The Pennsylvania Academy Of The Fine Arts: Influence From Transcendentalism

Influence from Transcendentalism Transcendentalism was the connection between philosophical ideas of Romanticism and Unitarianism. Transcendentalists encourage and promote the beauty of nature that was incorporated in architecture. There were three major concepts that influenced Furness and on his cultural independence of architecture. These were ‘Self-reliance’, ‘Anti-institutionalism’ and ‘Abolitionism’. Self-reliance refers to the trust in our own intuition and do not let other people’s opinion affect your thoughts. Anti-institutionalism is referring to that people should be innovative, and should not always look back to the past and history. Abolitionism refers the ending of slavery and setting the slaves free. These three concepts had greatly

The Academy was considered as a high Victorian Gothic building. The exterior of the Academy metaphorically expresses Furness’s ideal America: A well-organized multiculturalism. George E. Thomas notes that Furness’s Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts seems to be dominated by Hunt’s influence, but it also demonstrates that “Furness’s personal sense of proportion and ironic juxtaposition of forms made them his own. Orlowski asserts that there were two main reasons that the commission of the Academy eventually went to Furness and his partner George Hewitt (1841 – 1916). The first reason was that the Furness and his family had a strong connection with the committee members and the second reason was that since most of the Academy’s directors came from the middle class and were self-made “industrialists and capitalists” in Philadelphia, their norms and values were quite similar to that of Furness’s and