Number 2, 2016

For the first time in decades, Glencairn Museum is exhibiting three Easter scenes made in the 1920s for the Raymond and Mildred Pitcairn family. The scenes were designed by Winfred S. Hyatt, the principal stained-glass artist and designer for Bryn Athyn Cathedral and Glencairn.

Number 1, 2016

The biblical story of the Flight into Egypt recounts how Joseph took Jesus and Mary to Egypt after an angel warned him in a dream that Herod was planning to kill the Christ Child (Gospel of Matthew 2:13-15). Glencairn’s 12th-century panel of stained glass depicting this event, from the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis, may be the Museum’s most famous work of art—but this was not always the case.

Number 10, 2015

The construction of Bryn Athyn Cathedral began in 1913. With many masons and sculptors hard at work, its rising walls soon began to dominate the local skyline. At this time Raymond Pitcairn, who was supervising the building’s design and construction, turned his attention to the stained glass windows he hoped would illuminate the Cathedral’s interior. Pitcairn, who had loved medieval architecture since childhood, was determined to match the textures and brilliant colors of the stained glass windows in the walls of the great European cathedrals built during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Number 9, 2015

In this essay for Glencairn Museum News, Dr. Julia Perratore, Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, explains a remarkable twelfth-century capital in Glencairn’s Medieval Gallery that most people pass by without a second glance. At first, this limestone sculpture seems to represent a mere tangle of vines and other vegetation. However, as Dr. Perratore observes, “often a seemingly straightforward work of art yields real surprises, turning the simple act of looking into an adventure.”

Number 8, 2015

The Egyptian collection at Glencairn Museum, established in 1878, was assembled primarily by four men: the Reverend William Henry Benade (a Christian pastor, and later a bishop), John Pitcairn and his son Raymond (industrialists and philanthropists), and Rodolfo Vittorio Lanzone (an Italian Egyptologist and collector of antiquities). Benade and Pitcairn had earlier been instrumental in founding the Academy of the New Church, then located on Cherry Street in Philadelphia. Benade and Pitcairn were not present to witness the long-anticipated opening of the Academy in September of 1877, as the previous June they had boarded the White Star Liner Germanic, bound for an extended tour of Europe, Egypt and the Holy Land.