Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

The oldest art museum and school in the United States—founded in 1805—the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) includes among its notable faculty and alumni, Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, Henry O. Tanner, John Marin, and David Lynch. Over the years, Center grants have helped PAFA to bring notable single-artist surveys organized elsewhere to Philadelphia—Barkley Hendricks and Peter Saul—as well as to support the commissioning of new works by younger, mid-career artists, such as Emily Harvey. In 2020, PAFA received a Center Project grant for Rising Sun – Artists and an Uncertain America (working title), a collaborative project with the African American Museum in Philadelphia for which both museums will commission and present the work of 30 contemporary artists to address the canon of American art and the necessary work of re-appraisal, reckoning, and repair as institutions and artists work together toward more equitable museum spaces.