Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

About

In Philadelphia's North Broad Street, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts opens in 1805, founded by painter Charles Willson Peale, sculptor William Rush, and a circle of fellow artists and business leaders. From that unbroken run comes its claim to being the longest continuously operating art museum and art school in the United States. In 1876, timed to the Centennial Exposition marking the nation's hundredth year, the building designed by Frank Furness and George Hewitt opens its doors. Its Second Empire, Renaissance Revival, and Gothic Revival forms wrap rusticated brownstone, red brick, and purple terra-cotta into one of the country's most striking Victorian structures, landmarked as a National Historic Landmark in 1975. Inside, a lineage of American painting gathers — Benjamin West, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Mary Cassatt — extending from the 1760s to today's contemporary artists. On that lineage, the Academy still breathes as both museum and school at once.