Debut Post 2 - Art Museums

Continuing with the Debut Posts for this blog ...

In a new place, we immediately gravitate to art museums, so that is where I go with this post ...

Monumental East Entrance of Philadelphia Museum of Art 

East Entrance - Philadelphia Museum of Art

Grand Staircase, Philadelphia Museum of Art. Mobile by Alexander Calder, foreground. Saint-Gauden's "Diana," background.

Grand Staircase

View from the East Entrance looking down the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. In the foreground is Jacque Lipchitz's "Prometheus Strangling the Vulture." Beyond that sculpture is the top of the monumental George Washington Monument. At the far end (or beginning of the parkway) is City Hall, capped with a statue of William Penn by Alexander Milne Calder (grandfather of Alexander Calder).

View down Benjamin Franklin Parkway from PMA to City Hall

Three generations of Calders contributed to the visual adornment of Philadelphia: Alexander Milne, Alexander Stirling, and Alexander. Benjamin Franklin Parkway begins at Logan Circle, in the center of which is the "Swann Memorial Fountain," also know as the "Fountain of the Three Rivers," created by Alexander Stirling Calder. the Delaware, the Schuylkill, and the Wissahickon are represented as river gods.

"Fountain of the Three Rivers" - Alexander Stirling Calder

A few blocks from the end of the Parkway and City Hall is the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the oldest art museum and shool in the United States, founded in 1805 by painter Charles Wilson Peale and sculptor William Rush. In this view of the gallery, portraits of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart flank a door to a room with portraits by the Peale family, Gilbert Stuart, and Thomas Sully.

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

The new home of the Barnes Foundation is in the museum district along Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The exterior garden, reflecting pools and landscaping are works of art in their own right.

Barnes Foundation

Philadelphia is an outdoor art museum with over 700 works of art (mostly sculpture) scattered throughout the city. The Anne d’Harnoncourt Sculpture Garden near the West Entrance of the Museum of Art is just the beginning ...

For example, Claus Oldenburg's "Giant Three-Way Electric Plug" ...

Claes Oldenburg: "Giant three-Way Electric Plug"

... or my personal favorite, "Lips" by Franz West.

"lips" - Franz West