Abstract

Fine Arts

The new Academy of Fine Arts was opened on Saturday week in Pennsylvania, and, as an enterprise perfected without Governmental aid, a machine for aesthetic culture set up by a few private persons, it must be accepted as unique. The building is at Broad and Cherry Streets, protected all round by open thoroughfares or land owned by the Academy, so that the problem of lighting is solved for all time. The construction is tasteful, in what is called the Lombard-Gothic style, an order which is able to combine realism and nature, study in the ornament with general suavity of line and proportion. An art-museum, as it demands light from the ceilings, cannot well be a lofty structure, and the side-aspect of this Academy, with its great depth, approaching three hundred feet, is a little shed-like.