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Reminders:
The Athenaeum will be closed on September
7 for Labor Day. Also, first Saturday hours are suspended for
the summer and will resume with the first Saturday in October.
By mid-August the Fall 2009 calendar of lectures should be mailed to the Athenaeum membership.
Please keep that calendar. No other lecture schedule will be mailed although there will be e-newsletter reminders. If you have friends who do not have access to e-mail, please encourage them to retain their Fall lecture schedule.
Banner Image:
Capitals in Members' Reading Room.
Building By The Book
 As part of
Philagrafika 2010: the Graphic Unconscious, the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, in collaboration with the Philadelphia Center for the Book, is issuing this call for entries for book artists to respond to selected works from the Athenaeum’s legacy research collection of architecture and design.
Athenaeum curators have chosen ten books from their collections that are available to view both on site and online. Artists residing in the United States are invited to submit proposals for a book that they will create in response to one of the selected books. The proposed books may be editioned or one-of-a-kind, artist books, book objects, altered books or zines. The proposal must be for newly created work, directly responding to a specific book from the Athenaeum collection.
Six of the proposals will be chosen, and these six artists will make their proposed books, which will be exhibited in the Athenaeum gallery in March and April during the Philagrafika 2010 festival. A generous grant from the Beneficia Foundation underwrites this competition and exhibition and will provide these six artists with a stipend of $500 to help offset the cost of the book production. The artists’ books will be exhibited along with their Athenaeum counterparts.
For
more information, click here
Above:
Cover of Merrells, Cross & Beardsley, Wall Papers and Cretonnes.
(New Haven: Merrells, Cross & Beardsley, c1912).
Photography Exhibit to Open Later This
Month
 Jacob Stelman, Architectural Photography, 1936-1970 will open in the Haas Gallery on Monday, August 31. Based on the Athenaeum’s collection of more than 5000 images from talented and prolific Philadelphia photographer, Jacob Stelman, the show features more than 100 of his best photos. While Stelman’s work included landmark structures such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Temple Beth
Sholom in Elkins Park (1959), the exhibit also reveals the changing face of commercial Philadelphia at mid-century, when “downtown” was the uncontested retail capital of our region. The stores, theaters, restaurants, supermarkets and hotels depicted in the exhibit run the stylistic gamut
from Art Deco to Modern to Googie to Tiki, and provide a glimpse into an era before the uniform design of corporate chains dampened the robust individuality of both commercial architecture and signage.
The
exhibition is open 9:00am-5:00pm, Monday-Friday and from 10:00am-2:00pm on
Saturday October 3 and Saturday November 7.
Gallery Talk
Curator Bruce Laverty will give a
gallery talk on September 9 at 5:30pm. Space is limited, reservations
required. To make a reservation contact Susan Gallo at 215-925-2688 or sgallo@PhilaAthenaeum.org
Photo: Jacob
Stelman exhibition poster. The photo on the poster is the John Ellis &
Bro. Coffee Co. building at 9 S. 16th St, taken by Jacob Stelman in 1945.
Athenaeum Hosts Historic Photography
Program
 The Athenaeum, in cooperation with the Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts will host a two day program entitled
Focusing on Photographs: Identification & Preservation on September 22 & 23. This two-day program is intended for collections care staff responsible for photographic collections. It will focus on the fundamentals of
identifying and caring for photographic collections. Using lecture and hands-on demonstrations, topics will be intertwined over the course of the program to give participants a holistic view of identifying photographic materials, housing and caring for these collections, developing appropriate handling and display procedures, and establishing safe storage environments. For more information and registration instructions please consult
www.ccaha.org or
call the Conservation Center at 215-545-0613. Registration deadline is September 8.
Staff News
 Years before rubber hit the bricks of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Philadelphia was annually hosting a nationally important automobile race. Last week WHYY-FM radio reporter Peter Crimmins interviewed the Athenaeum’s own Michael Seneca about Philadelphia's early twentieth century road races. Mike is the local expert on the subject, having authored
The Fairmount Park Motor Races, 1908-1911. The interview took place as they retraced the century-old race course in West Fairmount Park. If you missed Mike on WHYY, you can listen to the report
here:
Philadelphia
Former Auto Racing Hot Spot
Photo:
A postcard shows a car passing the Belmont Waterworks on West River Drive
during the 1911 race..
Save
the Date:
August
11: Socrates Cafe, 11:00am
August
31: Jacob Stelman Exhibition Opens
September
8: Coffee Day in Members' Reading Room
September
9: Jacob Stelman Gallery Talk, 5:30pm
September
16: Maggie Lidz will speak on her book The Du Ponts: Houses and Gardens in the Brandywine,
1900-51, 5:30pm
See
the Event
Calendar for details and additional
events.
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