Cool Comes to PAFA - Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Faculty Spotlight: Michael Gallagher
Michael Gallagher, Double Down, 2008-09
Acrylic on panel 42” x 56”
School News
Students returning this fall will notice big changes in the
venerable Cast Hall in the Historic Landmark Building. Years of
dust and dirt in the cast hallways and studio classrooms of the
Historic Landmark Building are being swept away by Operations
Manager Ed Poletti and his crews, who have cleaned and
painted the hallowed halls. The new look, as well as a restored
collection of casts, is sensational.
Thanks to a generous grant from the Von Hess Foundation,
PAFA’s precious collection of plaster casts of historic masterpieces
will be given a careful cleaning and conservation
treatment over the next few years. The program of conservation
will be conducted piece by piece, with minimal impact on our
popular cast drawing program and frequent events held in the
Cast Hall. The project is being conducted by Robert Shure of
the Giust Gallery and Skylight Studios in Boston, and will be
supervised by Al Gury, John Horn, Doug Martenson, and other
members of the cast committee.
At last spring’s 2009 graduation ceremonies, curator and
Dean of the Yale School of Art Robert Storr gave an inspired
commencement address, artist Barkley L. Hendricks received
the Distinguished Alumni Award, and art collector Dr. Luther
Brady received an Honorary doctorate. We also witnessed
the first graduates of PAFA’s new BFA program. The Academy
BFA is our first undergraduate degree program, and is a close
companion to the famous Certificate program and our shared
BFA program with the University of Pennsylvania. The Academy
Book Your Event at PAFA!
At PAFA, you can dine and dance with Benjamin West or Betye
Saar, Thomas Eakins or Alex Katz, or the entire Peale family in
one of Philadelphia’s architectural treasures. Choose between
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With full event-planning resources, our experts always create a
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Contact Judi Garst at 215-972-1609 or jgarst@pafa.org
www.pafa.org/rentals
Like most kids, Certificate/BFA painting teacher Michael Gallagher
made his first contact with visual art through children’s books and
comics. And, like many children, he copied the images obsessively, but
by adolescence had abandoned the pastime.
Years later, while attending La Salle University on an athletic scholarship,
Gallagher took a painting course in his final semester, “merely to
fill out my course load,” says Gallagher. “Little did I know how important
that single experience would be. I was hooked and returned home
to Pasadena and took a year to prepare a portfolio in order to apply for
formal study.”
As athletics gave way to art, Gallagher came across a PAFA catalog
in 1979 and immediately knew that the Academy was the type of
school he wanted to attend. The catalog included examples of faculty
and student work and Gallagher found the range and quality of the
work impressive, sensing “a respect for tradition and craft that other
schools did not seem to offer.” Gallagher believes that same dynamic
is what continues to draw students to PAFA today.
As an Academy student, Gallagher moved back and forth between
representation and abstraction, the boundaries between the two languages
seeming very fluid to the burgeoning artist who felt that PAFA
offered a sympathetic and encouraging environment for individual
artistic growth. By attending the Academy, he felt that “the sense that
one could seriously pursue a life in the arts seemed to be a given.”
After graduating from the Certificate program in 1987, Gallagher
began working for the museum in the preparators department and
later as an assistant for the painting department. He began exhibiting
in 1988, and in 2002, he finished his Masters degree. He has been on
PAFA’s faculty ever since.
In 2007, Gallagher received PAFA’s “Outstanding Teacher of the
Year” Award and of his teaching style and philosophy, says, “I think it
is very important to respond to each student individually. It is a useless
endeavor to compare one student to another, to attempt to direct a
student to your way of thinking or what you think they should be doing.
You have to respect their interests and give them space to grow.
“I truly enjoy the teaching experience here at the Academy because
our students are excellent. They really are top notch. I can’t say enough
about the caliber of student the Academy attracts, they are a joy to
work with.”
Photography by Bresner
BFA has finished its first year of operation, and already, over 80
students have enrolled in this new program.
With the BFA, we are rapidly growing the Academy’s first
ever program of liberal arts studies. The latest professor to join
the liberal arts faculty is historian Dr. Ali Chambers, who will
be teaching a two-semester sequence of World Civilization. A
revamped drawing curriculum, with a number of new and improved
courses, includes a class taught by the two-time winner
of the Caldecott Medal, author/ illustrator David Weisner. New
faculty member Shelley Spector, who promises to bring innovative
techniques for artists to survive and thrive in this digital
age, is offering a fresh version of the Business of Art class.
Finally, the celebrated young artists and alums Steven and Billy
Blaise Dufala will be teaching a new sculpture class jointly with
PAFA’s John Grieg that will inspire our students to make art by
incorporating found objects and materials.
The wonderful exhibitions of Elizabeth Osborne and Sidney
Goodman will run through September, along with Legacies:
Works by Twelve Former Students of Elizabeth Osborne and
Sidney Goodman. These shows exemplify PAFA’s programs
and artists, as will the upcoming retrospective of Academy
alum Barkley L. Hendricks. Not to be missed are master
classes by Bo Bartlett, Stuart Shils, and Odd Nerdrum. The
School will be hosting talks by these artists during the periods
of their workshops.
From the Desk
of the Dean:
A Community of Artists
By Jeffrey Carr, Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs,
Dean of the School of Fine Arts
There’s a persistent image of the artist as a lone genius,
holed up in a garret somewhere, making sublime works
that nobody understands. Nobody who is a practicing
professional artist believes that. Artists love to hang out
with other artists. Who else knows better the trials and
tribulations of making art than other artists? There are
triumphs and failures, worldly success and the occasional
standout success in the studio. And all artists know that
these two forms of success don’t necessarily coincide.
In the end, your best audience is your audience of fellow
artists.
This was demonstrated by opening of the current alumni
show Legacies: Works by Twelve Former Students
of Elizabeth Osborne and Sidney Goodman. Over 700
alums and artists came to enjoy the work, the fellowship
and above all, the shared inspiration they had received
from the art and the teaching of Sidney Goodman and Liz
Osborne. There was a palpable sense of continuity that
night between the lives and careers of Sidney and Liz,
and the new generations of artists working, exhibiting, and
participating in the living traditions of the Academy.
Artists create their work and careers within complicated
communities of fellow artists, galleries, reviewers, patrons,
friends, collectors, and curators. No one can do it alone,
and why should one want to? Art is about sharing images,
ideas, inspirations, passions, and prejudges. The vibe in
the PAFA community was intense that opening night. The
talk, the remembrances, the art gossip, and the presence
of the art itself was a vivid reminder of what it means to be
part of a community of artists. I remember wonderful conversations
with Edgar Jerins about his portraits of hunters
and Kate Kaman about her new sculpture commission
with Temple University. I introduced artist Elena Peteva
to PAFA alum and New York Academy faculty member
Wade Schuman, and saw Vincent Desiderio hugging
his beloved mentor Sidney Goodman. Liz Osborne was
besieged with fans who wanted her to autograph her new
book. Many former and current students hung out, caught
up, and celebrated the life we have chosen.
In The Philadelphia Inquirer, Edith Newhall wrote,
“There’s no telling who studied with whom in the Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts’ [‘Legacies’]- and
apparently no point in guessing, either.” She’s right. It’s
not about who studied with whom, but the fact that we all
learn from one another. As the School’s Mission Statement
has it, we are “a community of working artists dedicated
to maintaining an inspired environment that fosters
a commitment to engaging art and the creative act as a
lifelong pursuit of the highest order.” I think that sums it
up: we inspire ourselves by inspiring each other.
Cool Comes to PAFA
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exhibited widely in solo and group shows and his works
are held in many major museum collections. The recipient
of many major awards and fellowships, Hendricks
was honored with the Distinguished Alumni Award of the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2009. He currently
lives and works in New London Connecticut, where
he is a professor of art at Connecticut College.
Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool is organized by the Nasher Museum
of Art at Duke University and curated by Trevor Schoonmaker.
The presentation of Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool at PAFA is
organized by Julien Robson, PAFA’s Curator of Contemporary Art.
The exhibition is sponsored in part by the Andy Warhol Foundation
for the Visual Arts, Inc., the National Endowment for the Arts, which
believes that a great nation deserves great art, the Mary Duke Biddle
Foundation, and the North Carolina Arts Council with funding from
the State of North Carolina.
Funding for the tour of Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool to the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has been provided by The Pew Center
for Arts & Heritage through the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative. Additional
support provided by an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of
2009 grant through the National Endowment for the Arts, Mr. & Mrs.
Harold Sorgenti, and the Edna W. Andrade Fund of the Philadelphia
Foundation.
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