From the Executive Director

Posted by on Dec 17, 2019 in | Comments Off on From the Executive Director One of the things I love best about being executive director of the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission is sharing our commonwealth’s history with other Pennsylvanians. Although this letter is appearing in the winter issue of Pennsylvania Heritage, I am writing it on one of the hottest days of 2018. Earlier today, I had just come out of a series of meetings related to agency work...
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Windows on Pennsylvania’s Natural Places: Restoring Mammal Hall at The State Museum

Posted by on Nov 5, 2019 in | Comments Off on Windows on Pennsylvania’s Natural Places: Restoring Mammal Hall at The State Museum At The State Museum of Pennsylvania, the beavers are busier than ever repairing their dam. The mountain lion gazes more intently at its prey, advancing stealthily upon a slanted tree trunk. And you might imagine you feel a chill as you approach the freshly fallen snow in the bison’s nighttime scene. If you haven’t visited the museum’s third-floor Mammal Hall recently, you’ll now notice that the...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Nov 5, 2019 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter Forty some years ago, when I was in elementary school, I took a field trip with my science class to The State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg to see the dioramas of Pennsylvania’s wildlife in Mammal Hall. Walking around the dark, circular gallery, I peered through windows into the fascinating, realistic habitats of 13 mammals, from the common to the locally extinct, and was transported to...
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WPA Diorama at State Museum of Pennsylvania

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on WPA Diorama at State Museum of Pennsylvania Under the auspices of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, specifically the Works Progress Administration (WPA), approximately one million objects for use as visual aids in the classroom had been produced by 1939 by Pennsylvania’s Museum Extension Program (MEP). From 1935 to 1943, the MEP churned out costume plates, prints, lantern slides, architectural models, dioramas, puzzles, puppets,...
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