Notes and Reviews 
T HE Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine 
Arts has taken an important step in estab¬ 
lishing a course in architectural design which 
will supplement those in painting and 
sculpture it has maintained ever since its 
foundation, nearly one hundred years ago. 
Singularly enough, though for many years it 
hung architectural drawings at its annual 
exhibition, the Academy has not, until the 
present time, included architecture among its 
courses. Nor has it now established a course 
which in any way parellels the curriculum 
of the existing schools. Its work will be 
post-graduate. The opportunities it offers 
are intended for those who have passed 
with credit through a technical school 
or who have shown marked ability in 
offices. It is assumed that all who take 
the course will be regularly employed as 
draughtsmen, and, therefore, the hours for 
work at the school are those of the late 
afternoon and evening. 
Few draughtsmen have any opportunity 
to pursue the study of architecture as a fine 
art ; that is to say, the study of design, 
disassociated as far as may be, from 
considerations which hamper artistic ex¬ 
pression. It is precisely to give men, 
able to seize it, a chance to work upon 
problems devised specially to afford scope 
for the exercise of their artistic ability 
that the Academy has opened its new 
course. There will be no teaching of 
the usual sort, no lectures, no recitations. 
The programs will be framed by Messrs. 
Walter Cope, Wilson Eyre, Frank Miles 
Day and Edgar V. Seeler, who have been 
added to the faculty of the Academy, and 
who from time to time will criticise the work 
of the students as it progresses. During 
the year four problems will be assigned, and 
to each six weeks will be given. A distin¬ 
guishing feature of the Academy’s course is 
the importance which it attaches to drawing 
or modelling from the antique or the 
life, as a part of an architect’s training. 
In the interval of three weeks between 
the conclusion of one architectural prob¬ 
lem and the beginning of the next, 
students will be required to draw or paint 
or model in the Academy under the instruc¬ 
tion of Messrs. Breckenridge, Anshutz, 
Grafly or Chase, and in company with other 
students who are devoting themselves chiefly 
to such work. 
Those who succeed in passing the en¬ 
trance examinations will be so placed as to 
exercise their powers of design and develop 
their artistic faculties under favorable cir¬ 
cumstances, and their progress should be 
rapid, even had they no incentive other 
than that of such exercise or develop¬ 
ment. But it happens that through the 
recent enrichment of the Academy by 
the Cresson legacies, the 
able to offer studentships 
usual value. In the course 
the student who each year 
Directors are 
of quite un¬ 
in architecture, 
quits himself 
in the most creditable way, not only in 
architectural design but in drawing and 
modelling, is to receive a studentship of one 
thousand dollars per annum, tenable for two 
years with a certainty of a third year if the 
work of the first and second be well done. 
Thus it will be possible for the holder of the 
Studentship not only to travel in Fmrope 
with a view to seeing the best work both old 
and new, but to realize what seems to be the 
hope of almost every ambitious young 
draughtsman in America, the hope of study¬ 
ing for several years at the Ecole des Beaux 
Arts before entering upon the practise of his 
profession. 
The income of the Cresson fund is so 
considerable that the Academy has offered 
in addition to the Scholarship in Architecture 
four in painting and sculpture, all five being 
of the same value and tenure. Such an 
endowment, enabling students to carry their 
studies beyond the point at which they 
ordinarily leave a well-equipped academy, is 
quite unique. In value and importance these 
studentships are probably exceeded only by 
the celebrated Roman prizes of the Ecole 
des Beaux Arts. Whether any connection 
between the Cresson studentships and the 
now well established American Academy 
in Rome can or should be effected is a 
matter to which the directors of the two 
academies will doubtless give prompt and 
careful consideration. In any event the 
Pennsylvania Academy and its students are 
greatly to be congratulated upon the splendid 
opportunities which the munificent bene¬ 
factions of Emlen Cresson and his wife have 
placed in their way. 
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