Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

This guide to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia turns on a tiny plaster fig leaf still hanging from a cast statue's hip, ordered there in 1856 when the academy let women study its Greek and Roman casts only if every bare hip and thigh stayed covered. It follows Mary Cassatt and Eliza Haldeman, who defied the rule by modeling for each other after hours around 1860, and anatomy teacher Thomas Eakins, who in January 1886 pulled the loincloth off a male model in front of a mixed class to make a point about anatomy. Look for that same fig leaf still clinging to its plaster hip in the old exhibition halls.