The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts: An Ideal and a Symbol

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts: An Ideal and a Symbol By 1805, the year the Pennsylvania Acad­emy of the Fine Arts was founded, Phila­delphia had achieved a large measure of political, social and economic stability. It had been the nation’s capital and contin­ued to thrive as a center of banking and commerce. The largest city in the United States at the opening of the nineteenth century, it was arguably the center of culture, with Boston its...
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A Special Place for Photography

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Special Place for Photography Edward L. Wilson wanted photography to have a special place at the Centennial Exhibition. Smartly dressed, the publisher of the nationally­-read Philadelphia Photographer stood out from the typically rumpled and chemical-stained lensman. But his enthusiastic promotion caused him to stand out even more. Wilson nudged his colleagues toward professionalism and toward his vision of a productive,...
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You Can Go Home Again: An Interview with James A. Michener

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on You Can Go Home Again: An Interview with James A. Michener James A Michener is a man of diverse talents, boundless energy, and seemingly countless interests. He is naturally inquisitive, passionately curious. He is fascinated by the world around him and the people who inhabit it. He collects stories about far-away places as effortlessly as one gathers seashells on the shoreline in summer. He is the Ultimate Con­noisseur. Of people. Of places. Of things....
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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 To Be Modern In 1921, Philadelphia’s venerable Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts mounted the first comprehensive display of American modernist works in an American museum with the ground­breaking “Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings Showing the Later Tendencies in Art.” The exhibition’s selection com­mittee, composed of such “moderns” as Thomas Hart...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Illustrating an Anthracite Era: The Photographic Legacy of John Horgan Jr. by Gwendoline E. Percival and Chester J. Kulesa Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and Anthracite Heritage Museum and Iron Furnaces Associates, 1995 (73 pages, paper, $9.95) Exemplifying the breadth and depth of more than twenty thousand images made by a single photographer of the anthracite region, the...
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Documenting Everyday Life in Pennsylvania During the Great Depression and World War II

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Documenting Everyday Life in Pennsylvania During the Great Depression and World War II The documentary photography project initiated by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in 1935 was an unprecedented experiment in the history of photography, and it remains a monument to a collective effort that will never be equaled-the recording of an entire nation, from the city and town to the farm, from the home to the factory, from work to leisure, from school to church, from the baseball...
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Two Hundred Years and Counting – The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Two Hundred Years and Counting – The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Two centuries ago, on Thursday, Decem­ber 26, 1805, seventy-one individuals gathered at the State House (now Independence Hall) to formally establish an art institution for Philadelphia. Meetings throughout the summer had led to the drafting of a charter, formation of a board of directors, and the collection of funds for a building. By the day after Christmas, a professional calligraph­er had...
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Pennsylvania Heritage Recommends

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania Heritage Recommends A Glorious Enterprise: The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and the Making of American Science The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, founded in 1812, is the oldest natural history museum in the Western Hemisphere. Early expeditions organized by the academy were of central importance to the exploration of America’s vast western wilderness, and the plant and animal specimens...
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