L. V. Kupper: Dirt-Street Town Photographer

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on L. V. Kupper: Dirt-Street Town Photographer In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, northwestern Pennsylvania was predominantly a region of dirt-street towns, each serving a neighboring farm popula­tion. As such, these communities were home to blacksmiths, harness makers. and their like – practical mechanics whose utilitarian skills were very much a pan of the agricultural landscape. And among these champions of the useful...
read more

The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts: An Ideal and a Symbol

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on 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...
read more

Gettysburg: The Killer Angels Comes to the Screen

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Gettysburg: The Killer Angels Comes to the Screen Writing about the Civil War in Specimen Days, poet Walt Whitman prophesied that the “real war will never get in the books.” Essentially, he issued a bold challenge to following generations of writers to capture the essence of battle – that cacophony of drama, death, smoke, stench, dauntless battle cries, and soldiers rising – in many cases, vainly – to fight again...
read more

Shorts

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Shorts The seventeenth annual Conference on Black History will be conducted by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission on Friday and Saturday, May 13-14, 1994, in Erie. The theme of this year’s event is “African Americans at Work in Pennsyl­vania.” For additional information, write: 1994 Conference on Black History, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, P. O. Box...
read more

Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents Famous Faces John W. Mosley (1907-1969), characterized by an admirer as “our most magnificent and beloved photographer,” was Philadelphia’s leading black photographer, whose images appeared in nearly every African American newspaper on the East Coast (see “His Eye Was On The Positive” by Richard D. Beards in the winter 1990 edition of Pennsylvania Heritage)....
read more

Currents

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Currents Officers and Gentlemen Brevet Major General John Frederick Hartranft and General Winfield Scott Hancock, of Montgomery County, and Brevet Brigadier-General Galusha Pennypacker and Private Samuel W. Pennypacker, of Chester County, were among the many local servicemen and heroes who served during the Civil War. Galusha Pennypacker (1842-1916), hero of Fort Fisher, off Cape Fear, North Carolina,...
read more

Shorts

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Shorts An intensive eight-day study tour examining the England of Pennsylvania founder William Penn (1644-1718) will be conducted under the auspices of the Pennsylvania Heritage Society in Octo­ber 2000. Participants, led by historian Larry E. Tise, will visit the Church of Ail Hallows Barking, where Penn was bap­tized and where, in 1999, Governor Tom Ridge and PHMC Chairman Janet S. Klein presented a...
read more

Current and Coming

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Current and Coming Steel Poetry Inspired by the various aspects of the steel industry in Bethlehem, Mildred T. Johnstone (1900-1988) created unusual canvas embroideries in the late 1940s and early 1950s. As the wife of Bethlehem Steel Corporation executive William H. Johnstone, she had the singular honor of being the first woman to tour the compa­ny’s steel mills. Although the mills have grown silent,...
read more

Two Hundred Years and Counting – The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Two Hundred Years and Counting – The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Two centuries ago, on Thursday, Decem­ber 26, 1805, seventy-one individuals gathered at the State House (now Independence Hall) to formally establish an art institution for Philadelphia. Meetings throughout the summer had led to the drafting of a charter, formation of a board of directors, and the collection of funds for a building. By the day after Christmas, a professional calligraph­er had...
read more

Edwin Austin Abbey, A Capital Artist

Posted by on Nov 24, 2013 in | Comments Off on Edwin Austin Abbey, A Capital Artist For those familiar with his majestic works of art – particularly his grand public murals – it seems improbable that Edwin Austin Abbey (1852–1911) had little formal training. He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for just one semester, where fellow students observed he rarely finished a drawing as assigned, preferring instead to produce sketches of his own design. Abbey was the...
read more