To celebrate America’s 250th anniversary of signing the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is teaming up with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) to put on A Nation of Artists across both venues. As the senior curator of American art at the PMA, Kathleen A. Foster, stated, “The whole city of Philadelphia is very fired up about this anniversary.”
Celebrating America’s Anniversary With Art
The Pennsylvania State House is the location where the famous document gathered its 56 foundational signatures. In celebration, the show comprises more than 1,000 paintings, sculptures, photographs, and decorative pieces of art themed around the American experience.
The centerpiece of the exhibition will be Charles Willson Peale’s 1779 portrait of George Washington.
“These are complicated times,” Foster said. “The anniversary, for the United States, is going to be a one of self-examination as well as celebration.” She goes on to describe the exhibition as a story “that all Americans can be rewarded by, can be excited by, can be proud of, and maybe challenged by”.
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The show will feature the contemporary work of the artist Laura Watters Maynor, who is of Lenape descent. Indigenous artists are present with historical textile, ceramic, and sculptural works from the Haida, Haudenosaunee, Diné, Hopi, and Pueblo nations.
Among the highlights will be the elegant portraiture of Barkley L. Hendricks, Andrew Wyeth’s elegiac Surrealism, Elizabeth Catlett’s sculpture Mother and Child (around 1956), and the Georgia O’Keeffe painting Red Hills and Bones (1941). The exhibition will also include 120 works from the Middleton Family Collection, whose Hudson River School and US Impressionist works will be on display with John Singer Sargent’s Group With Parasols (A Siesta) (1904-05).
John S. Middleton, owner of the Philadelphia Phillies, has emphasized that art and baseball share many qualities. He has said both 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 2026-5 July 2027; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 12 April 2026-5 September 2027.
