Number 12, 2014

Beginning this holiday season, visitors to the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center may see the Nativity scenes made in Bryn Athyn for the Eisenhower White House. In 1954 Raymond and Mildred Pitcairn commissioned Winfred S. Hyatt to make a single Nativity scene for President and Mrs. Eisenhower. It was displayed in the East Room of the White House that same year, next to the Christmas tree. Two more scenes were added in 1957.

Number 10, 2014

A limestone capital depicting the martyrdom of Andrew the Apostle, also known as Saint Andrew, is on exhibit in Glencairn’s Medieval Gallery (09.SP.3). In this essay for Glencairn Museum News, Dr. Julia Perratore, Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, recounts the story of St. Andrew and places this sculpture within the context of religion and art. According to Dr. Perratore, “the Glencairn capital is an unusual example of a saint’s martyrdom commemorated in stone, and the sculptor very capably handled what may have been an unfamiliar subject. ”

Number 9, 2014

Glencairn Museum’s ancient Egyptian collection includes more than four dozen magical amulets of the hippopotamus-shaped goddess Taweret (literally “The Great [Female] One”). Taweret was a key figure in the religious life of ancient Egyptian families, and images of her appear on a variety of magical artifacts. Pregnant and nursing women used amulets of Taweret to protect themselves and their babies from evil spirits. The goddess is fearsome in appearance, combining the physical attributes of the hippopotamus, crocodile, and lion. Taweret sometimes also carried a knife to help her ward off evil.

In this essay, Dr. Jennifer Houser Wegner, Associate Curator in the Egyptian Section of the Penn Museum (University of Pennsylvania), explains the role of this important domestic goddess in ancient Egyptian family life.

Number 8, 2014

Henry Chapman Mercer and Raymond Pitcairn shared interests in architecture, collecting, and the revival of the production of bygone crafts. Both men were self-taught architects from well-to-do families who used their financial means to build “castles” in neighboring Pennsylvania counties (Bucks and Montgomery). Fonthill, an eclectic mix of Gothic and Renaissance styles, was Mercer’s private residence. He built the Mercer Museum (1913-1916), his other Doylestown castle, to exhibit his large collection of tiles, tools, and artifacts of pre-industrial life. Pitcairn built Glencairn, a Romanesque-style home for his large family and his renowned collection of medieval art, between 1928 and 1939.

Number 7, 2014

This past June, Andrew Tallon, Associate Professor of Art at Vassar College, traveled to Bryn Athyn with a Leica Geosystems C10 laser scanner and conducted a laser survey of both Bryn Athyn Cathedral and the first floor of Glencairn. The resulting three-dimensional spatial maps will allow us to study these buildings in a new way, by creating ‘slices’ through the structures in the form of plans, sections, elevations, and perspective views. His goal was to study the "refinements," or subtle curves in plan and elevation, which were incorporated into the designs of both buildings. The use of a laser scanner was essential because, according to Dr. Tallon, "Though relatively well documented in the textual sources, the refinements applied at Bryn Athyn Cathedral are in most cases subtle enough to escape detection by the eye." In this essay, he presents the results of his Bryn Athyn laser scans for the first time. He also attempts to answer a question that has perplexed many of those who study these remarkable buildings: "Who is the architect of Bryn Athyn Cathedral?"

Number 6, 2014

On June 19, 1914, members of the Bryn Athyn New Church congregation participated in a cornerstone laying ceremony for Bryn Athyn Cathedral. Ground had been broken in the fall of 1913, and by the next summer construction was underway on the basement foundations. The date of June 19 was chosen because it coincided with an annual church celebration known as “New Church Day.” Clouds and rain earlier in the day had threatened to postpone the ceremony, but the sun managed to break through the clouds at the very moment that the stone was dedicated by Bishop William F. Pendleton.

Number 5, 2014

In the essay below, Irene shares her thoughts about the Minerva Victoria. She holds a Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania (1980), and is a specialist in Greek and Roman sculpture and in ancient art and archaeological collections. She is currently the Deputy Director of the Arizona State Museum at the University of Arizona, with teaching appointments in the School of Anthropology and in the Department of Art History. From 2006 to 2012 Irene was the Executive Director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

Number 4, 2014

This past week, during Glencairn Museum's annual Sacred Arts Festival, the Venerable Losang Samten worked for five days to create a traditional Tibetan sand mandala. Mandalas are an ancient art form of Tibetan Buddhism. Drawn in colored sand, they represent the world in its divine form, and serve as a map by which an ordinary human mind can be transformed into an enlightened mind. Losang, a renowned Tibetan Buddhist scholar and former personal attendant to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, was born in central Tibet. He traveled to the United States in 1988 to make the first public mandala in the West, at the American Museum of Natural History. He taught Tibetan Language at the University of Pennsylvania from 1994 to 1997, and was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2002. In 2004 he was awarded a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. Losang is now the Spiritual Director of the Chenrezig Tibetan Buddhist Center of Philadelphia. He was interviewed at Glencairn Museum on April 23, 2014.

Number 3, 2014

In the 1920s, before construction had begun on Glencairn, Raymond Pitcairn noticed two medieval bronze bells for sale in the gallery of a New York City art dealer. Unfortunately for Pitcairn, while he was deciding whether or not to buy the bells, they were purchased by William Randolph Hearst, the legendary newspaper publisher and art collector. In a remarkable turn of events, more than a decade later Mildred Pitcairn gave the bells to her husband as a Christmas present. After construction on Glencairn was complete, the bells were hung from ropes in the Great Hall, where they remain to this day.