The Many Faces of Thomas Eakins

Thomas Eakins, one of the country’s foremost painters, was probably photographed more often – and in more ways­ – than any other nineteenth century American artist. In 1985, the Pennsylvania Acad­emy of the Fine Arts, founded in Philadelphia in 1805, ac­quired a large collection of photographs, manuscripts, and works of art relating to Thomas Eakins. Saved first by his wife,...
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“The Public Is Entitled to Know”: Fighting for the Public Memory of Henry Clay Frick

On Saturday, July 23, 1892, Russian immi­grant and New York anarchist Alexander Berkman burst into the office of Henry Clay Frick in down­town Pittsburgh, stabbed him three times, and shot him in the ear and neck. Frick fought back and, with his secretary’s assistance, eventually subdued his assailant. Although he had sustained several serious wounds to his legs and chest, Frick insisted...
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Against All Odds: Chevalier Jackson, Physician and Painter

After he had observed his seventieth birth­day, Dr. Chevalier Jackson described downtown Pittsburgh of 1865, his birthplace, as dark, gloomy, and dirty. His recollec­tions of 1888, the year he es­tablished a medical practice in an old tailor shop on Sixth Avenue, were particularly vivid. All winter long we lived as in a dark, cold, damp cellar. The sun was visible, on an average, four days in a...
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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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