Listen to article • 0:00 min

Who is an “American” artist? It’s a subject that’s long been debated; even recently, when some levied (unfounded) criticisms of Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny headlining America’s biggest stage at the Super Bowl, singing in Spanish.

As the nation rings in America 250 this year, it’s an important question for cultural institutions presenting historical surveys of this country’s contributions to the art world: What’s the criteria? Where an artist was born, or where one created masterpieces? Does “America” include Indigenous people whose residence on this land predates the country’s founding, or those from other territories targeted by colonial expansion, like Guam?

For the forthcoming dual-venue exhibit, “A Nation of Artists,” the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts answer with yes — and more.

“In the past in American art history, when the field was created, [the definition] was an artist that had to be born in the United States, or one who worked in the United States,” said Lea C. Stephenson, the Kenneth R. Woodcock curator of historical American art at PAFA.

“Our show has really moved beyond that definition — which is exciting — and thought about artists who are immigrants, Indigenous artists, artists of color, and thinking about more of an inclusive narrative of American art.”

The show unites the collections of PMA and PAFA with some 120 rarely-before-seen artworks collected by Phillies managing partner John Middleton and his wife, Leigh, over the past 50 years, considered one of the largest private collections of American art in the country.

More than 1,000 paintings, sculptures, furniture, textiles, photographs, ceramics, and other works will trace American art history from 1700 to today in two complementary displays on the Parkway and Broad Street.

It’s an unprecedented exhibit aimed at showcasing “the most expansive presentation of American art ever mounted in Philadelphia,” organizers said. PMA takes a chronological approach, while PAFA will pair historical pieces alongside contemporary works.

Collectively, the shows feature major figures in art history like Benjamin West, Charles Willson Peale, Thomas Eakins, and John Singer Sargent, as well as Philadelphia-specific artists who made history in their own right, like PAFA students Mary Cassatt and Henry Ossawa Tanner, considered the first African American artist to receive international acclaim, and Cecilia Beaux, the first woman to teach at PAFA. Living contemporary artists are also on view, including Kara Walker, Mickalene Thomas, William Villalongo, Gisela McDaniel, and María Berrío.

A multitude of styles

Tackling a sweeping survey of more than three centuries of any kind of creative output would be a challenge anywhere. But for a large country that was multicultural long before colonial settlers arrived, the task became an even more ambitious effort, as curators sought to capture not only the biggest names in the canon, but the omitted ones, too.

In the 1800s, enslaved potters in Edgefield, S.C., crafted glazed jars, some for storage and others with large portraits of different faces. Few of their names were recorded, but in recent decades, museums have worked to correct narrative oversights in American art history that erased the contributions of these enslaved artists.

David Drake — known as Dave before his emancipation — was one such potter who signed his name on the jars he created, along with inscribing biblical references at a time when the U.S. government outlawed literacy for African Americans.

Drake’s 1859 jar that will be on display at PMA reads, “Good for lard or holding fresh meat, / blest we were when peter saw the folded sheet,” alluding to a verse about God telling the apostle to accept people of all backgrounds equally.

At the Art Museum, which also celebrates its 150th anniversary this year, ceramics and other decorative arts are a major focus. Curators say labels will avoid modern-day distinctions between fine or folk or decorative arts; whether it’s Pennsylvania German folk art or Native American ceramics or decorative silverware from formally trained or self-taught creators — it’s all art.

“One of the baseline observations, I would say, is that there’s no single American art. There is no American style. There are a multitude of ways to be American,” said Kathleen A. Foster, the Robert L. McNeil Jr. senior curator of American art and director of the Center for American Art at PMA.

Foster was interested in underscoring that artists can be found everywhere, across cultures, classes, and geography. The first gallery opens up the idea that many artists throughout history learned artmaking by doing skilled trade work or from their families, particularly their mothers: Two patterned ceramic pots, placed side by side, show the work of Frances Torivio, a matriarch of pottery in Acoma Pueblo, N.M., with that of her daughter and student Wanda Aragon.

American hustle

Intentionally incorporating outsider artists like Cuban American Felipe Jesus Consalvos — who worked in a cigar factory in Philadelphia in the 1900s and created satirical collages with cigar labels in his free time — points to the curatorial effort to enter these often-separated artists into the country’s national story.

“This was a thing he did in his spare time, in his hobby time, and so many artists are like that … My reference is always like, ‘They gotta dance.’ They have to go home and make something,” said Foster. “Artists are artists part time, unlike Michelangelo working 24/7 … The American artist had to scramble to find patronage.”

That hustle is one of the uniting factors across history, genres, and cultures, because American artists did not have patrons like a royal family or the pope, said Alexandra Kirtley, the Montgomery-Garvan curator of American decorative arts and manager of the Center for American Art.

“That lack of that patronage, the lack of that really strong salon or national academy, and also the size of our country, the number of borders, the number of cultures coming here — it creates a lot of different tastes. There isn’t a single taste because there’s not a single tastemaker,” said Kirtley. “We’re celebrating the creativity of many people. Everyone is an artist. There are many different ways to become an artist.”

Thinking globally

While national academies were not as prominent in the U.S., it was in Philadelphia where PAFA was founded in 1805 as the nation’s first school and museum of fine arts. That history of teaching is central to its iteration of “A Nation of Artists,” of course, and PAFA curators additionally wanted to spotlight a dialogue between the past and the present.

For example, the 1883 painting Fantasie by Boston-born Charles Sprague Pearce hangs alongside Chinese American artist Hung Liu’s 2004 painting Visage II; both depict portraits of East Asian figures.

“We pair those two together to interrogate how artists are involved in, perhaps, cultural appropriation, how they are inventing exoticism. We wanted to interrogate that definition a bit without just accepting the term,” said Stephenson.

Ultimately, these different styles, narratives, and approaches emphasize American art as a collection of diverse forms, people, and cultures. Kirtley compares art to a language with various dialects.

“That doesn’t mean just because we have the declaration and we have the Constitution, and we’re all voting in one election, right?” she said. “That doesn’t mean that there aren’t a multitude of dialects being spoken.”

“A Nation of Artists” runs April 12, 2026-July 5, 2027, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, 215-763-8100 or philamuseum.org) and April 12, 2026-Sept. 5, 2027, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (118-128 N. Broad St., Philadelphia, 215-972-7600 or pafa.org). Note: Exhibit admission is separate at each venue, though discounts are available to view both.