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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Reimagining William Penn: Janet de Coux and the Creation of the Pennsylvania Icon

Posted by on Jun 19, 2015 in | Comments Off on Reimagining William Penn: Janet de Coux and the Creation of the Pennsylvania Icon In 1944 Pennsylvania was celebrating the 300th anniversary of William Penn’s birthday. More than 2,580 celebrations were held across the commonwealth and the nation, and approximately 1,550 Pennsylvania schools each honored Penn with the planting and dedication of a hemlock, the state tree. These activities coincided with a movement on the part of several state officials and Pennsylvania...
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Curating a New Home for History: A Conversation with W. Fred Kinsey and Irwin Richman

Posted by on Jun 19, 2015 in | Comments Off on Curating a New Home for History: A Conversation with W. Fred Kinsey and Irwin Richman Established institutions rarely get the opportunity to hit the reset button. But that’s what happened with The State Museum of Pennsylvania in the early 1960s, after the long-anticipated William Penn Memorial Museum and Archives Building cleared its last bureaucratic hurdle. Ground was broken north of the State Capitol in Harrisburg, Dauphin County, in January 1962, and by summer Pennsylvania’s...
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Editor’s Letter

Posted by on Jun 19, 2015 in | Comments Off on Editor’s Letter Summer is a good time to connect with the past in Pennsylvania. The state features an abundance of museums, memorials and historic structures – including the sites on the Pennsylvania Trails of History – that are especially active in the summer, presenting and commemorating our history. Festivals and special events across the commonwealth also link us to our heritage with food,...
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A Home for History: S.K. Stevens and the Campaign for the William Penn Memorial Museum and Archives

Posted by on May 11, 2015 in | Comments Off on A Home for History: S.K. Stevens and the Campaign for the William Penn Memorial Museum and Archives by Curtis Miner On December 23, 1959, Dr. S.K. Stevens (1904-74) sent out a final, end-of-the-year message to members of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC). It came in the form of a brief, typewritten memo, informing them that Governor David L. Lawrence (1889-1966) had that morning signed a spending bill for the construction of a museum and archives building. “I think this...
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Executive Director’s Message

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Executive Director’s Message “How tall is the statue?” It’s a question visitors repeatedly ask guides and guards as they enter The State Museum of Pennsylvania’s Memorial Hall and encounter Janet de Coux’s towering bronze casting of a young William Penn (1644-1718) clasping a diminutive figure in his left hand. Museum staffers explain that the statue stands nearly eighteen feet high and weighs...
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A Centennial, A Celebration, A Cache of Treasures

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Centennial, A Celebration, A Cache of Treasures While Philadelphians in 1905 observed the centennial of the nation’s first art museum and school, the venerable Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Pittsburghers flocked to Harry Davis’s Nickelodeon, the first motion picture theater opened in the United States. In Harrisburg that year, on Tuesday, March 28, Governor Samuel W. Penny­packer (1843-1916) signed legislation creating...
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From the Editor

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on From the Editor With this issue, the staff and I are pleased to present the third feature in our series devoted to commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the New Deal in Pennsylvania, PHMC’s annual theme for 2008. For more than a decade, author David Lembeck — whose enthusiasm for the murals created for post offices during the New Deal is nothing less than infectious — has researched these works...
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