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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Bookshelf

African Americans in Pennsylvania: Shifting Historical Perspectives by Joe William Trotter Jr. and Eric Ledell Smith, editors The Penn State University Press and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1997 (519 pages; cloth, $45.00, paper, $19.95) Dedicated to “the African American people of Pennsylvania” and intended to honor “the historians who have diligently...
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Currents

Capturing the Light Showcasing the work of local turn-of-the-century photographers, an ongoing exhibit at the Erie History Center features more than two hundred and fifty photographs made between 1890 and 1900, along with related documents, artifacts, and equipment. Entitled “Capturing the Light: Turn of the Century Photographs,” the exhibition offers a glimpse of work, amusements,...
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