PAFA The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

06/02/2026

For years in Enfield, North Carolina, a siren known as the “Nine O’Clock Whistle” was blown every Saturday night to order Black residents off the downtown streets.

Three days after the March on Washington, hundreds of people refused to leave.

What followed was a community-wide movement that challenged segregation, sparked a voter registration campaign, and helped change the future of the town.

Join us on June 20 at PAFA for a special Juneteenth screening of The Nine O’Clock Whistle and a conversation with filmmaker, educator, and activist Dr. Willa Cofield.

🎟 Pay What You Wish
📍 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
🗓 June 20 | 1–4 PM
🔗 www.pafa.org/events/voices-freedom-nine-oclock-whistle-dr-willa-cofield-062026

In partnership with Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc.-Omega Mu Omega Chapter and Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee & Books.

06/02/2026

For years in Enfield, North Carolina, a siren known as the "Nine O'Clock Whistle" was blown every Saturday night to order Black residents off the downtown streets.

Three days after the March on Washington, hundreds of people refused to leave.

What followed was a community-wide movement that challenged segregation, sparked a voter registration campaign, and helped change the future of the town.

Join us on June 20 at PAFA for a special Juneteenth screening of The Nine O'Clock Whistle and a conversation with filmmaker, educator, and activist Dr. Willa Cofield.

🎟 Pay What You Wish
📍 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
🗓 June 20 | 1–4 PM
🔗 www.pafa.org/events/voices-freedom-nine-oclock-whistle-dr-willa-cofield-062026

In partnership with Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc.-Omega Mu Omega Chapter and Uncle Bobbie's Coffee & Books.

Black folks in a small, segregated North Carolina town rebel against the constraints imposed upon them, including an offensive and humiliating whistle blown every Saturday night at nine o’clock warning Blacks to clear the downtown streets.

05/31/2026

🎨 🖌️ “Bicentennial Dawn” by Louise Nevelson is a stylized graphic interpretation of her site-specific public sculpture installed in the James A. Byrne U.S. Courthouse in Philadelphia. The original work features clusters of abstract, pillar-like forms made from wood fragments, blocks, and crescent shapes rising from brick-edged platforms, rendered in stark white and casting shadows across the interlocking forms. In this photolithographic work, Nevelson isolates those sculptural elements against a metallic gold-ochre ground, recontextualizing the composition and emphasizing its rhythmic structure.

Commissioned for the courthouse through the U.S. government’s “Art in Architecture” program celebrating the nation’s 200th anniversary, Bicentennial Dawn was created in 1976 as a large-scale sculptural work. The corresponding photolithograph reflects the monument’s scale and rhythm in printed form.

This work is one of many by Nevelson in PAFA’s collection. Her sculpture South Floral (1972) is currently on view in A Nation of Artists. Nevelson described her approach to materials as a sense of “livingness”: “I don't want to make anything; what I am doing is living the livingness of life, the livingness of the livingness, and using all these things to extend this awareness.”
Source: https://buff.ly/bDZ3k6l
🖼️ Louise Nevelson (1899-1988), Bicentennial Dawn, 1976. Photolithograph and metallic ground on white wove paper, 35 x 24 15/16 in. (88.9 x 63.34125 cm.). Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Newbold, 1977.17 © Estate of Louise Nevelson / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

05/30/2026

Now that you know who’s performing, but what else is happening at PAFA’s Family Art Festival on June 21? 🎉

🎨 Art-making at interactive stations
✨ Connect with community partners from across Philadelphia
🎂 Help build a giant collaborative “birthday cake” for PAFA 220
🖼 Explore 'A Nation of Artists' with free museum admission
👨‍👩‍👧 Enjoy guided family tours for all ages
☕ Grab refreshments from Top Hat Coffee Lounge

Whether you come for the performances, the artmaking, or simply to spend the day exploring together, there’s something for everyone.

📍 Lenfest Plaza at PAFA
📅 June 21 | 12–4 PM

🔗 https://buff.ly/3fdso4i

FREE • ALL AGES

📹️ : Mini Studio

05/30/2026

Member Appreciation Month may be coming to a close, but there’s still time to enjoy 30% off Museum Store purchases and spend a weekend at PAFA. ✨

Maybe you’ve already seen A Nation of Artists — but have you explored Student Works: From the 2025–2026 Academic Year yet? How about Bodies and Souls, Kati Gegenheimer: We've Only Just Begun, or FRED WILSON: THE MASTER PLAN or In Between the Big Bang and Modern Art Is the Restroom?

And of course, don’t forget to snap a photo with the iconic #1 sculpture in Lenfest Plaza while you’re here.

Thank you for supporting art, artists, and creative community at PAFA all year long. 💙

Become a member today 🔗 https://buff.ly/C9MU3H4

05/29/2026

We just listened to the final episode of Song of Lynchadelphia, a special season of Song of Philadelphia, the podcast created, hosted, and produced by Julien Suaudeau. (Hidden City Philadelphia).

We loved the deep dive into the life of David Lynch. You’re walking through Philadelphia in the late 1960s, through PAFA’s studios, classrooms, and the streets just beyond campus, where a young Lynch is beginning to shape the strange, cinematic language that would define his work.

Across the season, you hear from voices connected to PAFA and the city’s art scene, including longtime faculty member Bruce Samuelson and friend of Lynch, fellow student and collaborator Jack Fisk, and others reflecting on this formative moment.

What emerges is a portrait of an artist and a city inseparable — memory, atmosphere, and imagination folding into the same space.

And if you’re on campus, you can see Lynch’s 'Six Men Getting Sick'—the short film he made while at PAFA that launched his career—on view now in the Anne Bryan Gallery at PAFA.

🎧 Listen to Song of Lynchadelphia
🔗 https://buff.ly/QmO40Qb

📷 : David Lynch with the Paint Torch in Lenfest Plaza, 2012

05/28/2026

In 1917, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts opened the Academy Country School at Chester Springs, transforming the historic village of Yellow Springs into a summer campus for open-air painting and landscape study.

Long before artists arrived, the site had already lived many lives: a colonial medicinal spa built around natural springs, a hospital during and after the Valley Forge encampment, and a place long shaped by Pennsylvania history. PAFA adapted the village into an immersive art school, converting a former hotel into student housing and barns and sheds into studios set across open fields, farmland, and wooded hillsides.

Rooted in the Impressionist tradition of en plein air painting, students spent six-to-eight-week summer sessions working directly from nature under artists including Henry McCarter, Arthur B. Carles, Hugh Breckenridge (see photo #4), and Daniel Garber (see photo #5). The school operated from 1917 to 1952 and became a significant chapter in American art education.

This post features Country Road, Chester Springs (1929) by Paul Wescott, his student registration card, and historic photographs preserved by Historic Yellow Springs.

Explore PAFA’s Chester Springs archives to learn more: https://buff.ly/kBT5b8j

You can also read Timothy Alexander’s recent article, "Yellow Springs: Where Pennsylvania Kept Reinventing Itself," (published May 10 on buff.ly/f1kYAbe) and explore the archives at Historic Yellow Springs to discover more about this remarkable place and its many lives.
🖼️ : Paul Wescott (1904-1970), Country Road, Chester Springs, 1929. Pennsylvania Academy purchase, 1929.6 © artist or artist's estate.
📄 : Name written on student registrartion card as: Wescott, Paul, 1927. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Archives, RG030501-6276.
All images: Historic Yellow Springs Archives:
📷 Model posing on the dam, 1939. RG4.B10.F26A.
📷 Margaret Smoot sculpting Roswell Weidner, 1932. RG4.B21.C204.
📷 Students sculpting the human form, c. 1916–1952. RG4.B21.C222.
📷 Indoor portrait painting class, c. 1916–1952. RG4.B21.C234.
📷 Hugh Henry Breckenridge teaching a painting class, 1918. RG4.B24.24.
📷 Daniel Garber teaching at the PAFA Country School, 1935. RG4.B21.C266.

05/28/2026

🎨🖌️ A Studio Education Built for Serious Artists | Artists serious about their studio practice. PAFA’s Fine Arts Certificate Program is a three-year, immersive studio experience designed for artists seeking rigorous training, mentorship from working artists, and a focused creative community.

✔ Hands-on studio instruction
✔ Intensive critique and faculty mentorship
✔ Structured curriculum that supports long-term artistic growth
✔ Study at the first museum and school of fine arts in the U.S.

PAFA Fine Arts Certificate alumni move in many directions: independent studio practice, exhibitions, graduate study, teaching, and a wide range of arts-related careers.

🎓 Fine Arts Certificate
📅 Fall 2026 start
🗓 Apply by June 15 to secure your spot

🗓 Free Info Sessions on select Thursdays at 12 & 6 PM
📅 Upcoming dates: May 28, June 11, June 25, July 9, July 23

This program is ideal for emerging artists, career changers, and practitioners ready to commit to sustained studio work in a historic, artist-centered environment.

🔗 Learn more + apply via the link in bio.

05/27/2026

Jazz-rock. Classical Indian dance. Live poetry. K-pop. Wait until you see who’s performing at our Family Art Festival happening June 21!

This year’s festival brings together four very different kinds of performance, each one bringing its own rhythm, voice, and energy.

🎸 Blush .philly
Philly-based band with sax-driven grooves, bold vocals, and a sound that moves between jazz, pop, and rock. They open the day and return to close it out with a birthday celebration set.

💃 Three Aksha
A classical Bharatanatyam company where movement becomes storytelling, precise, expressive, and rooted in centuries of tradition, performed with contemporary presence.

🎤 Poetry215 .com_
Live spoken word from Philadelphia’s poetry community, raw, immediate, and built on voice, rhythm, and lived experience.

🪩 PR¥SM Official
A K-pop dance crew delivering high-energy choreography, tight synchronization, and performance built to hit instantly in real time.

Just art happening in public—while families, friends, and kids create together, explore hands-on art activities, and experience live performances all around them.

📅 June 21
🕛 12–4 PM
📍 Lenfest Plaza at PAFA
🎟️ Free + all ages
🔗register at pafa.org or