Philadelphia art retrospective

Philadelphia’s two biggest art museums opened a joint exhibition on April 12 that tries to tell 250 years of American art in one sweep. (philamuseum.org) “A Nation of Artists” is split between the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, with more than 1,000 works on view from April 2026 into 2027. (pafa.org) The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s presentation runs through July 5, 2027, while the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts keeps its installation up through September 5, 2027. (visitphilly.com) The show was organized for the United States semiquincentennial, the 250th anniversary of 1776, with Philadelphia museums using that milestone to revisit how American art has been made and who gets included in that story. (press.philamuseum.org) That timing puts the exhibition inside a larger 2026 push in Philadelphia, where civic groups and cultural institutions are building anniversary programming around the city where the Declaration of Independence was signed. (theartnewspaper.com) The museums said the exhibition combines their own holdings with the private Middleton Family Collection, adding more than 100 paintings and decorative objects from that collection to the project. (pafa.org) At the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the lineup includes artists such as Charles Willson Peale, Mary Cassatt, Horace Pippin and Mark Rothko, alongside furniture, silver and other decorative arts. (philamuseum.org) Coverage by WHYY said the two institutions take different curatorial routes through the same subject, using separate installations to represent the history of American creativity rather than one merged checklist. (whyy.org) The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is also using the exhibition to mark the reopening of its Historic Landmark Building after a two-year closure. (msn.com) The result is a long-running, two-site exhibition timed to the nation’s 250th birthday and built to keep drawing visitors through the 2026 anniversary year and beyond. (visitpa.com)