In Conjunction

摘要

Philadelphia's Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts is an early modern building completed in 1880 that gestures toward an idea of American multiculturalism through the combination of a wide range of architectural styles. Indeed, architects Frank Furness and George Hewitt embraced difference and diversity in explicating the adjacency of aesthetic values in the building's design. For more than a century, Furness's work-and his tran-scendentalist and abolitionist ideals-have influenced other prominent American architects, including Louis Sullivan and Robert Venturi. As Jeffrey A. Cohen notes in Styles and Motives in the Architecture of Frank Furness, "It is difficult to judge whether [Furness] consciously aimed to create a proprietary, self-referential vocabulary-jibed at as the 'Furnessque'-or whether this was secondary to him, a result of his steadfastness and fundamental views not widely held." By articulating Furness's influence, we can trace how his ideas of style, complexity, and criticism impacted the canon and the role that the architect plays in shaping it.