Executive Director’s Message

Travel Notes – April 1996, Pittsburgh A series of conferences, meetings, and special events brings me to Pittsburgh for eight days this month and reconfirms the rich historical legacy of this city and region. Despite the enormous changes that have occurred in recent decades, there remains an abundance of physical reminders of the past. I begin my visit, as I always do, at the Forks of the...
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Currents

Journey in Time Prom the first interior scenes of Pennsbury Manor, in which light seems to caress each object-pewter bowl, chair, blanket chest-viewers of “Historic Pennsylvania: A Journey to America’s Past” will know this is masterful cinematography. As the camera moves a short distance from the mansion’s front door to the lush banks of the Delaware River, a dazzling...
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Currents

Kingdoms Come Edward Hicks (1780-1849), one of the best known of America’s folk painters, was a native and Lifelong resident of Bucks County, and a devoted Quaker preacher and missionary. His images of The Peaceable Kingdom, inspired by the Book of Isaiah’s prophetic vision of a peaceful world in which “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie with the...
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Currents

Wholly Warhol! Andy Warhol (1928-1987) was as well known for his commentary about contem­porary society (“In the future, everyone will be world famous for fifteen min­utes.”) as for his illustrations, art, writing, films, design, and publishing. Few, how­ever, realized the extent of his insatiable appetite for collecting until the auction house of Sotheby’s in New York...
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Out and About

Canis Major “I never met a pet I didn’t like,” pop icon Andy Warhol (1928–1987) — born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh — once wrote. The artist had many pets throughout his life, including his childhood dog, a lovable mutt named Lucy, more than a dozen Siamese cats, and his dachshunds Amos and Archie. His New York studio, the Silver Factory, had two resident felines, Black Lace and White Pussy, and...
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Bookshelf

Palace of Culture: Andrew Carnegie’s Museums and Library in Pittsburgh by Robert J. Gangewere published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011; 332 pages, cloth, $35.00 Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) is remembered as one of the world’s great philanthropists. As a boy, he witnessed the benevolence of Colonel James Anderson, a prosperous iron maker, who opened his personal library of several...
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