Number 2, 2014
Raymond Pitcairn is remembered primarily for two architectural achievements: Bryn Athyn Cathedral, and Glencairn, the Bryn Athyn home he built for his family and art collection. One of Pitcairn’s other creative outlets is less well known—his lifelong interest in photography. This hobby is the focus of Glencairn Museum’s current exhibition, Behind the Lens: Raymond Pitcairn and Photography (through November 15, 2014). The Glencairn Museum Archives maintains a large collection of photographic prints and negatives, including thousands of glass negatives. The images in the exhibition have been drawn from this remarkable resource.
Read MoreNumber 1, 2014
Crispin Paine, Honorary Lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London (UK), is a leading authority on the interpretation of religious objects in museums. His new book, Religious Objects in Museums: Private Lives and Public Duties, uses examples from around the world to examine how religious objects are “transformed” when they enter museums—how they are interpreted by curators, and how visitors respond to them. Last fall, after lecturing at Yale University, Crispin traveled to Bryn Athyn to spend several days at Glencairn Museum, where he consulted with museum staff and addressed a group of Bryn Athyn College students and faculty. Glencairn staff accompanied Crispin while he toured several local museums, including the National Christmas Center & Museum and the Biblical Tabernacle Reproduction at the Mennonite Information Center. In this essay, he shares his thoughts about museums of world religion, faith museums, and religion in secular museums.
Read MoreNumber 12, 2013
R. Michael Palan and Karen Loccisano, a husband-and-wife team of professional artists from New York, have spent the last two years creating their own interpretation of an Italian Presepio (Nativity scene). It was completed just two weeks ago, and is having its first public showing at Glencairn’s World Nativities exhibition.
Read MoreNumber 11, 2013
This year for Glencairn’s annual exhibition, Follow the Star: World Nativities, the Museum has exchanged several dozen crèches in our permanent holdings with the famous collection of Mepkin Abbey, a community of Roman Catholic Trappist monks in South Carolina. The 15-piece, hammered-copper Nativity pictured in this photograph was created over a period of several years by Vermont artist Mary Eldredge for the abbey’s annual Crèche Festival. According to the artist, “I have tried to create an experience of joy and wonder and awe at the birth of God as man, the dawn of our salvation, in the gestures of the various figures of the crèche” (as quoted in Mepkin Abbey’s 2012 book, Finding Bethlehem: A Global Journey through the Mepkin Abbey Creche Festival).
Read MoreNumber 10, 2013
Several weeks ago Glencairn Museum welcomed Philipp Serba from the Goethe University of Frankfurt in Germany, who is researching several Neo-Assyrian alabaster reliefs in Glencairn's Ancient Near Eastern collection. Philipp is using state-of-the-art computer technology to create a 3D-reconstruction of the wall reliefs in the Northwest Palace of Assurnasirpal II (883-859 B.C.) in Nimrud, Iraq. Reliefs from this palace are located in museums and archaeological collections around the world. Glencairn has two of them, each depicting a winged, bearded figure wearing a horned helmet. In this essay, he surveys the relationship between these supernatural figures and their original positions in the Northwest Palace.
Read MoreNumber 9, 2013
The Way of the Cross, also known as the Stations of the Cross, is a popular form of devotion involving a series of fourteen artistic representations of events from the Passion of Jesus Christ. In the early 1950s Thorsten Sigstedt (1884-1963), a woodcarver with a home and studio on Rose Lane in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, carved the Stations of the Cross for St. Timothy's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. Today Sigstedt's relief sculptures remain a vital part of the devotional life of St. Timothy's. This exhibition of the Stations of the Cross brings together two of the original wood-carved sculptures from St. Timothy's with twelve of Sigstedt's cast stone versions.
Read MoreNumber 8, 2013
In the essay below, Dr. Wendy Closterman, Associate Professor of History and Greek at Bryn Athyn College, explores the religious significance of Glencairn's Minerva-Victoria. According to Dr. Closterman, “Glencairn’s Minerva-Victoria illustrates ways that...a proliferation of divine images functioned in the Roman world. Depending on the viewer and the context, these images might evoke a variety of ideas in the minds of the people who saw them: the nature of a deity’s power, traditional tales, enduring life concepts, and connections between divine forces and human endeavors.”
Read MoreNumber 7, 2013
These twelfth-century marble fragments (09.SP.25a,b), on exhibit in Glencairn's Medieval Gallery, illustrate an episode from the biblical story of the Temptation of Christ. They were researched in the summer of 2012 by Dr. Julia Perratore, Glencairn’s Curatorial Fellow from the University of Pennsylvania. According to Dr. Perratore, “The devil holds a stone in his left hand, while his serpent-like tail appears to drape over his arm. In this manner, he urges the fasting Jesus to turn a stone into bread—the first of the temptations. Opposite, Jesus merely raises his right hand, a gesture typically intended to represent speech in medieval art, to indicate his reply: ‘It is written that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.’”
Read MoreNumber 6, 2013
“I took a sample of this material and showed it to Mr. Pitcairn. He became quite excited and, clapping me on the back, he exclaimed, ‘This is exactly the kind of surface that I want for the mosaic.’ I explained to him that I still had the problem of working out a formula which was workable for casting the glass. He said, ‘Go to it. You have my wholehearted support.’ Within two weeks I had perfected a workable formula…” (Ariel Gunther, Opportunity, Challenge and Privilege, 1973, pp. 101-102)
Read MoreNumber 5, 2013
Glencairn’s 12th-century capital illustrating the biblical story of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 19:19-25) was researched last summer by Dr. Julia Perratore, Glencairn’s Curatorial Fellow from the University of Pennsylvania. According to Dr. Perratore, “The capital’s exhortation to give charity and solace to the poor and suffering, while resisting the temptations of wealth, would have resonated in the minds of viewers, who took away with them a clear mental image inspired by the carving.” (09.SP.94, in Glencairn's Medieval Gallery)
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