By the middle of the eighteenth century the “greene Country Towne” founded by William Penn in 1682 was bustling with commercial and social activity
A portrait takes shape (From our Archives)
In late October 1916 the American impressionist artist William Merritt Chase lay dying at his town house on East Fifteenth Street in Manhattan
The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s North Entrance Reopens
Visitors can now enter the museum from Kelly Drive, and peruse a new gift shop, an espresso bar, and education facilities
Philadelphia Stories
Introducing a new section in which curators discuss ongoing research projects and other collection notes. First up, Alexandra Kirtley of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Boston baroque
Upholstery for an early easy chair
A portrait takes shape
The artist Annie Traquair Lang begins to emerge from the shadow of her mentor and paramour, William Merritt Chase.
Handle with care #2
A new installment of our web-only column about the worlds of ceramics and glass
Women and Watercolor
How a medium changed the fortunes of female artists in America.
Disruptive influences in Philadelphia
This fall the Philadelphia Museum of Art presents two exhibitions about art and artistry that upended the cultural apple cart—albeit in vastly different times, places, ways, and contexts. September 3 saw the debut of Classical Splendor: Painted Furniture for a Grand Philadelphia House—a showcase for a suite of furnishings designed by the architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe and fabricated in …
Superfluity & Excess: Quaker Philadelphia falls for classical splendor
The fruits of extensive research on Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s 1808 house and furniture for William and Mary Waln begin with their impact on the aesthetic of the city itself