Image: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is turning attention to paintings that stop short of conventional completion with ‘To Be Continued...’, an exhibition focused on the expressive and conceptual possibilities of the unfinished canvas. The presentation is on view from August 27, 2026, through March 8, 2027, in the Frances M. Maguire Gallery of PAFA’s Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building in Philadelphia.
Drawn from PAFA’s permanent collection, the exhibition brings together unfinished paintings, canvas studies, oil sketches and other works that complicate traditional ideas of artistic finish. Rather than treating incompletion as absence or failure, the exhibition frames it as a visible record of experimentation, revision and material decision-making.
The installation has been conceived as a companion to ‘One After Another: Series and Studies’. Its selection examines how artists have negotiated the boundaries between making and unmaking, presenting works in which process remains legible rather than being concealed by a polished final surface. The exhibition description emphasizes the unfinished state as an active artistic condition, one that can carry expressive and conceptual meaning in its own right.
Featured artists include Arthur B. Carles, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, Eastman Johnson, Alex Katz and Violet Oakley. Among the works identified by PAFA is Cassatt’s ‘Baby on Mother’s Arm’ (1891), an oil painting on canvas bequeathed by Peter Borie to the museum in 2003. The work is listed as a featured artwork for the exhibition.
‘To Be Continued...’ is curated by Michelle Donnelly, PAFA’s Evelyn and Will Kaplan Curator of Twentieth Century Art and the John Rhoden Collection; Lea Stephenson, Kenneth R. Woodcock Curator of Historical American Art; and Leah Triplett, Curator of Contemporary Art. Their collaboration spans historical, modern and contemporary areas of the museum’s collection.
Founded in 1805, PAFA describes itself as the first museum and school of fine arts in the United States. Its museum is known for collections of American art, while its exhibitions and educational programs address the country’s artistic history through both historic and contemporary work. ‘To Be Continued...’ remains on view at the Frances M. Maguire Gallery, Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building, through March 8, 2027.
