The Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (PMSIA), also referred to as the School of Applied Art, was a museum and teaching institution which later split into the Philadelphia Museum of Art and University of the Arts. It was chartered by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on February 26, 1876 in response to the Centennial International Exhibition held in Philadelphia that year.
Classes began during the fall of 1877, and were held in a building at 312 North Broad Street.[1] Shortly thereafter, classes were moved into the old Franklin Institute (now the Philadelphia History Museum) at 15 South 7th Street.[2]
In 1893, PMSIA acquired a complex of buildings at Broad & Pine, vacated by the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb when they moved to Germantown.
In 1964, following a series of name changes, the two institutions split: the museum became the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the school became the Philadelphia College of Art.[3] After further name changes the school has become the University of the Arts. University of the Arts has retained the property at 320 S. Broad Street.
The first president of PMSIA was Coleman Sellers II (1827–1907). The first principal of the school was Leslie W. Miller (1848–1931), who remained there for forty years, 1880 through 1920.
Notable alumni include Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller,[4] Charles Sheeler, Allan Randall Freelon, Samuel Yellin, Irving Penn, the Brothers Quay, Henry Clarence Pitz, Jerry Pinkney, Jayson Musson, Paul F. Keene Jr., Harold Knerr, Norman Carton, Wharton Esherick, Frederick Meyer, Julian Abele, Aliki Brandenberg[5] and Charles Barton Keen.