I’ve been looking back at my initial #stampfotheday posts, which began in April when I decided, on a whim, to see what would happen if I wrote a daily post about a stamp in my late father’s stamp collection. (I’ve been doing so because my daughter Rebecca has offered to build a website to host all the #stampoftheday posts – stay tuned for details.)

Those early posts generally were straightforward and short. Most of just describe one or more stamps that had a connection with the day. However, as the spring wore on, the posts started to get longer, mainly because there were unusual and important connections to events in the news.

Most notably, on May 30, five days after George Floyd’s horrible death, I wrote about a stamp, issued on May 30, 1951, to honor the last surviving members of the United Confederate Veterans. I took more space than usual to ask why the US had issued a stamp to honor people who fought against the country and the power to enslave others. And in doing so, I learned and wrote about how the United Confederate Veterans played a central role in building up the racists mythologies and systems we’re trying to unravel today. Indeed, they were major backers behind many of the controversial statues of Confederate leaders that were the subject of many protests.

Over the next three days, I wrote about the creation of the Kansas Territory (and the fights over whether slavery would be allowed in that territory), the admission to the union of Kentucky (which was a slave state); and the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant (who tried but ultimately couldn’t protect the rights and lives of the people who had been freed from slavery after the Civil War).
Those post made me realize that stamps can provide a unique and important perspective on a variety of current issues. In addition, I learned that can sometimes help me make sense of my own personal history.

And so my posts have gotten steadily longer and more convoluted. But sometimes, the stamps lend themselves to my initial treatment. Today is one of those days (except I’ve already gone on for a bit about something else).

Now, onto to the stamp at hand. On December 26, 1805, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts—the first and oldest art museum and art school in the country – was founded. In January 1955, the U.S Post Office Department honored that sesquicentennial by issuing a 3-cent stamp that is based on “The Artist in His Museum,” a self-portrait by Charles Wilson Peale, one of the museum’s co-founders. (Interestingly, two of Peale’s paintings of George Washington were the basis of stamps featured in my December 23 #stampoftheday post.)

Peale, who collected many of the museum’s exhibits, included some of them in the painting shown on the stamp. These include a wild turkey ready to be preserved and a great mastodon bone, to mark one of the museum’s greatest achievements, rebuilding a mastodon skeleton.

The academy, however, was to be – and is – far more than a curiosity shop. The academy’s founders, who included several leading artists and businessmen, stated in the charter they sought to “promote the cultivation of the Fine Arts, in the United States of America, by…exciting the efforts of artists, gradually to unfold, enlighten, and invigorate the talents of our Countrymen.”
Sculptor Benjamin West, who was one of those founders, also believed the academy could make Philadelphia “as much celebrated for her galleries of paintings…as she is distinguished by the virtues of her people,” which, in turn, would help people see the city as “the Athens of the Western World in all that can give polish to the human mind.”

I don’t think the academy or the city have lived up to West’s hopes. However, the academy, clearly has had an important impact. The school’s alumni, for example, include Mary Cassatt, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Thomas Eakins, William Glackens, Barkley L. Hendricks, Violet Oakley, Louis Kahn, David Lynch, and Henry Ossawa Tanner. In 2005, it received the National Medal of Arts recognizing it as a leader in fine arts education.

The museum is internationally known for its collections of 19th- and 20th-century American paintings, sculptures, and works on paper. Moreover, according to a 2019 study, the academy has been acquiring artwork by women at a rate five times faster than the national average. And the academy’s main building, which opened in 1876, is considered of the most magnificent Victorian buildings in the country.

I probably have some sort of personal connection to the academy as well because it’s likely that my father, who grew up in Philadelphia, spent some time at the academy. But I don’t know for sure because I don’t recall hearing him talk about it. (I do have some vague memories of him talking about the famed pendulum at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.) But for the most part, he never took us back to visit his Philadelphia haunts or to spend much time with his extended family. So that part of his life will, sadly, remain something of a mystery to me.

However, when we all can move around again, I’ll be sure to put the academy on my itinerary if and when I get to Philadelphia.

Be well, stay safe, fight for justice, and work for peace.