William Sidney Mount, The Painter's Triumph, 1838. Oil on wood. 23 9/16 x 19 1/2 in. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Bequest of Henry C. Carey (The Carey Collection). 1879.8.18.
On June 14, PEM will open Making History: 200 Years of American Art from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts , a stellar showcase of more than 85 works created by artists connected with the country’s first museum and school of fine arts in Philadelphia. We sat down with PEM’s George Putnam Curator of American Art, Jeffrey Richmond-Moll, to ask him about the show.
Q: What is this exhibition about?
A: Making History is about the role of artists in sharing and reframing our understanding of the United States, of American history, of American identity, and really the way that art is used as a visual tool for helping us understand our past, present and future in this place.
Q: What makes an artwork American, in your opinion?
A: American art as a category is a really slippery thing. It's something that's been debated since the 1940s, when the field of American art came into existence. There was this effort to try to understand what makes American art distinct, especially from European art, and this sort of inferiority complex that, I think, Americans had about creating a sense of our own homegrown and self-made canon of painting and sculpture that was connected with the ideals of American society and American history and distinct from art made elsewhere in the world.
Then and now, what makes art American is this commitment to reckoning with democratic ideals, with notions of liberty, equality, and diversity. Also, today, museums have really expanded the sense that American art is both local and global, that it's tied to forces well beyond American borders and connected to notions of exchange, the crossing of borders, and not an American art that is just distinct within the boundaries of the United States as a nation.
Q: The exhibition seems like a “who’s who” lineup of American artists. Can you name a few?
A: Making History has a range of very well-known American artists. If you are a fan of American art, you're probably familiar with many of the artists in this show, such as Gilbert Stuart, Edward Hopper, Mary Cassatt, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Georgia O'Keeffe. Then, there are some lesser-known names that might not be familiar to visitors, but, I think, are an exciting way of expanding our sense of the history of American art: artists like May Howard Jackson and Laura Wheeler Waring, Marianna Sloan, Margaretta Angelica Peale. You have the greatest hits of American art as well as new faces, new recognition of other artists’ contributions to this canon of American art history.
Q: The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) opened in 1805, just a few years after PEM (founded in 1799). What can you share about PAFA as an institution that might tell us more about these works?
A: Making History was co-organized by PAFA, and it’s been touring the country in partnership with the American Federation of Arts. Over multiple centuries, PAFA has built an incredible collection of American painting and sculpture. This exhibition showcases the wealth of works within PAFA's collection. PAFA was founded in 1805 as the first museum and art school in this country committed to art education and to the display of specifically American art. As institutions that were founded so soon after the foundation of the United States, both PEM and PAFA were trying to feel their way through a sense of what it means to display art and artifacts to a new American public. They both reflect this self-awareness and self-conscious impulse to capture a sense of history being made in the present.
Q: What can you share about PAFA's legacy and its role in helping shape American artists?
A: In the middle of the 19th century, the school opened up art education to women artists and Black artists. PAFA became this really vital hub for communities and networks of women and artists of color who were trying to forge a sense of kinship and support for one another to overcome educational and professional obstacles.
Q: Why is this exhibition particularly important and timely at the moment?
A: Making History is timely in a number of ways. Specifically, we see within this exhibition a number of artists, like John Quincy Adams Ward and his sculpture The Freedman, who are showing the kind of tensions, the contradictions within the American project. The notion that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are central founding ideals of this country. Yet, these are promises that have been sometimes fulfilled and sometimes not. The Freedmen is a sculpture, for example, that shows a man poised between bondage and freedom at this hinge point between a past of oppression and a future of hope.
There are other works in the show, like Andrew Wyeth's Young America, from the period after World War II that similarly convey this sense of uncertainty for the American future. That there is something about America that promises boundlessness and a kind of open-ended sense of freedom and promise, but also something unsettling in the midst of that. These contradictory patterns of freedoms being promised to some and delivered to some and not to others — I think that remains part of the American experience and something that we continue to reckon with today.
The other thing that makes Making History really important in this present moment is it shows how art has continued to be a tool for artists to try to capture a sense of American culture and identity, even as early as the late 1700s when the United States has just come into being as a nation and artists were trying to convey, “what does it mean to depict American democracy?” To depict, say, in Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington, an American president, as opposed to, the portraits of King George, where you have this aristocratic sense of a king who has inherited his throne. An American president looks very different from a British king, so how do we formulate a visual language of American identity? This is something that artists have long tried to figure out.
Portraits, especially in this exhibition, are a way of understanding how power is represented, and how artists grapple with disenfranchisement and giving a sense of dignity and humanity to those who often aren't afforded the privileges of power. Who gets to be represented? Who gets to be the beacon or icon of our country and our culture?
IMAGE: Gilbert Stuart, George Washington (The Landsdowne Portrait), 1796. Oil on canvas. 96 x 60 in. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Bequest of William Bingham, 1811.2.
IMAGE: Barkley L. Hendricks, J. S. B. III, 1968. Oil on canvas. 48 x 34 3/8 in. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richardson Dilworth, 1969.17. © Barkley L. Hendricks. Courtesy of the Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.
Q: Why is this exhibition a good fit to bring to PEM?
A: This exhibition will be a wonderful experience for PEM's audiences because there are just so many incredible works of American art, of paintings and sculpture that aren't represented within our collections. Icons of American art that really don't ever leave PAFA’s buildings are traveling as part of the exhibition. I hope that visitors understand that making art is central to this ongoing project of making history, and that we can also see ourselves in that ongoing project.
Making History: 200 Years of American Art from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is on view at PEM from June 14 to September 21, 2025. Join us for a curator talk about the exhibition on July 17. Making History: 200 Years of American Art from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is co-organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). Lead support was provided to PAFA by the William Penn Foundation with additional support from the Richard C. von Hess Foundation and donors to PAFA's Special Exhibitions Fund. In-kind support is provided by Christie's and Gill & Lagodich Fine Period Frames, New York. The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. This exhibition at PEM is made possible by Carolyn and Peter S. Lynch and The Lynch Foundation. We thank Jennifer and Andrew Borggaard, James B. and Mary Lou Hawkes, The Creighton Family, Chip and Susan Robie, and Timothy T. Hilton as supporters of the Exhibition Innovation Fund. We also recognize the generosity of the East India Marine Associates of the Peabody Essex Museum.
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