Harry Philbrick, PAFA’s interim museum director, is optimistic about the future

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 building.

The abrupt, unexplained collapse of the University of the Arts down Broad Street only contributed to the impression that PAFA, too, had shut down. A June New York Times article on UArts reported that PAFA was dissolving, and the piece traveled far before being corrected.

But while questions remain about the new certificate program PAFA plans to launch to replace its college degrees, the institution lives, and the museum at PAFA is moving ahead.

For one thing, exhibitions in PAFA’s Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building have continued uninterrupted. “Making Strange: Sacred Imagery and the Self,” a small show of works by Moe A. Brooker, Kara Walker, Anne Minich, Violet Oakley, and others, opens Nov. 14.

For another, the museum has a new leader.

“I started 49 hours ago — Monday morning at 9 o’clock, so I am a font of knowledge and wisdom,” said Harry Philbrick one recent morning.

Playful sarcasm aside, Philbrick does come to the job with prior knowledge. He started as interim director of PAFA’s museum on Oct. 1, but was previously director, from 2011 to 2016.

His main tasks are the rehanging of the permanent collection, whose planning is well underway for an opening in 2026, as well as museum programming over the next two or three years.

“We have a small number of projects in the pipeline right now, and given the cutbacks that have been made, we’ve got a very small staff. So my focus is on really trying to keep the museum open and running and shows going, but on a smaller scale through 2026, when I hope we can really ratchet up the programming.”

Philbrick, 66, sees staying in the post only through sometime in 2026, when he expects to be replaced by “presumably someone younger and more long-term than me,” he said. His influence in those 20 or so months, however, promises to be critical. President and CEO Eric G. Pryor is ending his three-year tenure by the end of December, and Philbrick is part of a trio with chief operating officer Lisa Biagas and chief academic officer Sonia Bassheva Mañjon that has already assumed leadership of the institution.

One of Philbrick’s first orders of business is finding a successor to Anna O. Marley, who left her job as curator of historical American art in July to become director of curatorial affairs at the Toledo Museum of Art. (Marley was also PAFA’s chief of curatorial affairs, but the new curator will not take that title. Brooke Davis Anderson last held the title of museum director. She left in May 2021.)

Interviews for a new curator of American art have begun, said Philbrick, who came to PAFA after a stint as interim executive director of the Fabric Workshop and Museum.

A big part of his job will be fundraising. He is already talking to individuals and foundations, and given the post-pandemic challenges to the arts sector and, “frankly, the trauma that we’ve all gone through with the closure of UArts,” the first question funders have is whether PAFA is going to survive, he said.

“And the answer is a resounding yes. We will survive. The board has really taken a hard look at what the financial reality is and made some hard decisions. We have clearly reduced staffing level than we’ve had in the past. So tough decisions have been made. But it’s decisions that have been made in order to create a sustainable context for the institution. Yes, we are going to survive and yes, we are developing plans to do more than survive to actually thrive.”

PAFA is still forecasting an end to a string of operating deficits by 2028 or sooner. But Philbrick reiterated the expectation that no piece of art in the museum’s 16,000-plus-piece collection would be deaccessioned for financial reasons — either to fund capital projects, or for work in the Furness building, which is closed for HVAC work and is expected to reopen in spring 2026.

“There is no deaccessioning being considered right now,” he said.

Philbrick says discussions about the revived certificate program are ongoing, and that while ultimately the substance of that program is not up to the museum side of the institution, “we remain active participants in that conversation.” PAFA hopes to launch the certificate program in fall 2025.

“We really are committed to the idea of the museum as a place of learning. And that’s everything from UPenn grad students coming here doing internships and doing research, to summer camp programs, and everything in between.”

What’s essential is that making art and viewing it are happening in the same place and have a relationship with each other. Which is as it has been for centuries.

“That is really what brought me back to PAFA, the magic of this place, that combination of art of the highest caliber on display and art being created cheek by jowl. And that’s an energy that no other institution has.”