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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Shorts

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Shorts “Tricks of the Trade: Apprenticeships in the Traditional Arts,” an exhibition ex­ploring the relationships between master artists and artisans and their apprentices will be shown at the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild, Pittsburgh, from Wednesday, January 10, through Friday, February 23, 1996. “Tricks of the Trade” documents more than one hundred part­nerships in a...
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents Hello, History! The former Chautauqua Lake Ice Company warehouse in Pittsburgh’s historic Strip District will come to life on Sunday, April 28 [1996], when it officially opens to the public as the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center. Renovated by the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, which has been protecting, preserving, and interpreting the history of the...
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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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Penn’s Treaty by Edward Hicks at State Museum of Pennsylvania

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Penn’s Treaty by Edward Hicks at State Museum of Pennsylvania Best known for his Peaceable Kingdom works of art, nineteenth-century American folk painter Edward Hicks (1780–1849) was a distinguished Society of Friends minister who ultimately became a Quaker icon for his narrative paintings. Born at Attleboro (now Langhorne) in Bucks County, he apprenticed at the age of thirteen with coach makers William and Henry Tomlinson for seven years, during which he...
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