Hours
Tuesday – Saturday, 10 a.m.– 5 p.m.
Sunday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Closed Mondays and legal holidays
Admission
Admission to the permanent collection
Adults: $10
Seniors and Students with I.D.: $8
Youth ages 5 – 18: $6
Admission to Special Exhibitions
(Price includes Permanent Collection)
Adult: $15
Seniors and Students with I.D.: $12
Youth ages 5 – 18: $10
- Free for members and children under 5.
- Morris Gallery exhibitions and the ground floor of the Historic Building are free.
Tours
Docent Tours meet in the lobby of the museum and feature the highlights of the Permanent Collection or the current special exhibition. Please check with the front desk on the day of your visit for specific details. Tours are free with admission.
Accessibility
An accessible entrance to the Museum is located at Cherry and Burns Streets. Guided tours are available for people with physical or mental disabilities upon request.
- To schedule a guided tour for your school or adult group, call 215-972-2069
Mission
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is a recognized world leader for American fine arts education, which, bringing together artists and the public, integrates a world-class collection of American art, major exhibitions, and exceptional teaching programs.
About PAFA
Founded in 1805, PAFA is America’s first school of fine arts and museum. Over the past two centuries, PAFA has assembled what scholars and collectors describe as one of the three finest collections of American art in the world, from colonial masters like John Singleton Copley and Benjamin West, to major contemporary artists such as Red Grooms and Faith Ringgold.
Few museums are housed in their own work of art, but PAFA’s Historic Landmark Building is considered one of America’s finest surviving examples of Victorian Gothic architecture. Opened in 1876, this Victorian treasure was designed by the illustrious Philadelphia firm of Frank Furness and George Hewitt.
Along with gallery tours for museum visitors and school groups, PAFA is devoted to stimulating program of educational events that are central to its core mission. From lectures by visiting artists and free weekly “Art at Lunch” lectures to its Annual Wine Auction, PAFA offers visitors some of Philadelphia’s most distinctive and unique cultural opportunities.
Exhibitions:
Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit
American Art Starts Here: PAFA Refreshed and Reloaded
After Tanner: African-American Artists Since 1940
Events
Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit
January 28 - April 15, 2012
- Cincinnati Art Museum, May 26 - September 9, 2012
- Houston Museum of Fine Arts, October 21, 2012 - January 13, 2013
Opening Reception at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts:
Friday, January 27, 2012
Fisher Brooks Gallery, Samuel M. V. Hamilton Building
The subject of this exhibition is the career and life of the artist Henry O. Tanner (1859-1937) - including the pioneering African-American artist’s upbringing in Philadelphia in the years after the Civil War; the artist’s success as an American expatriate artist at the highest levels of the international art world at the turn of the 20th century; Tanner’s role as a leader of an artist’s colony in rural France and his unique contributions in aid of American servicemen to the Red Cross efforts in WWI France; his modernist invigoration of religious painting deeply rooted in his own faith; Tanner’s depictions of the Holy Land and North Africa interpreted through comparison with contemporary French orientalist painting and photography; and the scientific and technical innovations of the artist’s oeuvre.
Henry O. Tanner was a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1879 to 1885. PAFA is proud to organize this exhibition, and especially to elevate Tanner’s reputation through new scholarship and to bring his greatest works together for the first time in a generation.
After Tanner: African-American Artists Since 1940
January 28 - April 15, 2012
Annenberg and Tuttleman Galleries, Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building
Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) was a mentor and role model for younger artists during his lifetime and has been a source of pride for many generations of artists since his death. This installation, drawn largely from PAFA’s collection and supplemented by several major loans, broadly celebrates what Tanner’s career inspired and made possible in its wake. Tanner was a trailblazer, bravely choosing his own path and attaining international stature in the arts despite innumerable societal challenges. He was also an innovator of African-American genre painting and in religious subjects, where he made his most lasting and powerful contribution to art history. It is not unreasonable to assert that Tanner’s professional example together with the quality of his work made it possible for subsequent generations of African-American artists to pursue their aspirations in the art world and transform American art in the twentieth century.
Some of the artists included in this installation sought out and met Tanner, including William H. Johnson and Hale Woodruff. Other artists, such as Reginald Gammon, made paintings in homage to Tanner. Gammon's 1967 personal portrait of Tanner is featured here. Faith Ringgold celebrates a key moment in Tanner’s biography -- the moment when he decided to become an artist – by imagining it in a recent print commissioned by PAFA. Others, such as Romare Bearden and Alma Thomas, took up religious themes that meant a great deal to Tanner, and reworked them by using new materials and a modernist visual language unique to their time. Contemporary artists such as Laylah Ali, Willie Cole, Glenn Ligon, Quentin Morris, and Kara Walker explore identity and a complex cultural past in ways that Tanner could not have imagined. Together this ensemble suggests the innumerable channels for expression Tanner’s example opened up for African-American artists working in the wake of his career.
Special thanks to lenders Bill and Navindren Hodges, Lee and Barbara Maimon, Michael Rosenfeld and halley k harrisburg, Ann R. and Harold A. Sorgenti, and a generous private collector.
Curator: Robert Cozzolino, Curator of Modern Art
Sponsors:
PAFA's special exhibitions in 2011-12 are supported by generous contributions from Max N. Berry, Esq, Donald R. Caldwell, Jonathan L. Cohen, and Lori Levine Ordover and Janusz Ordover.
American Art Starts Here: PAFA Refreshed and Reloaded
Ongoing
Historic Landmark Building
Curators Anna Marley and Robert Cozzolino invite you to experience a fully reinstalled Historic Landmark Building. New juxtapositions, thematic groupings, recent acquisitions, and resuscitated gems pulled from storage will challenge and delight new audiences and dedicated members alike. Collection strengths such as history painting, early American landscape, portraiture, and still-lifes, nineteenth-century genre scenes, art by the Peale family, trompe l’oeil still-lifes, American impressionism, art by Robert Henri and The Eight, and Philadelphia modernism are given special attention. PAFA’s curators have initiated a series of cross-period collaborations that will enrich visitor experience and bring forth new interpretations of the permanent collection and our buildings.
