Although the Philadelphia Museum of Art did not yet exist – it would eventually open in 1928 – it was chartered in that centennial year. Presented in concert with the 100th anniversary of the nation’s founding, the Centennial Exhibition highlighted American history and arts – from recreated “colonial” dwellings to paintings by members of the Hudson River School – but it also featured international exhibits, notably a display of Japanese art and design that caused a stateside craze for Japonisme. The PMA’s press materials acknowledge that anniversary but elide perhaps an even more crucial one: the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876, which had long-reaching ramifications for the history of art and museums in the United States generally, and Philadelphia in particular. It was no accident that the earlier iteration of the PMA’s American wing debuted in 1976, a year in which cultural institutions nationwide organized celebrations in honor of the US bicentennial. “There was a whole new build for those American galleries, which were state-of-the-art in 1976, and that’s the last time the galleries really had been reconsidered.” She adds that it was all “getting a little bit shopworn” and “intellectually, needed a rethinking.” “The American department was created in 1973, and the new galleries were installed in 1976,” Foster recalls. Then-director Anne d’Harnoncourt had a reinstallation of the American collections in mind even then. ![]() (Foster led the curatorial team for the reinstallation, which also includes curators David Barquist, Alexandra Kirtley and Carol Soltis project manager John Vick and educator Rosalie Hooper, along with an academic advisory committee). McNeil Jr senior curator of American Art and director of the Center for American Art, remembers that it was already on the agenda when she was hired in 2002. McNeil Jr Galleries that house the reinstallation are part of a larger and ongoing building campaign overseen by architect Frank Gehry. The newly reinstalled Art of the Americas collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), opening May 7, takes seriously that idea of past as prologue, offering “a spotlight on immigration, colonialism, trade and underrepresented narratives.” But that mindset overlooks two important facts: that reflecting upon our national history has been a constant and essential aspect of understanding the turmoil of the last year or so, and that the arts – both the fine and the functional – are and have always been a mirror of that history. ![]() As we deal with the aftermath of a contentious presidential election and the related insurrection attempt at the Capitol in January rising calls for social justice, not least in response to the continued killing of unarmed people of color by the police and a pandemic that has brought both our global interconnectedness and the power and limitations of science to the fore, the art of the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries might seem very remote – perhaps not the most urgent issue to parse, among so many. PHILADELPHIA – What a time to be reconsidering the origins and development of American art. On temporary loan from the board of trustees of the Atwater Kent Museum (Philadelphia History Museum), the Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection and the City of Philadelphia. Wampum belt likely made by Lenape women artisans, 1682.
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