To support a Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts’ (PAFA) convening of scholars and artists for input on a permanent collection reinstallation. The symposium engages in critical dialogues, looks at the project in the context of civic and national conversations about the founding of the US, and considers PAFA’s role in crafting narratives and myths of American identity in Philadelphia for almost 250 years. The goals of the permanent collection reinstallation are to present the collection in ways that help audiences reconsider the history of American art. New understandings can be elicited via the presentation of new visual and intellectual contexts aimed at unsettling what viewers think they know about historical art, and through expansion of the canon to include art that has been overlooked due to the materials or themes the artists addressed or the marginalized background of the artists themselves.