On April 30 the government of Kenya staged the largest ivory burn in history.
Philly Eats, High and Low
“I once spent a year in Philadelphia. I think it was on a Sunday,” W. C. Fields said sometime in the early 1940s. Fields, born in Philadelphia and tied with fellow native Man Ray for recognition as Philadelphia’s merriest Dada prankster, was right about the city back then, but this is now. Philadelphia is booming, and so are its restaurants. …
The Schwarz Gallery
by Gregory Cerio The Private Office of George William Childs at the Philadelphia Public Ledger, Philadelphia by George Bacon Wood Jr. (1832–1910), 1877. Oil on canvas, 27 by 38 inches. Private collection; all photographs courtesy of the Schwarz Gallery, Philadelphia. Specializing in American and European paintings of the eighteenth through twentieth centuries and best known for its expertise 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
A divine passion
Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun was the most sought-after portraitist of the ancien régime.
Sites along the Schuylkill
The story goes that the Dutch, sailing up the Delaware River, missed the marshy entrance to its largest tributary. Upon discovering their mistake, the Europeans dubbed the waterway the Schuyl Kill, or “Hidden River.” The Dutch were soon squeezed out of Pennsylvania by the Swedes and then the English, but the name somehow stuck, showing up as the “Scool Kill …
Enlightenment in Black and White
Nestled along the luxuriant cliff-side banks of the Mekong River, Luang Prabang, the former royal capital of Laos, is a city of stately palaces, villas, and bungalows left from the French colonial period, as well as many golden temples (vats) alive with the Buddhist culture of their attendant monasteries. While its local textile industry is renowned, what seduces the visitor …
The Fabric Workshop and Museum
At the moment, Philadelphia’s Fabric Workshop and Museum has a national reputation though it is less well known around town. In one respect it is a little like its founder, the late Marion “Kippy” Boulton Stroud, who was both bold (and bossy) but surprisingly self-effacing. Unlike the Rosenbach or the Barnes, to name two of the city’s other idiosyncratic museums, …
Mount Vernon Comes to Freeman’s
Despite its dainty name the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association is not an outfit to be trifled with. Nor is it one to do anything by half measures. Founded in 1858, it is comprised of twenty-seven members, each representing a state in the union at that time, who approached and still approach the project of preserving George Washington’s estate with an almost …
Editor’s Letter
The American Revolution has a hit on its hands with Hamilton, the hip-hop musical currently lighting up Broadway. “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story,” the cast sings in its sly retooling of our republic as the story of Alexander Hamilton’s rise through the imperial city of New York (“History is happening in Manhattan and we just happen/to be in …