Among America’s 250th celebrations of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, those held in Philadelphia take pride of place. It is in what was then the Pennsylvania State House that the fabled document garnered its 56 foundational signatures. As the senior curator of American art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), Kathleen A. Foster, puts it, “The whole city of Philadelphia is very fired up about this anniversary.”
The PMA is teaming up with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) to put on A Nation of Artists across both venues. This monumental show comprises more than 1,000 paintings, photographs, sculptures and pieces of decorative art, running the full gamut of the American experience. The centrepiece will be Charles Willson Peale’s 1779 portrait of George Washington. But the show’s beating heart is not the state or its organs but rather the multiplicity of daily life and the many American arts this has nurtured.
Barkley L. Hendricks’s 1968 portrait, J. S. B. III Courtesy of Pennsylvania Museum of Art
“These are complicated times,” Foster says. “The anniversary, for the United States, is going to be a one of self-examination as well as celebration.” So too this exhibition, which she describes as a story “that all Americans can be rewarded by, can be excited by, can be proud of, and maybe challenged by”. In place of bald patriotism, the curators are inviting deep questioning.
All manner of US identities will be present: Hudson River School landscapes will jostle with the contemporary work of the artist Laura Watters Maynor, who is of Lenape descent. Indigenous nations are further present with historical textile, ceramic and sculptural works from the Haida, Haudenosaunee, Diné, Hopi and Pueblo nations. Among the highlights will be the elegance and refinement of Barkley L. Hendricks’s portraiture, Andrew Wyeth’s elegiac Surrealism, Elizabeth Catlett’s magnificent sculpture Mother and Child (around 1956) and the Georgia O’Keeffe painting Red Hills and Bones (1941).
Key to the show will be 120 works from the Middleton Family Collection, whose Hudson River School and US Impressionist works will be on display with, among other masterpieces, John Singer Sargent’s Group With Parasols (A Siesta) (1904-05). John S. Middleton is the owner of the Philadelphia Phillies and has emphasised that art and baseball have a lot in common: both, he has said, have the power to “bring people together and surprise us when we least expect it”.
• A Nation of Artists, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 12 April-5 July 2027; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 12 April-5 September 2027
