PAFA and the PMA present A Nation of Artists

The show (running at PAFA through September 5, 2027 and the PMA through July 5, 2027) draws from both institutions’ permanent collections as well as the Middleton Family Collection, a private collection on view for the first time: John and Leigh Middleton lent 120 works accumulated over 50 years. A Nation of Artists is remarkably ambitious and impressive in scope and organization.

Is art his story?

When I began studying art in the 1980s, I understood art as history, but his story: that of white males; however, the curators of Nation organized the exhibition to be inclusive of identities overlooked or intentionally written out of the archive by including the contributions of marginalized individuals and groups who established this country. This intentionality feels important.

Compelling sightlines

The PMA displays are in the newly restored American galleries, curated by Kathleen Foster, Alexandra Kirtley, and Julia Hamer-Light. A list of advisory groups and additional curators consulted demonstrates best practices in exhibition planning. Their configuration here designed for compelling sightlines, with galleries painted in various colors.

The works, spanning the 1840s to the 1950s, are organized both chronologically and thematically. Nineteen galleries encompass a wide range of genres: fine art, decorative art, furniture, textiles, and ceramics. Room numbers can be confusing; even security wasn’t sure how to find a specific room. Yet navigational perplexity is offset by didactic wall displays that clearly explain the context for specific eras and themes. More benches for rest and contemplation are needed given the breadth of displays. Selected artworks connect the viewer to an audio tour via the app Bloomberg Connects, narrated by Philly creatives.

Rooms are organized around targeted motifs such as “Speed, Sound and Machine”, “Friends, Neighbors and Heroes”, and “Prosperity, Abundance and Inequity”. The introductory gallery stresses Nation’s overarching theme: the longevity of America’s creativity, rooted in stories of lived experience, traditions, and available resources. Subjects include family, sports, dance, war, portraiture, and commerce. Two examples are Horace Pippin’s autobiographical The Ending of War, Starting Home (1930-33), and Florine Stettheimer’s cheerful, capitalist Spring Sale at Bendels (1921).

Can creativity ever be apolitical?

The exhibition’s attention on creativity raises questions: what is it? Why the emphasis? Creative output is typically defined by imagination and originality. For 250 years, locals and foreign-born residents have brought their conventions and ideas to innovative artistic pursuits. A contemporary painter mentioned to me recently that she considered her work free of political agendas. But can our lives and work ever be truly apolitical? An American art boom followed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, as a demonstration of living and working without oppressive government control. Then as now, the “American dream” holds values of individuality, originality, and self-expression.

Creativity manifests in both the oppressed and the privileged. Storage Vessel (1859) by enslaved potter David Drake is adorned with a Biblical inscription as a declaration of faith. In the same room is Wax Fruit and Dessert Arrangement (1860-1880) by an unknown maker: a fanciful array of berries, melon, and pastries under a glass dome, typically fashioned by middle and upper-class women as a stylish domestic embellishment.

Creativity is also tied to identity, seen in polychrome water jars, Olla (1987), attributed to Native American potters. Likewise, Face Vessels from South Carolina (1860-70) probably preserved African traditions of enslaved African Americans.

New ways of thinking about the works

The Academy’s iteration of Nation holds a different vibe. Curated by Lea C. Stephenson and Leah Triplett, the artworks range from the late 18th century to the present. Spread across the second floor of the stunning Furness building (just reopened after a two-year HVAC overhaul), the displays are arranged with five key thematic narratives, including “Prosperity, Abundance and Inequity”, “Geometry, Industry and Modern Imagination”, and “Looking West”.

Juxtapositions offer the viewer new ways of thinking about artworks. For example, Breast Portrait Triptych (no date) by contemporary painter Clarity Haynes offers sympathetic, unidealized views of anonymous female torsos. Nearby, Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos (1809-14) by John Vanderlyn portrays the traditionalist nude-in-a-landscape fantasy of a sexually available mythological princess.

The expression of creativity in response to American dissent is the subject of several works. Sarah McEneany’s painting Clinic Defense (1990) depicts activism for women’s reproductive rights and suggests racial imbalance. Alice Neel’s Investigation of Poverty at the Russell Sage Foundation (1933) portrays a poor mother being pointlessly interrogated by suit-clad bureaucrats during the Depression. Neel described the woman as living in an overturned car with her seven children. The foundation did not offer humanitarian relief, and welfare was not yet an option.

A more challenging vision

What sets PAFA apart is its storied history as an important art school, of which I am a graduate. It’s a delight to see the work of former faculty, such as Louis B. Sloan’s Self-Portrait in a Landscape (1970). He painted himself as a small figure under a blue sky in a deep field of wildflowers and trees. Sloan is a part of nature rather than dominating it. Landscape (like nudes) is a well-established subject for painters, and yet experimental approaches persevere. Minerva Cuevas’s The End (2016) is a startling example. The top of the canvas depicts a conventional, ideal oil seascape; however, the lower half is literally torn away and dripping with actual tar, serving as a brutal reminder of ongoing environmental abuses.

The Academy’s version of Nation is more challenging for viewers. Some of the art groupings are denser, with salon-style stacking, making high-hung works harder to view for height-challenged onlookers. Labels are printed in a tiny font, and in some instances, large didactic wall text and graphics contend with nearby artworks, making the viewing experience a bit chaotic. The context of certain blown-up historical photographs is unclear. I found the effect over-designed and wonder why the intrinsic beauty of the historic building wasn’t sufficient. With so many artworks to explore, less may be more.

What does it mean to be American?

If you want to see both the PAFA and PMA installations, a discount is available for patrons this summer. Through August 31, 2026, purchase a full-price general admission ticket at either museum and get half-price entry at the partner institution within seven days. To redeem the discount, use the link in your e-receipt or present your original ticket at the admissions desk.

There is much to think about in A Nation of Artists. But perhaps embedded in these hundreds of creative artifacts is another way to ask “What does it mean to be American?” OG existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre argued that creativity is tied to human freedom. In other words, born as blank canvases, we are forever free to create meaning through what we choose to do (or not do). Considering Sartre’s argument, Nation presents 250 years of American choices to do something: something beautiful, useful, irrational, experimental, whimsical, patriotic. Acts of freedom as something to remember.

At top: Childe Hassam’s 1917 ‘Up the Avenue from Thirty-fourth Street’, oil on canvas, 36” x 30”. (Image courtesy of The Middleton Family Collection.)

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