News

David Lynch, Unified Field (Photograph by Matt Rourke / AP / Shutterstock)

The New Yorker's Troy Patterson selects PAFA's 2014 exhibition of David Lynch's work, The Unified Field, as one of his top cultural moments of the decade:

I see that a certain sort of film critic, possibly possessive, possibly possessed by a bias against the tube, insists upon claiming the third…

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PAFA Image Placeholder
PAFA is pleased to announce that Jill Holler Durovsik has been appointed to the Board of Trustees. Durovsik has had a long and distinguished career in business, and was founder of the consumer services company Corporate Concierge, Inc.
Press Release
Minerva Cuevas The End
Ancient History of the Distant Future was featured as one of Philly Style magazine's art picks for December 2019.
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As a museum and school committed to artistic exploration and development, PAFA's first priority is always the safety and well-being of our students and community members. PAFA has strict and publicly accessible policies in place to enforce compliance with Title IX and the Violence Against Women Act…

Arcmanoro Niles for Cultured Magazine | Photo: Aubrey Mayer
Arcmanoro Niles '13 has been selected as one of Cultured Magazine's fourth annual "30 Under 35" list.
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installation view of ancient history of the distant future
With "Ancient History of the Distant Future," PAFA transforms itself into a meta museum, opening the grand doors to influences unknown at the institution’s 1805 founding. Not long from now, their work will join the ongoing archive, to be considered by artists not yet born. And the conversation will…
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Thomas Eakins, "Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic)" (1875)

Artsy's Alina Cohen writes, "In 1875, Thomas Eakins decided to paint a picture that would glorify his hometown of Philadelphia. [...] The work has become perhaps the most important painting in the history of American art."

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Image: Tailinh Agoyo via The Warrior Project

PAFA’s new landscapes exhibit is the jumping-off point for this weekend’s celebration of the people missing from those paintings: Local Native Americans.

Image: Tailinh Agoyo via The Warrior Project

 

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Njideka Akunyili Crosby '06 (Image: Time Magazine / T.J. Kirkpatrick—Redux)

Visual artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby completed her Post-Baccalaureate Certificate at PAFA in 2006 after graduating from Swarthmore College.

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"Street View (Hoagiefest)" 2019 by Alex Da Corte Courtesy the Artist, Karma, NY and Sadie Coles HQ, London
At first look, an over-sized Wawa Hoagiefest donut might appear out-of-place in PAFA’s Historic Landmark Building. In the Rotunda "Street View (Hoagiefest)" by Alex Da Corte, a phototex of the artist’s hand clutching a Wawa donut is layered on the wall behind a painting by Thomas Birch. PAFA’s…
Perspectives
"Falls of Niagara" by William Russell Birch
The waterways depicted in "From the Schuylkill to the Hudson: Landscapes of the Early American Republic" are most well-known by their current Euro-American names, but are situated in the homelands of the Lenape people. “Some visitors to PAFA may have heard of the contemporary 'museums are not…
Perspectives
David Lynch | Image: Josh Telles for Vogue Magazine

"David Lynch, the artist and master director behind such macabre, Surrealist films as Mulholland Drive, The Elephant Man, and Blue Velvet—not to mention the cult favorite television series Twin Peaks—has made a career out of leaning into the world’s discomfort, or at least of exposing it."

David…

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About PAFA

Founded in 1805, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is the United State's first school and museum of fine arts. A recipient of the National Medal of Arts, PAFA offers undergraduate and graduate programs in the fine arts, innovative exhibitions of historic and contemporary American art, and a world-class collection of American art. PAFA’s esteemed alumni include Mary Cassatt, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, William Glackens, Barkley L. Hendricks, Violet Oakley, Louis Kahn, David Lynch, and Henry Ossawa Tanner.