digital archives

The Student Years: Edward Redfield’s Student Drawings Now Online

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Before he became one of America’s most celebrated impressionists and a cornerstone of the New Hope art colony, Edward Redfield (1869-1965) was a student honing his craft at the Academy. We are thrilled to announce the recent acquisition of a small collection of Redfield’s student works, created between 1887 and 1889. These are particularly unique as students rarely preserved any of their student work.

The complete digitized collection is now fully accessible online via our Digital Archives, offering researchers, students, and art enthusiasts free access to these foundational works. Explore the new collection today and trace the early steps of a master landscape painter.

Collection Highlights

Pedagogical Insight: Gain a rare window into the traditional academic curriculum that shaped a generation of American masters under the influence of the Eakins-era PAFA framework.

Foundational Studies: Explore early technical exercises, including meticulous plaster cast and architectural ornament studies of leaves, hands, and feet.

Life Drawings: View advanced charcoal and graphite nude figure studies that demonstrate the rigorous anatomical training of the late 19th-century academy.

New Digital Resource: Index of Annual Exhibition Jurors (1882–1969)

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The Archives is happy to announce a new digital research tool: the Index of Annual Exhibition Jurors. This resource provides a centralized, searchable record of the jurors who shaped one of the most significant exhibition series in American art history.

From the inception of the juried system in the late 19th century through the final annual in 1969, the information provide valuable research details for researchers, curators, and historians tracing the evolution of American taste and institutional standards.

1942 Annual Exhibition Jurors (PC0104_1942_003)

Access the Resource: Index of Annual Exhibition Jurors

Key Research Data & Insights

The database allows for a granular analysis of PAFA’s institutional decision-making. Initial findings from the data reveal several significant trends:

  • Institutional Influences: The records document the recurring involvement of important Academy instructors, including Thomas Eakins, Cecilia Beaux, William Merritt Chase, Thomas Anshutz, Hugh Breckenridge, and Charles Grafly.
  • Specialized Jury Structures: The data tracks the professionalization of the jury system, ranging from “Hanging Juries” responsible for gallery aesthetics to specialized committees for Painting, Sculpture, and Architectural Drawings.
  • Geographic Reach: Documentation of regional juries in St. Louis, Chicago, Cleveland, and Indianapolis demonstrates the Academy’s historical role as a national arbiter of fine arts.
  • Gender and Professional Status: Researchers can track the increasing—though initially limited—inclusion of women in leadership and jury roles, providing a metric for shifting professional standards in the early 20th century.

Why This Matters for Scholarship

The Annual Exhibitions at PAFA brought over 100,000 works of art to the public. By making the names and roles of the jurors accessible, we provide the “missing link” in provenance and exhibition history research. Understanding who selected the art is as vital as knowing which art was shown.

This digital resource reduces the need for manual catalog searches, streamlining the workflow for provenance researchers and academic historians.

Reflecting on 2025: How We Connected with History and Art

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As we wrap up 2025, we’re taking a moment to look back at how you—our researchers, students, and curious visitors—interacted with the Academy’s collections over the past year.

These patterns are more than just numbers on a spreadsheet; they offer a window into our community’s evolving needs and help us map out our future. It’s important to note that these figures focus specifically on research and resource requests—things like deep dives into our archives, library services, and access to works of art not currently on public display.

2025: A Year of Purposeful Research

In 2024, the Academy recorded 923 total research requests. As of mid-December 2025, that number stands at 892. While this is a slight 3.4% dip, the story behind the data is one of resilience.

This minor decrease was expected as the Academy transitioned away from degree-granting programs, leading to a smaller student population this fall. However, demand remains remarkably robust.

The Breakdown of Requests:

  • External Requests (63%): 562 inquiries came from the research community.
  • Internal Requests (37%): 330 inquiries supported our faculty, staff, and students.

The Digital Frontier: Global Reach, Human Connection

While our physical halls have seen shifts, our digital presence is exploding. The Academy’s Digital Archives recorded over 100,000 unique human visitors this year!

A standout star of our digital offerings remains the Rediscovering John Rhoden Digital Archives, which drew over 3,100 unique visitors. We are honored to continue stewarding Rhoden’s incredible legacy for a global audience.

New to the Digital Collection this year:

We’ve added 2,475 new items across three collections:

  1. PAFA Course Catalogs: A journey through our institutional history.
  2. Blanche Dillaye Drawings: Exquisite works now available to all.
  3. Chester Springs Student Registration Cards: A treasure trove for genealogists and historians.

A “New Normal” for In-Person Visits

How you visit us is changing. While email remains the primary way researchers start their journey, we’ve seen a “hybrid” rhythm emerge.

  • The Archives are Booming: In-person use of the Archives surged by 122% (111 visitors).
  • The “Walk-In” Surprise: We saw an unexpected rise in walk-in service, largely driven by our new cohort of certificate students seeking hands-on support.
  • A Shift in Scale: Total in-person interactions dropped from 885 to 428. This 52% decline was anticipated following the school’s transition, but it has paved the way for more focused, scholarly engagement.

Top 3 Reasons People Use the Archives:

  1. Academic Research
  2. Curatorial Research
  3. Provenance Research

What These Shifts Mean for Our Future

The data tells us three important things:

  1. Demand is High: Projects like the “A Nation of Artists“ exhibition and our upcoming 220th Anniversary celebrations continue to drive intense interest in our holdings.
  2. Archives are Essential: The massive jump in archival research proves there is a deep hunger for primary-source materials.
  3. Intentionality Wins: Visitors are coming to us with more specific, deep-seated goals. Our digital archives are serving as a gateway, allowing researchers to do their “homework” online before arriving for a high-impact physical visit.

Looking Ahead

These insights are vital. They allow us to plan responsibly—ensuring we balance broad digital access with the specialized, high-touch care required for on-site research.

Whether you reached out via email, spent hours in the reading room, or browsed our catalogs from across the ocean: Thank you. Your curiosity is what brings these collections to life. We can’t wait to see what you discover in 2026!

Exciting New Acquisition: Blanche Dillaye’s Collection Now Digitized and Open for Research!

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We’re thrilled to announce the recent acquisition and digitization of a remarkable collection of works by American artist Blanche Dillaye, dating from circa 1928. This newly available archive features 38 exquisite pencil sketches and one reflective poem, offering a rare glimpse into Dillaye’s travels and artistic vision during the late 1920s.

From the cobbled streets of Looe and Dinan to the architectural charm of Moret and the serene landscapes of Lelant, Dillaye’s drawings capture the textures, moods, and quiet beauty of European towns and countryside with masterful detail. Her accompanying poem, Trees, adds a lyrical layer to the collection, echoing themes of nature, presence, and timelessness.

Cobbled Street in Dinan, France (MS.2025.02-44)

Now fully digitized, this collection is open to researchers, educators, and art enthusiasts. Whether you’re studying early 20th-century travel sketching, American women artists abroad, or simply drawn to the elegance of pencil work, Dillaye’s collection offers rich material for exploration.

We invite you to dive into this evocative body of work and discover the world through Blanche Dillaye’s eyes. https://pafaarchives.org/s/digital/item-set/175232

Newly Digitized Collection Available Online: Chester Springs Student Registration Cards

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We are thrilled to announce the completion of a major digitization project within the PAFA Archives: The Chester Springs Student Registration Cards. (https://pafaarchives.org/s/digital/page/chester-springs) For decades, these cards have been the primary—and often the only—proof of a student’s time spent at PAFA’s historic summer campus. Now, for the first time, this entire collection is available online, offering a searchable window into the lives of over 2,300 artists who studied in the rolling hills of Chester County.

A Legacy of “Open-Air” Art

In 1917, PAFA embraced the Impressionist-led “plein air” movement by opening the Academy Country School (popularly known as Chester Springs). Located about six miles from Phoenixville on a site steeped in history—from a pre-Revolutionary medicinal spa to a Revolutionary War hospital—the campus offered 100 acres of creative freedom.

Until its closure in 1952, the school was a vibrant village of art. A former hotel served as a dormitory, while barns and sheds were transformed into sun-drenched studios. Students spent six-week sessions painting landscapes, open-air figures, and still lifes, balanced by games of tennis, croquet, and swims in the local pools.

What the Collection Reveals

The archives has digitized every single student registration card from the Chester Springs records. This extensive list of 2,315 individual names provides vital documentation that can confirm:

  • Personal Details: Registered names and home addresses.
  • Academic History: Specific dates of attendance and courses taken.
  • Financial Records: Tuition and fee payments.
  • Special Distinctions: Notes on veteran status (GI Bill), scholarship awards, and even dormitory assignments.

Each entry allows you to click the student’s name to view the scan of their original index card. Because many artists returned year after year, these cards are displayed sequentially to show their growth and history with the school.

Start Your Research: Specialized Browse Lists

To help you navigate this vast collection, we have curated several specialized categories. Whether you are a genealogist, an art historian, or just curious about the Academy’s history, these links provide a great starting point:

A Collaborative Effort

This project was made possible by the dedicated work of our staff and PAFA students. We would like to extend our deepest thanks to the project contributors:

  • Sharon Yoon, Museum Collections Assistant (Project Lead)
  • Lily Kalinovsky, PAFA BFA (Lead Digitization Technician)
  • Nina Clifton, PAFA BFA
  • Victor Surbrook, PAFA BFA
  • Hoang Tran, Director of Library, Archives, & Collections

A Note on Accuracy: While we have made every effort to transcribe these names accurately, historical handwriting can be a challenge! If you believe a name has been transcribed incorrectly, please contact the Archives.

Newly Digitized Collection Available Online: The PAFA School Catalogs 

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Contributed by Sharon Yoon, Museum Collections Assistant 

The PAFA School Catalogs are valuable archival records that help provide insight into over 130 years of school operations. Historically known as “Circulars”, the school catalogs provided students and prospective students with information such as school policies, programs, scholarships, schedules, fees, prizes, and instructors. After 1908, the catalogs included illustrations of classes, work by students, and exhibitions of student work. Catalogs from the 1920s show many views of classes and grounds at the Chester Springs campus. From 1940, photographs of faculty and their work were prominently featured.  

The catalogs provide important details on the curriculum, the instructors, and the overall artistic training environment at the Academy, making the collection particularly useful to those interested in 19th and 20th century American Art education.  

Online view of 1891 Circular (https://pafaarchives.org/s/digital/item/165026#lg=1&slide=0)

For this digitization project, collections staff continued using a DSLR/copy stand setup that was outlined from our pilot project in April 2024 (Testing a new method to digitize archival collections) .  

As there were over 100 catalogs (and nearly 4,000 pages!) to digitize, using a flatbed scanner for this project would have been time-consuming and inefficient for staff. Moreover, since the text was the most important aspect of the records, we were less concerned about the overall “image quality”. However, as mentioned in the previous blog post, a large obstacle that presented itself during this project was post-processing. Each image needed to be individually rotated, cropped, and color corrected. Afterwards, all the pages had to be converted and combined into a PDF file. These files were then organized by year and run through OCR software, which recognizes and converts text within images to be machine readable. Finishing this step resulted in 118 digital reproductions of the Academy’s school catalogs that are now freely available online: https://pafaarchives.org/s/digital/item-set/29807  

For more information on the school’s history, please see “School History” here: https://pafaarchives.org/s/digital/page/historicalresources 

Newly Digitized Collection Available Online: The Morris Gallery photographs 

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Contributed by Sharon Yoon, Museum Collections Assistant 

We’re excited to announce that the digitization of the Morris Gallery photographs is complete. You can browse the images on PAFA’s Digital Archives: https://pafaarchives.org/s/digital/item-set/159894 or view our dedicated Morris Gallery page here: https://pafaarchives.org/s/digital/page/morrisgallery

In 1978, PAFA established the Morris Gallery on the ground level of the Furness-Hewitt building with the specific intent of exhibiting contemporary work by living artists with Philadelphia ties. The Gallery has housed numerous exhibitions by influential artists such as Robert Ryman, Vik Muniz, Nan Goldin, Laylah Ali, Virgil Marti, Alyson Shotz, and Emil Lukas, among many others.   

In addition, more conventional exhibitions focusing on art associated with the Academy or its traditions helped spread knowledge of the institution’s heritage and collections. As the program continually developed through the decades, it served as a showcase for a diverse array of artists from the Philadelphia region and beyond. 

In Our Academy, PAFA Newsletter 1978 (RG.05.04) 

Named after Harrison S. Morris (1856-1948), the turn-of-the-century secretary and managing director of the Academy from 1892 to 1905, the Gallery was located on the ground floor of the Furness-Hewitt building; the space was restored by Catharine Morris Wright, in memory of her father.  

To read more about Harrison S. Morris, please see: https://pafaarchives.org/s/digital/page/timeline 

The Morris Gallery assumed the function of the Peale House galleries, which had originally featured works by both European and American artists. The broad focus of the Peale House galleries shifted in the early 1970s to highlight the work of younger, talented but unrecognized artists with special consideration given to those living or working in Philadelphia. The transfer of these exhibitions to the newly renovated and larger space of the Morris Gallery consolidated the Academy’s exhibition programs to one building and reaffirmed the institution’s continuing interest in contemporary art. From its inaugural exhibition in March 1978 (John Dowell: Recent Paintings), the Gallery has been a space for art of a range of mediums: drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, performance, and site-specific installations. 

John Dowell: Recent Paintings (1978)

Steve Powers: The Magic Word (2007-08)

Woofy Bubbles performance (1984)

Lynn Denton: Sophia’s House— An Installation (1983) 

After a series of part-time curators, the Academy hired a full-time head for the Morris Gallery program and for other contemporary exhibitions. Judith E. Stein held this position from 1983 until 1994. She was advised by the Morris Gallery Committee, consisting of board members, local artists, and Academy staff. In 1994, the gallery space was converted to a video and orientation theater. As a result, exhibitions were held in the main galleries for two years. The program resumed exhibitions in the original ground floor location in 1998. Subsequent Morris Gallery and Contemporary Art curators have widened the scope of this program, and the Morris Gallery Committee has been discontinued. 

Odd Fellows: Marcel Dzama, Michael Dumontier, and Andrew Jeffrey Wright (2003),

Nannette Clark and Scott Rothstein: Recent Work (1994)

Charles Burns (1999) 

Toshiko Takaezu: Recent Work (1992)

Various Morris Gallery exhibition programs (RG.02.06.05) 

Throughout the years, over 1,000 photographs were taken of exhibitions held at the Morris Gallery between 1978 and 2009. All images have been digitized and organized by Museum staff and can now be viewed as part of the archive’s digital collection. Please also see the finding aid here: https://pafaarchives.org/PAFA-DigitalArchives/FindingAids/Photographs/PC.01.12_MorrisGallery.pdf

Testing a new method to digitize archival collections

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Since much of our archival collections are digitized by work study students or interns, the archives has always relied on flatbed scanners to perform the work. The most obvious benefits for the department include reducing user-errors as well as reducing technical training—digitizers would input the correct settings and basically scan the item. The major downside for scanning archival collections is the time required to scan at preservation level standards. Depending on the size of the record/object, the scan could take anywhere from one to three minutes per item. The minutes surely add up for very large collections.

PAFA is very familiar with using digital cameras to digitize collections—the museum has used cameras to digitize/document its permanent art collection and exhibitions since 2007!

Since we had a spare DSLR camera and copy stand, we thought it would be interesting to test out this new method. We selected a small collection to pilot this digitizing method. The work was completed by Annie Thompson (MFA), the archives’ long-term work-study student.

copystand setup

The pilot project allowed us to get a better sense of the speed and image quality to formulate a baseline to compare to the scanning workflow. While cultural institutions typically focus on creating high-quality reproductions, we kept our expectations low since the technical skills required to use a DSLR with all its settings properly was a huge learning curve.

The obvious benefit of using a camera to digitize collections is the sheer speed—it takes literally a few seconds to create a digital capture. One major hurdle we faced with this new approach was the post-processing time. All digital captures required straightening, cropping, and color adjustments. Some workstations in the archives were too slow to use some software, which made post-processing time consuming.

The pilot project selected the Miscellaneous Photographs collection of cartes-de-visite to photograph. Browse the collection here: https://pafaarchives.org/s/digital/item-set/121443

New Digitized Collections

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We are excited to announce that the archives has completed digitizing a few more photograph collections. The work was completed by Victoria Black (MFA), the archives’ winter work-study student.

The first collection consists of 679 photographs that document the various prizes that students compete for, typically at the end of the school year. These prizes are sometimes referred to as the Spring Scholarship and Prize Competitions.

You can browse the Student Prizes photograph collection here: https://pafaarchives.org/s/digital/item-set/119251

The second collection consists of 149 photographs that document the Edmund Stewardson Prize in Sculpture. The annual prize is competed for by students of the Academy. The subject for the competition is a full-length figure from life, in the round. 

You can browse the Edmund Stewardson Prize in Sculpture photographs here: https://pafaarchives.org/s/digital/item-set/121144

Digital Treasure Trove: Macro Photography

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Contribute by Zoe Smith, Project Museum Collections Assistant

PAFA’s collection primarily consists of paintings, works on paper, and sculpture. There are some more unique objects in the collection such as medals! PAFA has a discrete collection of medals that were sculpted for the many prizes it awarded artists during its Annual Exhibitions. These objects are much smaller in comparison to the typical objects that we have photographed for the past year. Because of their size, the photography workflow needed to change to obtain a preservation quality image. The project team added a lightbox and new Helicon Focus software. Together, these dramatically improved our capabilities and efficiency.

One of the benefits of using this workflow with the medium format camera is once the photograph is completed, you can zoom in on miniscule details, showcasing the precision and skills of the artist.

The miniatures in the collection are even smaller than the medals–smaller than a quarter! The focus stacking technique allows us to capture stunning details throughout each piece. Using this technology to photograph these objects brings a new life to each piece. This detail from a Temple Trust Fund Medal is less than 2 inches and shows an amazing rendering of PAFA.  

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