New art by women prominent among 140 new PAFA acquisitions

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts announced a number of acquisitions Friday, adding substantially to its holdings of 20^th-century and contemporary art.

Through purchases and gifts, the academy added about 140 paintings, sculptures, photographs, and works on paper, including purchased works by Alexi Worth, Cassils, Stephanie Syjuco, and Tammy Rae Carland.

In addition, artist and collector Ofelia Garcia donated a collection of 27 works on paper. Chitra Ganesh, Hung Liu, Louise Nevelson, and Faith Ringgold are all represented in the gift.

Linda Lee Alter, who in 2010 donated to the academy nearly 500 works of art by women, has bestowed even more works, including two collections of etchings by Philadelphia artist and educator Rochelle Toner: Annie Crow Road, Chesapeake (n.d.) and Io Drinks Coffee (2004).

David Brigham, academy president and chief executive, noted that "Linda Lee Alter and Ofelia Garcia have long celebrated the work of female artists, who have had far fewer opportunities for visibility than their male counterparts."

The recent gifts, said Brigham, add "even greater depth and richness to our growing permanent collection."

The academy has also received a gift of 63 contemporary works on paper from the Experimental Printmaking Institute (EPI) at Lafayette College. The collection includes serigraphs by Richard Anuszkiewicz, Willie Cole, Najee Dorsey, Martha Jackson Jarvis, Alison Saar, and William T. Williams.

Many of these works will be on view in the exhibition A Collaborative Language: Selections From the Experimental Printmaking Institute (EPI), opening in August.

Among its recent academy purchases are works by a number of contemporary artists, including an edition of four large-scale Time Lapse (2011) C-print portraits by performance artist and bodybuilder Cassils, who is the subject of an academy exhibition, Melt/Carve/Forge: Embodied Sculptures by Cassils, on view through March 5.

The show is Cassils' first solo museum exhibition in the United States and features the artist's work in photography, video, sculpture, and performance.