Two Centuries Of American Painting At Nation's Oldest Museum

PHILADELPHIA, PENN.

:The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, America's oldest museum and fine arts school, is concluding a yearlong celebration of its 200th anniversary with a splendid exhibition, "In Private Hands: 200 Years Of American Painting." The paintings, drawn from private collections, showcase the diverse achievements of American artists. It is a fitting coda to a year in which the academy's proud history and significant contributions to America's cultural life have been recalled and its future examined.

This truly remarkable institution was founded in 1805, not long after the establishment of the American Republic and while memories of the American Revolution were still fresh. In large part due to the tireless leadership of the irrepressible Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827), the fledgling academy survived shaky early years, during which it assumed a role of national importance as both a teaching and collecting and exhibiting institution.

The audacity and significance of the founding of the academy are suggested by its status as not only the oldest art institution in this country, but as one of the oldest in the world. The Louvre had opened in Paris in 1796, but the academy is older than the National Gallery in London and the Prado in Madrid. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston did not open their doors until 1870. The Art Students League in New York dates to 1875, the Philadelphia Museum to 1876 and the Art Institute of Chicago to 1879.

As the first in the field, for decades the Pennsylvania institution played a pioneering role in training artists and promoting the fine arts in America. Over the years, a distinguished faculty has tutored a significant number of prominent painters and sculptors, while the museum side of the academy hosted a variety of important exhibitions.

Among its most influential instructors have been Thomas Eakins, Thomas Anshutz, William Merritt Chase, Cecilia Beaux and Arthur B. Carles. Among notable alumni of yesteryear are Rembrandt Peale, William Harnett, Mary Cassatt, Eakins, Beaux, Henry O. Tanner, Maxfield Parrish, Robert Henri, John Sloan, Violet Oakley, John Marin, Carles, Charles Sheeler and Charles Demuth. More recent students have included such contemporary standouts as Bo Bartlett, Vincent Desiderio, Jody Pinto and Sarah McEneaney.