Museums

221 results
Page 19
Camels travel a dirt path at the site of Gordion in central Turkey. Prominent in the distance is Tumulus MM, the burial mound of a Phrygian ruler who was probably father to King Midas. (Photo: 1958, Penn Museum Gordion Archive, G-3312)

The Golden Age of King Midas at Penn Museum

Archaeology fit for a king

King Midas was a real Phrygian ruler, and Penn archaeologists have been excavating his home, Gordion, since 1950. Some of the treasures unearthed are on display in a dazzling show at the Penn Museum.

Pamela J. Forsythe

Articles 4 minute read
Karen Verderame of the ANSP holds Indy, a Rose Hair tarantula. (Photo by Alaina Mabaso)

Tarantulas: Alive and Up Close at the Academy of Natural Sciences

Tarantulas on their own terms (or not)

A new exhibit on the spiders of our nightmares avoids some of the hairiest questions of nature and human beings. Is there a reason to value these beasts for their own sake?
Alaina Johns

Alaina Johns

Articles 5 minute read
Nine Ladies "dancing" at Cedar Grove in Fairmount Park. (Photo by the author)

Fairmount Park's historic mansions celebrate the season

Fairmount Park's mansions are a treasure trove of colonial architecture. Bedecked for the Christmas season, they are shown off to their best advantage.

Pamela J. Forsythe

Articles 4 minute read
Tenniel alice

Down the Rabbit Hole at the Rosenbach

Alice at 150: From spur-of-the-moment story to literary institution

Down the Rabbit Hole at the Rosenbach is the centerpiece exhibit of a Free Library-wide menu of talks, screenings, and tea parties that continues into next spring to celebrate the sesquicentennial of Alice in Wonderland.

Pamela J. Forsythe

Articles 4 minute read
Evoking the plane. (photo by the author)

The Flight 93 National Memorial

Reclaiming the site of a tragedy

The recently opened memorial to United Flight 93 is a glorious work of art that blends architectural structures and crafted landscape to create a contemplative place for visitors and a resting place for those who died.
Joanna Rotté

Joanna Rotté

Articles 5 minute read
Visitors to the Richard Tuttle show may benefit from donning “The Thinking Cap.” (Collection of the Fabric Workshop and Museum; photo by Will Brown.)

Richard Tuttle Retrospective at the Fabric Workshop and Museum

An enigma wrapped in a mystery

Visitors to the Fabric Workshop and Museum are always accompanied by a docent, which quickly makes sense, given the hopscotch layout and inscrutable installation. It helps to have a guide when you think you’re entering a nice little fabric museum and find yourself on the cutting edge of. . .something entirely different.

Pamela J. Forsythe

Articles 5 minute read

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Frank Kameny handing out leaflets to bystanders at the Reminder Day in 1966. (photo by Kay Tobin Lahusen, courtesy of National Constitution Center)

Speaking Out for Equality at the National Constitution Center

The quiet beginning of the gay rights movement

While the exhibit, covering a half century of gay rights progress, is impressive in its breadth, it’s lacking in depth, as if the archivists geared things primarily for an audience suffering from attention deficit disorder.
Gary L. Day

Gary L. Day

Articles 4 minute read
FDR's Hyde Park home, Springwood. (Photo by Ad Meskens via Creative Commons/Wikimedia)

FDR Presidential Library and Museum

At home with FDR

The qualities that FDR cultivated — fortitude, equanimity, compassion, and transcendence — to live a prodigiously fruitful life in spite of extreme debilitation were the qualities that enabled him to lead the nation out of the morass of the Great Depression and through the horrors of World War II.
Joanna Rotté

Joanna Rotté

Articles 5 minute read
“Clouds over Olana,” Frederic Edwin Church, 1872

Frederic Church's Olana

The art of landscape

I visited Olana on the first day of spring with chilly air, bare trees, snow on the ground, and ice in the Hudson. The house or villa or monument is a marvel, a fantasy, an unlikely but pleasing blend of styles — Persian, Moorish, Italian, and then some.
Joanna Rotté

Joanna Rotté

Articles 5 minute read
The original home of the Franklin Institute. (Photo by Willjay via Creative Commons/Wikimedia)

Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent

The museum of Philadelphia past

Visiting the Philadelphia History Museum is like climbing into the family attic: We don’t just see the past; it’s our past and probably our parents’ and grandparents’ as well.

Pamela J. Forsythe

Articles 4 minute read