Philadelphia, The Museum City

Time: 5:30pm

Location: Wagner Free Institute of Science

From the opening of Charles Willson Peale’s Museum in Independence Hall in 1786 to the inauguration of the new home for Barnes Foundation on the Parkway in 2012, Philadelphia has been the center for innovation in the design of museums. On Wednesday, May 15, 2013 at 5:30pm at the Wagner Free Institute of Science, Dr. David Brownlee, a historian of modern architecture and urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania, will present “Philadelphia, The Museum City.”

Museums have been built and reshaped in every era of Philadelphia’s history, influenced by the forces and movements that identify the region and its place in the American and global narrative. They reflect the encyclopedic curiosity of the Enlightenment, the mid-century interest in science and manufacturing when Philadelphia was known as the “Workshop of the World,” and the “City Beautiful” movement in the early 20th century. Visitors can expect to hear about the history and making of Philadelphia’s finest institutions, including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Please Touch Museum, and more.

“Dr. Brownlee is an expert on the history of Philadelphia -- especially its institutional and cultural history. He literally wrote the book on the Philadelphia Museum of Art, on the development of the Parkway and most recently, on the Barnes,” says Susan Glassman, Director of Wagner. He will discuss the forces that made Philadelphia a city of museums, covering its long history of innovative museum design to the museums of the new millenium that symbolize Philadelphia’s rising global status as a center for education, medicine, history and the arts.

David Brownlee is the Frances Shapiro-Weitzenhoffer Professor in the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a historian of modern architecture and urbanism whose interests embrace a wide range of subjects from the late 18th century to the present. His work is widely published and he has received three major publication awards from the Society of Architectural Historians. His most recent book is The Barnes Foundation: Two Buildings, One Mission (2012).