Join us for a journey across time, medium, and identity with a lecture about the exhibition of Making American Artists: Stories from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1776–1976. This flagship exhibition offers new narratives in American art history, embracing stories about women artists, LGBTQIA+ artists, and artists of color with over one hundred of the most acclaimed and iconic pieces in American art on display. Organized by theme—portraiture, history painting, still life, genre scenes, and landscape—and not chronology, the exhibition affords the opportunity to enjoy familiar works in a new light and find new favorites.

Lori Waselchuk, PAFA’s Assistant Director of Public Programs, will lead a lively lecture that highlights PAFA’s legacy as well as its continuing role in shaping American art of the twenty-first century.

Lori Waselchuk is the Assistant Director of Public Programs at PAFA. Before joining PAFA’s staff, Waselchuk was the exhibitions and programs coordinator at TILT, where she co-created and directed the Women’s Mobile Museum with Zanele Muholi. She is a documentary photographer whose works have appeared in national and international exhibitions and publications. Waselchuk also curates and coordinates projects that prioritize creative engagement and social change, including Grace Before Dying (Umbrage Editions 2010), a collaboration with incarcerated hospice caregivers at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Waselchuk has received many honors for her work including an Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photography Fellowship, a Pew Fellowship for the Arts, and a Leeway Foundation Transformation Award.

For more info on the exhibit and artists, visit here: https://www.pafa.org/museum/exhibitions/making-american-artists-stories-pafa-1776-1976

Image Credit:

Joan Brown (1938-1990), Self Portrait, 1977, Oil on canvas, unframed: 84 x 72 in., Museum purchase