Friday Night Lounge

Friday Night Lounge transforms the Philadelphia Museum of Art into an evening destination with live music, gallery access, and drinks, offering a different perspective on one of America's great cultural institutions. The museum's origins trace to the 1876 Centennial Exposition, when Philadelphia hosted the nation's 100th birthday celebration in Fairmount Park. Nearly 10 million visitors experienced the world's fair, and afterward, the art gallery in Memorial Hall became the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art—founded to train craftsmen and elevate American design. As collections grew through major bequests, the museum required grander quarters, and in 1928 the current Greek Revival building opened atop Fairmount hill, designed collaboratively by Horace Trumbauer, Paul Cret, and the firm of Zantzinger, Borie, and Medary, with perspective drawings by Julian Abele, one of few opportunities for an African American architect at the time. The building's monumental steps, later immortalized in the Rocky films, lead to over 240,000 objects spanning 2,000 years of creative achievement. Friday evenings invite visitors to experience masterworks from Thomas Eakins to Marcel Duchamp alongside contemporary performances, extending the museum's founding democratic mission of bringing art to the public.