and what’s out are being made now. The last time PAFA did a reinstallation of its permanent collection was in 2005; the vast majority of works were by white men.
Will PAFA tell the story of American art this time in a way that more comprehensively considers race, gender, ethnicity, and sexual identity?"
Featured Photo from the article: Grand staircase in the Historic Landmark Building at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer.
Read full article: "The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is choosing works for its first new permanent exhibition in two decades" online at inquirer.com by Peter Dobrin (October 23, 2024).
