Two Philadelphia art museums will celebrate America’s 250th anniversary with a stupendous joint exhibition. Unprecedented in scope and scale, “A Nation of Artists” spans three centuries of American art through more than 1,000 paintings, photographs, sculptures, decorative arts, and other items, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA).
Founded in 1805, the PAFA was America’s first art museum and fine arts school. The academy’s founders signed its charter in Independence Hall, where almost three decades earlier, America’s Founding Fathers had read the Declaration of Independence and signed the Constitution.
“It was a very self-conscious act of having the founding document signed in the same building where the Declaration was first read,” former PAFA president David Brigham said. “I think it makes a statement that this is about building a civilization and not just a nation.” …