Historical Society of Pennsylvania absorbs 150 years of UArts

As the institutions that would become UArts developed, they absorbed arts organizations to turn them into academic departments.

The Philadelphia Dance Academy, for example, was founded by Nadia Chilkovsky in 1944. In 1977, it was absorbed into the Philadelphia College of the Performing Arts. The PCPA then merged with the Philadelphia College of the Arts in 1985, which became UArts in 1987.

MacDonald said even the Philadelphia Orchestra is historically connected to UArts, whose music department’s roots went back to the city’s 19th-century music schools, the Philadelphia Musical Academy, founded in 1870, and the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music, founded in 1877. They were competitors until merging in 1962, and later became UArts’ music department.

“The Philadelphia Orchestra wasn’t founded until 1900,” MacDonald said. “A number of its members came from the Philadelphia Musical Academy and the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music, who had been around for 30 years before the orchestra was founded.“

“I mean, there’s just connections, connections, connections,” she said.

On Nov. 9, HSP will host an open house for former UArts students and faculty, as well as the general public, to show off selections from the archive. The event will include talks, including by Sara MacDonald, and performances.