Shorts

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Shorts “Abstraction to Figuration: Selections of Contemporary Art from the Pincus Collection” is an exhibition of works of art drawn from the collection of David and Gerry Pincus currently on view at the Palmer Museum of Art on the University Park campus of the Pennsylvania State University. An exhi­bition of post-1945 American painting, sculpture, and photography, “Abstraction to...
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents Let’s Motor! Although Detroit has earned the title of “Motor City,” Pittsburgh was home to twenty automobile makers at the turn of the century, manufacturing such notable vehicles as the Penn 30 Touring Car, the Standard Model E Touring Car, the Keystone Six-Sixty, the Brush Model D Runabout, and the Artzberger Steam Surrey. Several of these automobiles attracted widespread...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Charles Sheeler in Doylestown: American Modernism and the Pennsylvania Tradition by Karen Lucic Allentown Art Museum, 1997 (120 pages, paper, $30.00) This remarkable book traces the development of artist Charles Sheeler’s modernist treatment of a highly familiar theme, the Bucks County barn. Charles Sheeler (1883-1965) was born in Philadelphia and as a young man lived in the Bucks County...
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Currents

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents The Circle is Unbroken “Jane Piper and Her Circle: Three Gen­erations of Painters in Philadelphia” will open at The State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, on Saturday November 4 [2000]. Featuring more than one hundred and twenty-five paintings and works on paper, the exhibition expands a traveling retrospective of works by the Philadelphia painter and teacher Jane Piper...
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18th Century Clock at Joseph Priestley House

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on 18th Century Clock at Joseph Priestley House An exuberantly styled marble mantle clock, decorated with ormolu and capped by a figural grouping of nesting birds, once belonged to scientist, theologian, and natural philosopher Joseph Priestley (1733-1804). According to the donor, the clock, made by Guy d’Amour, Paris, was given to Priestley by the Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834) in appreciation of his support of the French Revolution....
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Letters to the Editor

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Letters to the Editor Dreams Do Come True I enjoyed the update about The Dream Garden, the Maxfield Parrish mural installed at the Curtis Building in Philadelphia [see “Executive Director’s Message,” Fall 2001]. We can only hope that it will be saved for Philadelphians. I had heard that Parrish created another mural for the employee cafeteria, which was, I believe, located near the top of the...
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Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth By Randall M. Miller and William Pencak, editors Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002 (688 pages; cloth, $49.95; paper, $24.95) Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth is the first comprehensive history of the Keystone State in thirty years. Nearly a decade in the making, this weighty tome...
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Anchor by Stuart Davis

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Anchor by Stuart Davis “I am an American, born in Philadelphia of American stock. I studied art in America. I paint what I see in America, in other words, I paint the American scene,” so Stuart Davis (1894-1964) described himself and his work. He was raised in an environment that nurtured artistic leanings. His mother, Helen Stu­art Foulke, a sculptor, and his father, Edward Wyatt Davis, art editor for the...
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Fred Waring (1900-1984)

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Fred Waring (1900-1984) In her 1997 book, Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians, Virginia Waring declared her late husband “The Man Who Taught America How to Sing.” In his foreword to the book, Robert Shaw (1916-1999), world-famous choral conductor known for his classical and secular repertoire, wrote, “It is certain to me that tours of the Bach B Minor Mass and the Mozart Requiem would not have been...
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Trainloads of Goodwill and Gratitude

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Trainloads of Goodwill and Gratitude Pittsburghers, on the evening of Saturday, November 15, 1947, witnessed a ceremony at the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) Station that marked the beginning of an extraordinary occurrence: the journey of a Friendship Train across the Keystone State. By the time it reached Philadelphia, three days and seven stops later, the train hauled an additional fifty-one cavernous boxcars packed to capacity with...
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