Image: Philadelphia Museum of Art
‘Workshop of the World: Arts & Crafts in Philadelphia’ is on view through October 11 and marks the 150th anniversary year of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The exhibition examines creative innovations that emerged from a network of Philadelphia artists, architects, and manufacturers responding to the problems of urban industrialization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The exhibition features work by Samuel Yellin, Violet Oakley, and Henry Chapman Mercer, while also bringing to life lesser-known stories from Philadelphia’s artistic and industrial heritage.
A special feature of Arts and Crafts in the Philadelphia region was the development of craft-based communities outside the city in Bryn Athyn, New Hope, and Rose Valley in Pennsylvania, and Arden in Delaware. Each community made a distinctive contribution to the artistic and social transformations of the era. The exhibition is presented in the Main Building, Morgan, Korman, and Field Galleries 150–155, and is curated by David Barquist, Colin Fanning, and Elisabeth Agro.
The legacy of Arts and Crafts has continued to inspire Philadelphia artists up to the present, while debates about the value of the handmade, the integration of art into daily life, and the importance of beauty remain with us.
