Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts closes historic building to reimagine permanent collection

In Charles Willson Peale’s The Artist in His Museum, an elderly figure is seen pulling back a curtain to reveal just a peek at the tantalizing museum beyond.

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts’ prized painting is something of a visual metaphor for PAFA itself today. Earlier this month, the North Broad Street museum and school closed and emptied the galleries in its historic Furness and Hewitt building. Already gone were Peale’s famous canvas and other old friends that have drawn visitors for decades — such works as The Fox Hunt by Winslow Homer, Penn’s Treaty with the Indians by Benjamin West, and The Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks.

Today, nearly all of the 200 or so paintings and marble sculptures dotting the museum’s interior have been pulled and lifted from their longtime perches.

The favorites will return one day, but not until after an elaborately choreographed round of musical chairs over the next several years that will leave the permanent collection of Philadelphia’s august, 217-year-old museum profoundly changed.

The exact content of that newly mounted permanent exhibition, expected to open in 2026, remains to be worked out. But the goal is to tell the story of American art through an expanded PAFA collection in a way that’s more inclusive than it’s been in the past.

But before that, “Rising Sun,” a major collaboration with the African American Museum of Philadelphia, will open in March and run until October at the Academy.

Inclusion was at the heart of much of the turmoil that swept through PAFA — protests, petitions, resignations — beginning several years ago. Faculty complained about censorship in their support of the Black Lives Matter movement, and changes were eventually made in board and staff leadership.

Interim chief executive Elizabeth Warshawer took over in 2021, and after a period to “pause, step back, reevaluate, start to reimagine the future,” as she put it, the institution named Eric G. Pryor as new president.

His presence is seen as a chance for a reset, and PAFA’s balancing of legacy and inclusion in the newly conceived permanent collection under Pryor’s leadership is sure to draw attention.

“When we look at Fox Hunt or the Benjamin West paintings, I call them our Mona Lisa moments, I think there is a tremendous opportunity to build around those works,” said Pryor, who arrived from the Harlem School of the Arts just over a year ago. “We definitely want to maintain those old friends, those artworks, as part of the vision. The key now is to see what else we can do to surround those works.”

Anna O. Marley, PAFA’s chief of curatorial affairs, said that when it’s unveiled in 2026, PAFA’s new permanent exhibition will be nothing less than a “complete retelling of our part in the story of creating American art.”

The revamped permanent collection will be the last in a number of dramatic changes already underway at America’s oldest art school and museum. The stars of the Academy’s collection have been removed from the 1876 Furness building for an exhibition that opened next door in the Hamilton Building in October. After this April, “Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776-1976″ goes on the road, visiting a handful of U.S. cities over two years.

That frees up the Furness building, which is now being readied to host PAFA’s part of a show in collaboration with the African American Museum in Philadelphia. The show commissions a total of 20 artists — some at PAFA, some at the African American Museum — to look at human rights, equality, and free speech and to consider whether the sun is rising or setting on American democracy.

PAFA calls “Rising Sun” one of its most ambitious shows ever. It will fill the historic building with the work of 11 artists ― much of it immersive, with elements of audio, video, and other media.

“Without a doubt, it will be one of the more complex installations that we’ve done, just the nature of the artwork itself,” Pryor said.

Not all of the Academy’s treasures were removed to make way for the show. In a Houdini-esque stroke, the two enormous canvases long resident on either side of the grand central staircase will remain in place, but hidden. Workers have created false walls in front of Benjamin West’s Death on the Pale Horse and Christ Rejected over which works from “Rising Sun” will be mounted. The interior space around the two old paintings will be monitored for humidity to ensure safe conditions, Marley said.

“Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America” is currently slated to take over the historic building from late March through October, though if it’s a hit, the exhibit it could be extended through the end of 2023.

At that point, there’s a bit of uncertainty.

After “Rising Sun” closes, PAFA will take advantage of the empty galleries to do a thorough assessment of the building. Depending on what kind of repairs and renovations are deemed necessary, and on whether leaders can raise the money to pay for it, the historic building may close — perhaps until 2026.

“If we are able to do the reinstallation sooner than 2026, we will,” Pryor said. “But a lot of it hinges on what we learn, so we wanted to make certain that if there are any major issues that need to be addressed immediately we have enough time to address those issues.”

No architectural firm has yet been hired, a PAFA spokesperson said. But it seems clear already that problems with the floors and an old freight elevator used for transporting art will likely need attention.

The recent renovation of one gallery also suggests building troubles that may exist elsewhere. A fabric wall covering in Gallery 10, installed in perhaps the 1970s, created a space behind which condensation harbored.

“There were days when it was sagging off the wall, rippling, particularly in that wall right there,” said Marley on a recent visit. “Some days even the hardware would pop out because the fabric was detaching. We were so worried about it, and this was the most egregious room.”

The fabric covering was removed, and floors in the gallery redone.

“We want this,” said Marley of the renovation of Gallery 10, “to happen everywhere. We want to rip off all the walls, we want to take out all the carpet and either refinish the original concrete, or [reveal] any original wood.”

The cast hall and teaching studios in the Furness building are open, and there are no current plans for that to change, the school said.

PAFA is not in the midst of a current fund-raising campaign, Pryor said, so he acknowledges that a lot may have to happen quickly.

“There isn’t a campaign, but I am always meeting with people and having conversations,” he said. “I am not shy to ask.”

The content of the new permanent collection that will follow will be decided in large part by Marley; Brittany Webb, curator of 20th-century art and the John Rhoden Collection sculpture collection; and a new contemporary art curator yet to be hired.

“Our plan is to completely reinstall this building in a totally nonchronological way in 2026,” Marley said. “Philadelphia is planning Philadelphia 250 and many institutions are thinking about the legacy of the founding of the nation, but in a hugely different way than we did in 1976, with very different priorities and interests. I think ‘Making American Artists,’ the Rhoden collection and ‘Rising Sun’ are sort of practice runs for what we will do in 2026.”

Marley pointed out that PAFA has historic strengths in work by women and Black artists, and plans to build collections in other areas, such as mid-20th-century Asian American art. The commissioned works in “Rising Sun” will remain and become part of PAFA’s collection.

The inclusion of more diverse voices is something PAFA has been more actively folding into its programming in recent years. Currently, in “Making American Artists,” “Alice Neel is in conversation with Benjamin West and Peter Frederick Rothermel and Horace Pippin,” said Marley, referring to artists whose works are mounted in proximity to each other. Until just a few weeks ago, contemporary works comingled with the 18th century in the Furness building.

It’s that historic sweep, PAFA’s ability to draw on three centuries of art, that Pryor sees as its “magic dust.”

“I like to call PAFA America’s first contemporary art museum,” he said, “because the historic works were collected in real time. They were contemporary works when they were collected. It wasn’t a reach back in history. And seeing through that lens helps us really bridge to people who love the historic part of who we are and say, ‘Well, why are you guys doing contemporary?’

“Because we can tell the story of American art in an unbroken line. And I think it’s so much more dynamic and exciting when you do it that way.”