Untitled, 1981, reflecting the idiosyncratic aesthetic of the short-lived Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), stands out in the “Private Hands” exhibition. Collection of Aimee and Robert Lehrman, Wash-ington

Today, the school boasts what Dean Jeffrey Carr describes as”one of the largest programs in the country devoted exclusively tothe traditional fine art studio disciplines of painting, drawing,printmaking and sculpture.” The 300 full-time students are diversein styles and approaches to creating art. “We view art as avocation, almost as a calling,” says Carr, adding that “the academyis about making art as a way of life.”

Since 1876 the school and museum have been housed in what is surely one of the most beautiful museums in the world. Designed by Frank Furness and George Hewitt, it is a decorative tour de force, outside and inside. This year’s expansion into the Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building across the street from the original museum has added significant gallery and teaching spaces.

Many treasures from the museum’s important permanent collection have been highlighted during 2005. Peale’s iconic “The Artist in his Museum,” 1822, shows the academy’s patron saint raising a curtain to reveal the wonders of his first museum, then located in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. A genuine blockbuster is “Death on a Pale Horse,” 1817, painted by the academy’s first honorary member, Benjamin West, a mammoth depiction of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse that was purchased by mortgaging the museum’s building and then was heroically saved during a devastating fire in the 1840s. There are several famous portraits of Washington in the collection, including Gilbert Stuart’s “Lansdowne Portrait” of 1796.

Members of the prolific Peale family are generously represented in the holdings, as are such early titans as John Singleton Copley, Washington Allston, Thomas Sully and Edward Hicks. The manner in which John Vanderlyn, the first American artist to study in France, put his training to good use is reflected in his enduringly sensuous nude, “Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos,” 1809-1814. John Neagle’s “Pat Lyon at the Forge,” 1829, is a commanding portrait of that blacksmith at work, while genre pioneer William Sidney Mount’s “The Painter’s Triumph,” 1838, shows an awestruck farmer wowed by an artist’s creation.

The Hudson River School is well represented, as are Nineteenth Century sculptors ranging from Powers and Crawford to Ward and Saint-Gaudens. Fine paintings by instructors Chase and Beaux are arrayed near works by accomplished academy school alumni like Cassatt, Harnett and Parrish. Eakins, who influenced a generation of art teachers but was eventually dismissed from his position, has a number of works in the collection, highlighted by his warm and insightful portrait of a white-bearded Walt Whitman of 1888 and the dignified “The Cello Player” of 1896.

The permanent collection also includes familiar paintings by such perennial favorites as Inness, Homer (“Fox Hunt,” 1893), Twachtman, Weir and Hassam. George Bellows’s powerful “North River,” 1908, contrasts with the delicate beauty of Philip Leslie Hale’s “The Crimson Rambler,” painted about the same year. Abstract works by Marsden Hartley and Carles vie for attention with such realist masters as Henri, Luks, Glackens, Sloan, Hopper, Sheeler and O’Keeffe. American scene painters Benton and Wood are represented, as are works by Pennsylvania natives as diverse as Stuart Davis and Andrew Wyeth. Among the African American standouts are Pippin, Bearden, Lawrence, Catlett and Ringgold.

Albert Bierstadt’s golden-hued “Wind River Wyoming,” circa 1870, is characteristic of the German-born painter’s romanticized view of the American West. Courtesy of The Anschutz Collection.

More abstract painters, such as Rothko, Motherwell andDiebenkorn, have works in the collection, as do sculptors likeAlexander Calder and Louise Nevelson. Notable living artists in thepermanent collection include Philip Pearlstein, Alex Katz and FrankStella. Former student, now faculty member Desiderio’s huge”Procreator,” 2002, is among the more recent additions to thisimpressive museum trove.

Concluding a year of interesting special shows, “In Private Hands: 200 Years of American Art,” on view through January 8, is in the words of academy president and director Derek A. Gillman, “a truly magical exhibition representing America’s huge achievement in the visual arts.” The 100 works from 54 private collections, curated by Nicolai Cikovsky, the esteemed retired curator of American and British paintings at the National Gallery of Art, and Lynn Marsden-Atlass, the academy’s senior curator, include a number of the finest works of American art ever created. It is certainly one of the most impressive assemblages of major works from private collections ever presented in an American museum. A valuable, scholarly catalog accompanies the exhibition.

About one third of the works in the “In Private Hands” show date from the Nineteenth Century. Among the earliest is Hudson River School founder Thomas Cole’s idyllic “The Falls of Kaaterskill,” 1826. “Cole invented American landscape painting,” Cikovsky writes in the catalog, “and in so doing, he virtually invented American painting.” Other standout early works include luminist Fitz Hugh Lane’s evocative “Boston Harbor at Sunset,” 1853, and tonalist George Inness’s “Delaware Water Gap,” circa 1857. John La Farge’s “The Last Waterlilies,” 1862, is an exquisite reminder of the gifts of that multitalented artist, as are two enduringly appealing views of Italy by John Singer Sargent.

The greatest of them all, Winslow Homer, is represented by two early watercolors highlighted by the gloriously hued “Gloucester Sunset,” 1880, and a strong late oil, “Cape Trinity, Saguenay River Moonlight,” 1904, inspired by a fishing expedition in Quebec. Of special interest to some visitors will be works by two masters of art of the American West: Albert Bierstadt’s golden view of “Wind River Wyoming,” circa 1870, and Frederic Remington’s realistically romantic “Return of a Blackfoot War Party,” circa 1887.

As befits the academy’s recent focus, two-thirds of the works in “In Private Hands” date to the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. Among the turn-of-the-century Ashcan School painters are Bellows, Glackens, Luks and John Sloan, whose charming “Gray and Brass,” 1907, evokes memories of the early days of the automobile. There are early experiments in abstraction, such as Max Weber’s energetic “New York.” 1913, and works by O’Keeffe and Marin. Paintings by Paul Cadmus, Lawrence (“Christmas in Harlem,” 1937) and Benton reflect the vicissitudes of American life in the 1930s and 1940s.

The triumph of the Abstract Expressionists is reflected in several Jackson Pollock works, including “Number 23, 1949,” which Robert Rosenblum calls in his catalog essay “a perfect example of the artist’s innovative techniques of pouring and splattering paint to create a new abstract language of impulse and energy set loose….” Also displayed are works by such avant-garde titans as de Kooning, Hofmann and Rothko. Several stars of Pop Art weigh in with characteristic works, including Andy Warhol’s multiple likenesses of Jacquelyn Kennedy, “Sixteen Jackies,” 1964; Robert Rauschenberg’s complex “Drawing III for 700th Birthday of Dante (A) and (B),” 1965, and Roy Lichtenstein’s bold and colorful “Cape Cod Still Life II,” 1973.

Gifted in creating everything from watercolors to stained-glass images, John LaFarge also excelled in oil painting as evidenced by “The Last Waterlilies,” 1862. Private collection, courtesy of Thomas Colville Fine Art.

Postmodern and contemporary works by the likes of Jean-MichelBasquiat, Brice Marden and Matthew Ritchie suggest diversity ofexpression at the end of the last century and starting into theTwenty-First Century.

Organizers Cikovsky and Marsden-Atlass have done a marvelous job of assembling diverse, topnotch works for this rewarding exhibition. As Pennsylvania Academy head Gillman says, “‘In Private Hands’ celebrates the legacy of American art and is a perfect complement to the academy’s 200th anniversary celebration.”

Also on view (through November 20) are a number of prints of Brazilian-born Vik Muniz’s illusionist drawings and sculptures, including a depiction of Charles Willson Peale, and (through January 8) Ellen Harvey’s site-specific installation of mirrors that echo the academy’s architecture and traditions.

The current exhibitions offer fresh reasons to visit this beautiful and historic museum and to applaud its proud legacy, while anticipating its exciting future. An enduring fusion of the past, present and future, this venerable institution is poised to carry on its mission to develop American artists and to enhance appreciation for their work, while continuing its contributions to the national and international art worlds.

The exhibition catalog, fully illustrated and with essays by Cikovsky, Marsden-Atlass and Robert Rosenblum of New York University, is both readable and informative.

For those interested in the history of the academy, its anniversary publication, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts: 200 Years of Excellence, 1805-2005 is available for $80 (hardcover) and $60 (softcover). The 312-page book contains essays covering the institution’s history (by this author), its buildings, school, museum holdings, and a timeline of important events. Short essays accompany 220 color reproductions of treasures from the permanent collection.

The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is at the corner of Broad and Cherry Streets in the heart of the city. For information, 215-972-7600 or www.pafa.org.