Number 6, 2012
This summer Glencairn Museum welcomes Julia Perratore (pictured in the Great Hall), who has been awarded a Curatorial Fellowship by the University of Pennsylvania. Julia will be working with Glencairn’s curator, Ed Gyllenhaal, on a variety of projects, including an exciting new exhibition this fall. When she is not working at Glencairn, Julia will be finishing up her dissertation on the Romanesque sculpture of Spain. In addition to Glencairn, four other area museums have been chosen to participate in this prestigious summer program: The Barnes Foundation, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Rosenbach Museum & Library, and The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
Read MoreNumber 5, 2012
A “Days of Creation” relief sculpture provides the background for a photograph of Raymond and Mildred Pitcairn. Here the Pitcairns admire a handwrought silver bowl presented to them as a Christmas present in 1951 by friends and members of the Bryn Athyn Church.
Read MoreNumber 4, 2012
Ken Leap, noted stained glass artist and Vice President and Education Chair of the American Glass Guild, has been leading workshops at Glencairn and researching the history of the stained glass windows created for Bryn Athyn Cathedral and Glencairn since 2006. During Glencairn Museum’s Sacred Arts Festival this weekend Leap will conduct glass painting workshops using authentic 12th-century techniques. Participants will apply glass pigment to designs adapted from Glencairn’s collection of medieval stained glass. The painted glass panels will then be fired in an ultra-fast kiln. No previous artistic experience is necessary to participate in these workshops.
Read MoreNumber 3, 2012
Raymond Pitcairn (1885–1966) is perhaps best remembered for building Bryn Athyn Cathedral, a renowned New Church place of worship, and Glencairn, a home for his family and art collections. Raymond’s interest in photography is less well known, but his extensive efforts in this medium are treasured by local historians.
Read MoreNumber 2, 2012
Religious people communicate stories that are sacred to them by means of oral tradition, scripture, and myth. In some cultures these stories are brought to life by re-enacting them in rituals that have transformative power. Glencairn Museum’s current exhibition, “Sacred Stories: Scripture, Myth, and Ritual,” presents religious rituals from a variety of cultures and time periods, carried out in order to recreate sacred stories for believers.
Read MoreNumber 1, 2012
On January 16, 1982, Glencairn, the former home of Raymond and Mildred Pitcairn, began a new chapter in its history, opening to the public as Glencairn Museum. In this photograph from the opening event, Margaret Wilde and Judith Smith, teachers from the Academy of the New Church Girls School, study an exhibit of Greek vases.
Read MoreNumber 12, 2011
The ornaments, Christmas village, and Nativity scene beneath this tree were gifted to Glencairn Museum in 2011 by Brother Bob Reinke, a Franciscan friar who is a pastoral associate at St. Ann’s Church in Hoboken, New Jersey. The decorations date from 1910 to 1955. Brother Bob, whose special love of Christmas has earned him the nickname “Brother Christmas,” joined the Brothers of the Poor of St. Francis in 1958. St. Francis is credited with popularizing the tradition of the Nativity scene, famously staging a live Nativity in the woods near Assisi, Italy, in 1223.
Read MoreNumber 11, 2011
This Neapolitan presepio is the work of the Giuseppe and Marco Ferrigno workshop, a fourth-generation family business in Naples, Italy. The faces, hands, lower legs, and feet of their figures are made of terracotta, which is then painted. Most of the figures have glass eyes. Other parts of the body are constructed with wire wrapped in cloth so that each figure can be posed. The clothing for each character is handmade in the 18th-century style, draped in San Leucio silks. The Ferrigno family began making presepi in Naples in 1836.
Read MoreNumber 9, 2011
This 1817 painting of Emanuel Swedenborg by noted Swedish portrait artist Carl Fredrik von Breda (1759–1818) was “rescued” from storage in 2003, cleaned by a conservator, and examined by an art historian. What was discovered in the process surprised everyone involved. (See below.) The von Breda portrait is currently on exhibit in Glencairn’s Upper Hall, where it will remain through the end of 2011. Photo: David Hershy, Lasting Expressions (Glencairn Museum number 06.OP.75)
Read MoreNumber 9 2011
This early photograph, reproduced from a glass negative in the Glencairn Museum Archives, shows Felice Sabatino working on a scale model of one of the pinnacles on the tower of Bryn Athyn Cathedral. Raymond Pitcairn, who oversaw the construction of Bryn Athyn Cathedral and Glencairn, explained how it came about that he began using architectural models: “My lack of training in draftsmanship and the reading of architectural drawings, I endeavored early in the work to offset through dealing with the designs in the form of scale and full-sized models” (Raymond Pitcairn. Letter to John T. Comes. 10 May 1920).
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