Meet Andrea W. Lowery, PHMC’s New Executive Director

Posted by on Oct 25, 2019 in | Comments Off on Meet Andrea W. Lowery, PHMC’s New Executive Director In August 2017 the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission (PHMC) appointed Andrea W. Lowery as the new executive director of the agency. A preservationist with more than two decades of experience, Lowery succeeds James M. Vaughan, who retired in July 2017. Lowery has worked for PHMC since 2011, most recently serving as chief of the agency’s Division of Architecture and Preservation...
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Louis Kahn and Midcentury Modern Philadelphia

Posted by on May 8, 2015 in | Comments Off on Louis Kahn and Midcentury Modern Philadelphia “A city should be a place where a little boy walking through its streets can sense what he would someday like to be.” For Louis I. Kahn, arguably the most influential American architect of the late 20th century, that city was Philadelphia. Kahn spent nearly his entire life in Philadelphia, attending grade school through college, teaching, practicing and designing a number of...
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Montgomery County: Cultural Microcosm of the Commonwealth

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Montgomery County: Cultural Microcosm of the Commonwealth The third most populous county in Pennsylvania, with ap­proximately 480 square miles of rolling hills criss-crossed by rivers, streams and superhighways, Montgom­ery County is a microcosm of the Com­monwealth, a reflection of its cultural development. Pan of Philadelphia County until 1784, Montgomery Coun­ty served as a sanctuary for numerous ethnic and religious groups seeking the freedom...
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Violet Oakley, Lady Mural Painter

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Violet Oakley, Lady Mural Painter When Violet Oak­ley accepted the commission – and challenge – of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to decorate the State Capitol then under con­struction in Harrisburg, she announced that the subject of her mural series would be “The Romance of the Found­ing of the State.” In 1902, the ardent lady mural painter, then twenty-eight years old and the only one of her kind,...
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What Love Can Do: William Penn’s Holy Experiment in Education

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on What Love Can Do: William Penn’s Holy Experiment in Education The founder of Pennsyl­vania stands atop Philadelphia’s City Hall, seemingly sur­veying a “Holy Experiment” he nurtured out of the ideals of his Quaker faith. William Penn, the political theorist, is still remembered for his daring experiment in establishing a colony dedicated to pacifism, civil liberty and religious free­dom in a seventeenth century world conditioned by...
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents Chester County Centennial The Chester County Historical Society, West Chester, has marked its one hundredth anniversary by mounting an exhibition entitled “Presenting Your Past: A Centennial Celebration.” The exhibit highlights the extraordinary collections acquired by the historical society during its first century. Objects on view include significant pieces selected from the...
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents Beaux’s Art Pennsylvania native Cecilia Beaux (1855-1942) was one of the most important and successful portrait painters of her time (see “Artistic Ambitions: Cecilia Beaux in Philadelphia” by Tara Leigh Tappert in the winter 1996 edition). Among the significant commissions she completed in the early twentieth century was a portrait of President Theodore Roosevelt’s...
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents Moore Is More As early as 1915, acclaimed American poet Marianne Moore (1887-1972) had discovered the artists and writers who were shaping what was coming to be known as the “new art.” Comments contained in her notebooks indicate her early grasp of the significance of the New York Armory Show of 1913, a benchmark in the American Modernist movement. In several lengthy letters to her...
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents The Circle is Unbroken “Jane Piper and Her Circle: Three Gen­erations of Painters in Philadelphia” will open at The State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, on Saturday November 4 [2000]. Featuring more than one hundred and twenty-five paintings and works on paper, the exhibition expands a traveling retrospective of works by the Philadelphia painter and teacher Jane Piper...
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From the Peace Corps to Americorps: An Interview with Harris Wofford, Torchbearer for National Service

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on From the Peace Corps to Americorps: An Interview with Harris Wofford, Torchbearer for National Service In an inaugural address that has become a poignant reminder of the idealism of the mid-twentieth century, President John F. Kennedy chal­lenged Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” By throwing down the gauntet, he inspired a strong sense of national purpose and pride among the American people. His New Frontier programs...
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