Making History: 200 Years of American Art from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts on view at PEM June 14 through September 21, 2025
SALEM, MA – This summer, the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) takes visitors on a journey across time, and through medium and identity, surveying 200 years of American painting and sculpture through 85 American artworks. Making History: 200 Years of American Art from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts considers what it meant to be an American artist at the time of the nation’s founding and what it means to make art in the United States today. Co-organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), Making History is on view at PEM from June 14 through September 21.
The exhibition delves into the extensive historic and modern collections of the first art school and museum in the United States. Established in Philadelphia in 1805, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) has long championed American art and artists and was the first art academy in the nation to admit women and Black art students for study in the 1800s. The exhibition features PAFA’s formidable collection of well-known, iconic works by 19th and 20th-century artists such as Edward Hopper, Winslow Homer, Gilbert Stuart, Georgia O’Keeffe, Horace Pippin, Childe Hassam, Thomas Hart Benton, Mary Cassatt and Stuart Davis, alongside outstanding pieces by artists such as Elizabeth Osborne, Laura Wheeler Waring and Raymond Saunders.
Since the founding of the United States, artists have played a key role in shaping the nation’s history and reframing shared perspectives of pressing social and political issues. By embracing the stories of an array of artists, Making History offers a range of narratives on American art, culture, and community. Assembled together, these works show us how artists shape our contemporary understanding of America’s past, present, and future.
“The perennial question – what makes an artwork American – is interrogated again and again in this exhibition that pairs widely acclaimed and recognizable paintings with lesser known stellar works by artists sometimes overlooked during their time,” said Jeffrey Richmond-Moll, Ph.D., The George Putnam Curator of American Art and organizing curator of this exhibition at PEM. “Making History reveals American artists as they have always been: a diverse group that includes women, artists of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community. Since the founding of the United States, these artists have played a vital role in crafting and continually retelling the nation’s history.”
The European art establishment of the 17th century introduced the term “history painting” to describe scenes that drew upon ancient history, mythology, and the Bible. At the nation’s founding, American artists began altering this approach by depicting contemporary stories, as if to show history was in the making all around them. Alice Neel extended this approach into the early 20th century when she depicted impoverished women and children who slipped through the cracks of government bureaucracy during the Great Depression in her painting, Investigation of Poverty at the Russell Sage Foundation (1933). By creating this painting, Neel ensured that the inequalities this family experienced remain part of the historic record of America. She described the circumstances behind this unsettling depiction:
The woman seated in a chair in the middle was living with her seven children under an overturned automobile—that was their house. She had a rash all over her chest. And these two old men at the side were just a couple of old wretches from Bleecker Street . . . . The Russell Sage Foundation never gave a penny to the poor, but they investigated the poor. Out of that came social security and welfare, but before that, you just starved to death.
Portraits create connections to people across different times and experiences. Prominent American artists in the 1700s and 1800s, influenced by European traditions, privileged imposing portraits, symbolizing power and wealth and often featuring white subjects of prominence. Other artists shaped a different narrative, creating portraits that honor family members, friends, and mentors. In the 1800s and 1900s, Black artists illuminated narratives of Black accomplishment, pride, and power. Barkley Hendricks is widely acknowledged as the father of Black postmodern portraiture. After studying at PAFA in the 1960s, he built a career around painting realistic life-size portraits of individuals at the center of contemporary Black fashion and culture, such as 1968 painting J. S. B. III.
Making History takes us on a journey to encounter a range of people, places and events to contemplate how America’s founding principles are lived and experienced every day. Scenes of ordinary people and domestic life reflect the reality of their time and the unique perspectives of the artists. Warm depictions of mothers and children hang in contrast to scenes of independent women in the bustle of modern American cities. Through landscape painting and still-life scenes, we can see Americans’ ever-changing relationship with the natural world and gain insights into Americans’ evolving sense of national identity in relation to the wider world.
PRESS & INFLUENCER RECEPTION
Please join us for a press and influencer preview reception on Friday, June 13 from 5:30–6:30 pm, featuring remarks and a curator-led tour. Invitation to follow.
EXHIBITION CATALOG
Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776–1976
Edited by Anna O. Marley, with contributions by Dana E. Byrd, Christian Ayne Crouch, Jonathan D. Katz, and Michèle Wije, the 224-page publication reinterprets American art through one institution’s iconic collection, spotlighting contributions by Black, women, and LGBTQ+ artists. Making American Artists delves into the extensive historical and modern collections of the first art school and museum in the United States, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, to reconsider what it means to be an American artist. Brimming with illustrations of more than one hundred significant works, this catalog commemorates a traveling exhibition with several venues, including the Wichita Art Museum in Kansas; the Albuquerque Museum of Art in New Mexico; the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma; the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York; and the Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, Virginia. This book is available in the PEM Shop.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Follow along and share your experience on social media using #MakingHistoryatPEM
PUBLICITY IMAGES
Publicity images available upon request.
IMAGE CREDITS
- Horace Pippin, John Brown Going to His Hanging, 1942. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. John Lambert Fund, 1943.11.
- Charles Willson Peale, The Artist in His Museum, 1822. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Gift of Mrs. Sarah Harrison (The Joseph Harrison, Jr. Collection). 1878.1.2.Violet Oakley, June, about 1902. Oil, charcoal, and graphite on composition board. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Henry D. Gilpin Fund. 1903.4.
- Violet Oakley, June, about 1902. Oil, charcoal, and graphite on composition board. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Henry D. Gilpin Fund. 1903.4.
- Winslow Homer, Fox Hunt, 1893. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Philadelphia. Joseph E. Temple Fund. 1894.4.
- Alice Neel, Investigation of Poverty at the Russell Sage Foundation, 1933. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Art by Women Collection, Gift of Linda Lee Alter, 2010.27.2. © The Estate of Alice Neel, Courtesy of The Estate of Alice Neel and David Zwirner.
- Barkley L. Hendricks, J. S. B. III, 1968. Oil on canvas. 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.
SPONSORS
Making History: 200 Years of American Art from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is co-organized by the American Federation of Arts (AFA) and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) and curated by Anna O. Marley, PhD, former Chief of Curatorial Affairs and Kenneth R. Woodcock Curator of Historical American Art at 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. 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 PEM’s East India Marine Associates.
About the Peabody Essex Museum
Founded in 1799, the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts, is the country’s oldest continuously operating museum. PEM provides thought-provoking experiences of the arts, humanities and sciences to celebrate the creative achievements and potential of people across time, place and culture. By connecting people through inquiry, empathy and dialogue, PEM encourages an understanding of our shared humanity and fosters a sense of belonging in a complex, ever-changing world. We build, steward and share our superlative collection, which includes African, American, Asian Export, Chinese, contemporary, Japanese, Korean, maritime, Native American, Oceanic and South Asian art, as well as architecture, fashion and textiles, photography, natural history and one of the nation’s most important museum-based collections of rare books and manuscripts. PEM offers a varied and unique visitor experience, with hands-on creativity zones, interactive opportunities and performance spaces. The museum’s campus, which offers numerous gardens and green spaces, is an accredited arboretum and features more than a dozen noted historic structures, including Yin Yu Tang, a 200-year-old Chinese home that is the only example of Chinese domestic architecture in the United States.
About the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA)
PAFA was founded in 1805 in Philadelphia as the country’s first museum and school of fine arts. It was an accredited college from 2013 to 2025 and maintains a robust program of continuing education and community arts programming through the PAFA museum. The American Federation of Arts (AFA) is the international leader in traveling exhibitions. A nonprofit organization founded in 1909, AFA is dedicated to enriching the public’s experience and understanding of the visual arts through organizing and touring art exhibitions for presentation in museums around the world, publishing exhibition catalogues featuring important scholarly research and developing educational programs.
MEDIA CONTACTS
Whitney Van Dyke | Director of Marketing & Communications whitney_vandyke@pem.org | 978-542-1828
Kristen Levesque | Exhibition Publicist
kristen_levesque@pem.org | 207-329-3090