Sights on Site: Philadelphia Sketch Club

Using the city as both classroom and canvas, Friends Select has partnered with the Philadelphia Sketch Club, America’s oldest club for artists, for our annual Sights on Site art study. Throughout the fall, students from all three divisions visited the Sketch Club to learn about the history of this 165-year-old artist hub and conduct observational studies of the art and architecture. Students examined portraits, crests, gargoyles, and carved chairs. They viewed a small oil painting exhibition as well as the sixteenth-annual Philustration exhibit, and they learned about influential Sketch Club members, such as N.C. Wyeth, before returning to their classrooms to make art inspired by what they saw and learned.

The Philadelphia Sketch Club is located at 235 S. Camac St., Philadelphia, PA 19107. Please be advised that Sights on Site will be on view in the second-floor gallery, and there is no elevator.

About Sights on Site

Now in its eighth year, Sights on Site is Friends Select’s annual, site-based art exhibition in which art students from all three divisions spend part of the school year visiting and studying the history and cultural role of a specific site in Philadelphia. Previous sites have included the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Parkway Central Library, the Philadelphia Rail Park, the Reading Terminal Market, the historic Arch Street Meeting House, and the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.