Currents

Let’s Motor! Although Detroit has earned the title of “Motor City,” Pittsburgh was home to twenty automobile makers at the turn of the century, manufacturing such notable vehicles as the Penn 30 Touring Car, the Standard Model E Touring Car, the Keystone Six-Sixty, the Brush Model D Runabout, and the Artzberger Steam Surrey. Several of these automobiles attracted widespread...
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Currents

Xanthus Smith It is Sunday, March 9, 1862. Smoke hangs thick in the air. The water is littered with debris. The air even tastes bitter. Cannon roar. Cries of men pierce the din. Ironclad titans, the vessels Monitor and the Merrimac, clash in one of the fiercest confrontations of the Civil War. This is the Battle of Hampton Roads. Today, museum-goers are able to revis­it the Battle of Hampton...
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Currents

When Worlds Collide History, politics, and art collide in a newly opened exhibition of works by renowned illustrator N.C. Wyeth (1882- 1945) and his grandson, James Wyeth (born 1946), at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Delaware County. One Nation: Patriots and Pirates Por­trayed by N.C. Wyeth and James Wyeth brings together eighty draw­ings and paintings that challenge viewers to...
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Current and Coming

Photography of Design Margaret Bourke­-White (1904-1971) is best remembered as the first staff photographer of Fortune magazine, the first female war correspondent, and the woman whose photographs made the covers of Life magazine famous. Before she began traveling throughout the world to record history in the making, Bourke-White was creating evocative abstract photographs of American industry...
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Bookshelf

Fountains of Philadelphia: A Guide By Jim McClelland Stackpole Books, 2005 (80 pages, paper, $14.95) Fountains of Philadelphia: A Guide, replete with eighty color photographs, several maps, and a bibliography, celebrates the artistry of the city’s famous – and not-so-famous – fountains, from the monumental Washington Monument on Eakins Oval in front of the Philadelphia Museum...
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Bookshelf

Pivotal Pennsylvania: Presidential Politics from FDR to the Twenty-First Century by G. Terry Madonna published by the Pennsylvania Historical Association, 2008; 126 pages, paper, $14.95 Pivotal Pennsylvania: Presidential Politics from FDR to the Twenty-First Century by G. Terry Madonna, one of Pennsylvania’s foremost political analysts, opens with an explanation of how the Democratic Party...
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Bookshelf

Almost a Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the 1980 Phillies by William C. Kashatus published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008; 382 pages, cloth, $34.95 Professional historian William C. Kashatus, in his introduction to Almost a Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the 1980 Phillies, reveals, “Writing this book has been a labor of love,” adding, “While the research allowed me to connect with...
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