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50-469: By 1909, Philadelphia’s Fairmount Water Works had been replaced by a series of filtration plants in other parts of the city. The site’s former reservoir land was later used for the Philadelphia Museum of Art . On May 16, 1911, the mayor of Philadelphia signed an ordinance specifying that an aquarium be created at the old Fairmount Water Works site. About $ 1,500 was provided initially to create

100-471: A $ 350 million expansion at the Cleveland Museum of Art , will be carrying out the plans as scheduled. In 2010, Gehry attended the groundbreaking for the second phase of the expansion, due to be completed in 2012. In that phase, a new art handling facility was created on the south side of the building, enabling the museum to reclaim a street level entrance, closed since the mid-1970s, which leads to

150-496: A 640-foot (200 m)-long vaulted walkway that extends across the museum and is original to the 1928 building. The north entrance will be reopened to the public as a part of the "core project", which is scheduled for completion in 2020. The core project also focuses on the interior of the current building and will add 90,000 square feet (8,400 m ) of public space, including 11,500 square feet (1,070 m ) of new gallery space for American art and contemporary art. In addition,

200-441: A Chinese palace hall, a Japanese teahouse, and a 16th-century Indian temple hall. The European collections, dating from the medieval era to the present, encompass Italian and Flemish early-Renaissance masterworks; strong representations of later European paintings, including French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism ; sculpture, with a special concentration in the works of Auguste Rodin ; decorative arts; tapestries; furniture;

250-596: A decade to resolve these issues. The final design is mostly credited to two architects in Trumbauer's firm: Howell Lewis Shay for the building's plan and massing , and Julian Abele for the detail work and perspective drawings. In 1902, Abele had become the first African-American student to be graduated from the University of Pennsylvania 's Department of Architecture, which is presently known as Penn's School of Design . Abele adapted classical Greek temple columns for

300-402: A large painting collection, including many American paintings, and an endowment of half a million dollars for additional purchases. Works by James Abbott McNeill Whistler and George Inness were purchased within a few years and Henry Ossawa Tanner 's The Annunciation was bought in 1899. The City Council of Philadelphia funded a competition in 1895 to design a new museum building, but it

350-411: A new space called the forum will be created, along with dining and retail spaces. Said Gehry: "When it's done, people coming to this museum will have an experience that's as big as Bilbao . It won't be apparent from the outside, but it will knock their socks off inside." In March 2017, the museum announced a $ 525 million campaign. The core project is budgeted at $ 196 million and will be funded through

400-883: A restaurant. Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art ( PMA ) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia . The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at Eakins Oval . The museum administers collections containing over 240,000 objects including major holdings of European, American and Asian origin. The various classes of artwork include sculpture, paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, armor, and decorative arts. The Philadelphia Museum of Art administers several annexes including

450-476: A series of regular lectures on marine life (many featuring sketches by renowned artist "Biggie" Grover Simcox ). Initially, the forebay housed seals and sea lions. When the animals became ill, though, the area was filled in. The waterworks' turbine and pumps were initially used to get water from the Schuylkill River for the exhibits, but this untreated water proved to be too polluted for the fish, and

500-508: A temporary aquarium in a building that would eventually become a lecture hall, with plans to use the two powerhouses for the permanent aquarium. The aquarium was intended to help educate visitors about the habitat, breeding, and activities of fish, especially those native to Pennsylvania. This was a novel concept at the time, originating in exhibits of fisheries at the 1893 (Chicago) and 1904 (St. Louis) World’s Fairs. The aquarium opened on Thanksgiving Day , 1911, with nineteen small tanks and

550-601: Is a Beaux-Arts style building in the Centennial District of West Fairmount Park , Philadelphia , Pennsylvania . Built as the art gallery for the 1876 Centennial Exposition , it is the only major structure from that exhibition to survive. It subsequently housed the Pennsylvania Museum of Industrial Art (now the Philadelphia Museum of Art ). Since October 18, 2008, the Hall has served as home to

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600-567: The Penn Museum after an exchange agreement was made whereby the museum houses the university's collection of Chinese porcelain . Highlights of the Asian collections include paintings and sculpture from China, Japan, and India; furniture and decorative arts, including major collections of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean ceramics; a large and distinguished group of Persian and Turkish carpets; and rare and authentic architectural assemblages such as

650-472: The Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art . The building closed in 1928 when the Philadelphia Museum of Art opened on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway . The Fairmount Park Commission took over the building in 1958 where it made its offices. The hall was used as a police station for a period of time and has also housed a gymnasium and a swimming pool in its wings. The building

700-601: The Philadelphia Orchestra made a number of recordings in a basketball court in Memorial Hall under the batons of Riccardo Muti and Wolfgang Sawallisch . Memorial Hall was used because the Academy of Music , the orchestra's home at the time, was considered not resonant enough. In September 1997, a viewing for former Philadelphia Phillies baseball player and long-time broadcaster Richie Ashburn

750-760: The Please Touch Museum . It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976. The building is located west of the Schuylkill River , at the corner of East Memorial Hall Drive and the Avenue of the Republic. Memorial Hall was designed by Herman J. Schwarzman , and is an early example of monumental Beaux-Arts architecture in the United States. Schwarzman, the chief engineer of the Fairmount Park Commission , also designed

800-644: The Rodin Museum , also located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building , which is located across the street just north of the main building. The Perelman Building, which opened in 2007, houses more than 150,000 prints, drawings and photographs, 30,000 costume and textile pieces, and over 1,000 modern and contemporary design objects including furniture, ceramics, and glasswork. The museum also administers

850-771: The armor collection of Carl Otto Kretzschmar von Kienbusch. The Von Kienbusch collection was bequeathed by the celebrated collector to the museum in 1976, the Bicentennial Anniversary of the American Revolution . The Von Kienbusch holdings are comprehensive and include European and Southwest Asian arms and armor spanning several centuries. On May 30, 2000, the museum and the State Art Collections in Dresden , Germany ( Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden ), announced an agreement for

900-656: The 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with the Centennial Exposition in 1876. Memorial Hall , which contained the art gallery, was intended to outlast the Exposition and house a permanent museum. Following the example of London's South Kensington Museum , the new museum was to focus on applied art and science, and provide a school to train craftsmen in drawing, painting, modeling, and designing. The Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art opened on May 10, 1877. The school became independent of

950-630: The Czech Republic. Besides being known for its architecture and collections, the Philadelphia Museum of Art has in recent decades become known due to the role it played in the Rocky films — Rocky (1976) and seven of its eight sequels, II , III , V , Rocky Balboa , Creed , Creed II , and Creed III . Visitors to the museum are often seen mimicking Rocky Balboa 's (portrayed by Sylvester Stallone ) famous run up

1000-579: The Duchamp siblings— Marcel , Gaston , Raymond and Suzanne —in 2019. A Jasper Johns exhibition is planned for 2021. In 2009, the museum organized Bruce Nauman: Topological Gardens , the official United States entry at the 53rd International Art Exhibition, more commonly known as the Venice Biennale , for which the artist Bruce Nauman was awarded the Golden Lion. The directors of

1050-489: The Philadelphia Museum of Art since its inception are: Below is the list of chairs of the board of trustees of the museum since 1991. In December 2021, the heirs of Piet Mondrian filed a lawsuit against the museum for Composition with Blue, which the artist had consigned to Küppers-Lissitzky when it was seized by the Nazis. The same year, the museum announced that it would return an ancient 'Pageant Shield' looted by Nazis to

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1100-475: The aquarium switched to using city water. All of the machinery was removed from the two powerhouses in 1912, and they were eventually refitted as the exhibit halls for the aquarium, the larger (200-by-50-foot (61 by 15 m)) being used for freshwater fish and the smaller (100-by-50-foot (30 by 15 m)) for seawater fish. The buildings required very little structural change, and the flat roofs, previously used as plazas, provided space for skylights to illuminate

1150-487: The campaign. The museum also announced that more than 62 percent of the campaign goal has been met, as of March 30, 2017. In March 2020, the museum was officially temporarily closed due to COVID-19 pandemic . All public events and programs were canceled until August 31, 2020. The museum reopened by late September 2020. The most controversial part of the Gehry design remains a proposed window and amphitheater to be cut into

1200-545: The centennial of the museum and the bicentennial of the nation. During the last three decades major acquisitions have included After the Bath by Edgar Degas and Fifty Days at Iliam by Cy Twombly . Due to high attendance and overflowing collections, the museum announced in October 2006 that Frank Gehry would design a building expansion. The 80,000-square-foot (7,400 m ) gallery will be built entirely underground behind

1250-605: The continued funding for the completion of the design. Once the building's exterior was completed, twenty second-floor galleries containing English and American art opened to the public on March 26, 1928, though a large amount of interior work was incomplete. The building's eight pediments were intended to be adorned with sculpture groups. The only pediment that has been completed, Western Civilization (1933) by C. Paul Jennewein , colored by Leon V. Solon , features polychrome sculptures of painted terra-cotta figures depicting Greek deities and mythological figures. The sculpture group

1300-563: The design of the museum entrances, and was responsible for the colors of both the building stone and the figures added to one of the pediments . Construction of the main building began in 1919, when Mayor Thomas B. Smith laid the cornerstone in a Masonic ceremony. Because of shortages caused by World War I and other delays, the new building was not completed until 1928. The building was constructed with dolomite quarried in Minnesota. The wings were intentionally built first, to help assure

1350-454: The east entrance stairs and will not alter any of the museum's existing Greek revival facade. The construction was initially projected to last a decade and cost $ 500 million. It will increase the museum's available display space by sixty percent and house mostly contemporary sculpture, Asian art, and special exhibitions. Uncertainty was cast on the plans by the 2008 death of Anne d'Harnoncourt , but new director Timothy Rub , who had initiated

1400-600: The east entrance stairs, informally nicknamed the Rocky Steps . Screen Junkies named the museum's stairs the second most famous movie location behind only Grand Central Station in New York. An 8.5 ft (2.6 m) tall bronze statue of the Rocky Balboa character was commissioned in 1980 and placed at the top of the stairs in 1982 for the filming of Rocky III . After filming was complete, Stallone donated

1450-487: The east entrance stairs. Others have criticized the design as too tame. The Gehry expansion is projected to be completed by 2028. The Philadelphia Museum of Art houses more than 240,000 objects, highlighting the creative achievements of the Western world and those of Asia, in more than 200 galleries spanning 2,000 years. The museum's collections of Egyptian and Roman art , and Pre-Columbian works, were relocated to

1500-502: The exhibits. The aquarium hosted 290,000 visitors in its first year, and by 1929 was one of the four largest aquariums in the world. In the period after World War II , the aquarium suffered from years of inadequate funding, political maneuvering and the resulting neglect. By 1962, the aquarium was forced to close, despite several grass roots attempts to save it. The facility was later used as an indoor swimming pool (closed in 1973). More recent uses have included banquets, guided tours, and

1550-437: The gift of Charles M. Lea, including French, German, Italian, and Netherlandish engravings. Major exhibitions of the 1930s included works by Eakins , Manet , Renoir , Cézanne , van Gogh , and Degas . In the 1940s, the museum's major gifts and acquisitions included the collections of John D. McIlhenny ( Oriental carpets ), George Grey Barnard (sculpture), and Alfred Stieglitz (photography). Early modern art dominated

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1600-673: The growth of the collections in the 1950s, with acquisitions of the Louise and Walter Arensberg and the A.E. Gallatin collections. The gift of Philadelphian Grace Kelly 's wedding dress is perhaps the best known gift of the 1950s. Extensive renovation of the building lasted from the 1960s through 1976. Major acquisitions included the Carroll S. Tyson, Jr. and Samuel S. White III and Vera White collections, 71 objects from designer Elsa Schiaparelli , and Marcel Duchamp 's Étant donnés . In 1976 there were celebrations and special exhibitions for

1650-506: The hall began on 6 July 1874 and was completed for the opening ceremonies on May 10, 1876. President Ulysses S. Grant dedicated the building with a ribbon-cutting ceremony . The President was joined by both Houses of Congress, and Supreme Court, and the Emperor Pedro II of Brazil to kick off the event. Nearly ten million visitors walked through Memorial Hall during the exhibition that lasted from May to November. Memorial Hall

1700-582: The historic colonial-era houses of Mount Pleasant and Cedar Grove , both located in Fairmount Park . The main museum building and its annexes are owned by the City of Philadelphia and administered by a registered nonprofit corporation. Several special exhibitions are held in the museum every year, including touring exhibitions arranged with other museums in the United States and abroad. The museum had 437,348 visitors in 2021. Philadelphia celebrated

1750-463: The museum in 1964 and is now part of the University of the Arts . The museum's collection began with objects from the Exposition and gifts from the public impressed with the Exposition's ideals of good design and craftsmanship. European and Japanese fine and decorative art objects and books for the museum's library were among the first donations. The location outside of Center City, Philadelphia , however,

1800-705: The paintings of Thomas Eakins . The museum houses the most important Eakins collection in the world. Modern artwork includes works by Pablo Picasso , Jean Metzinger , Antonio Rotta , Albert Gleizes , Marcel Duchamp , Salvador Dalí and Constantin Brâncuși , as well as American modernists. The expanding collection of contemporary art includes major works by Agnes Martin , Cy Twombly , Jasper Johns , and Sol LeWitt , among many others. The museum houses encyclopedic holdings of costume and textiles, as well as prints, drawings, and photographs that are displayed in rotation for reasons of preservation. The museum also houses

1850-677: The return of five pieces of armor stolen from Dresden during World War II . In 1953, Von Kienbusch had unsuspectingly purchased the armor, which was part of his 1976 bequest. Von Kienbusch published catalogs of his collection, which eventually led Dresden authorities to bring the matter up with the museum. The Philadelphia Museum of Art organizes several special exhibitions each year. Special exhibitions have featured Salvador Dalí in 2005, Paul Cézanne in 2009, Auguste Renoir in 2010, Vincent van Gogh in 2012, Pablo Picasso in 2014, John James Audubon and Andy Warhol (et al.) in 2016, Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent in 2017, and

1900-613: The second-largest collection of arms and armor in the United States; and period rooms and architectural settings ranging from the facade of a medieval church in Burgundy to a superbly decorated English drawing room by Robert Adam . The museum's American collections, surveying more than three centuries of painting, sculpture, and decorative arts, are among the finest in the United States, with outstanding strengths in 18th- and 19th-century Philadelphia furniture and silver, Pennsylvania German art, rural Pennsylvania furniture and ceramics, and

1950-471: The statue to the city of Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Art Commission eventually decided to relocate the statue to the now-defunct Spectrum sports arena due to controversy over its prominent placement at the top of the museum's front stairs and questions about its artistic merit. The statue was placed briefly on top of the stairs again for the 1990 film Rocky V and then returned to the Spectrum. In 2006,

2000-686: The statue was relocated to a new display area on the north side of the base of the stairs. The museum provides the backdrop for concerts and parades because of its location at the end of the Ben Franklin Parkway. The museum's east entrance area played host to the American venue of the international Live 8 concert held on July 2, 2005, with musical artists including Dave Matthews Band , Linkin Park and Maroon 5 . The Philadelphia Freedom Concert , orchestrated and headlined by Elton John ,

2050-415: The temporary Horticultural Hall for the Exposition. The building cost $ 1.5 million to construct and was made without wood, making it fireproof, which was innovative for the time. The exterior is finished with granite and the interior is decorated with marble and ornamental plaster. The building is 365 feet (111 m) by 210 feet (64 m) with basement and ground floor, and 150 feet (46 m) tall at

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2100-587: The top of the building's most distinctive feature, an iron and glass dome . Surmounting the dome is the 23-foot-tall (7.0 m) statue of Columbia (the poetic symbol of the United States ) holding a laurel branch. At the corners of the dome stand four statues symbolizing industry, commerce, agriculture and mining. Memorial Hall was the inspiration for the Reichstag building in Berlin . Construction of

2150-471: Was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 8, 1976. The building had fallen into great disrepair by 2000 and was used mainly for art storage. The Fairmount Park Commission sought a new tenant to help restore the building to its former glory. The Please Touch Museum signed an eighty-year lease for the building in 2005 and began extensive renovations. In the 1980s and 1990s,

2200-724: Was awarded the Medal of Honor of the Architectural League of New York . The building is also adorned by a collection of bronze griffins , which were later adopted as the symbol of the museum in the 1970s. In the early 1900s, the museum started an education program for the general public, as well as a membership program. Fiske Kimball was the museum director during the rapid growth of the mid- to late-1920s, which included one million visitors in 1928—the new building's first year. The museum enlarged its print collection in 1928 with about 5,000 Old Master prints and drawings from

2250-473: Was designed to house the Centennial Exposition's art exhibits. The exposition received so many art contributions that a separate annex was built to house them all. Another building was built for the display of photography . The hall was one of over two hundred buildings constructed on the property of Fairmount Park to display exhibits. Memorial Hall reopened in 1877 as the museum portion of

2300-450: Was fairly distant from many of the city's inhabitants. Admission was charged until 1881, then was dropped until 1962. Starting in 1882, Clara Jessup Moore donated a remarkable collection of antique furniture, enamels, carved ivory, jewelry, metalwork, glass, ceramics, books, textiles and paintings. The Countess de Brazza's lace collection was acquired in 1894 forming the nucleus of the lace collection. In 1892 Anna H. Wilstach bequeathed

2350-605: Was held at the museum through April 29 of that year. On February 8, 2018, the victory parade for the Philadelphia Eagles ' win in Super Bowl LII finished upon the museum steps, where players and team personnel gave speeches from a lectern to the large crowd gathered along Ben Franklin Parkway. It was featured on the finale of The Amazing Race 36 . Memorial Hall (Philadelphia) Memorial Hall

2400-558: Was held shortly after his death from a heart attack in New York City . Several hundred thousand people mourned his death as they walked by his casket in the Grand Hall. In 2005, the Please Touch Museum began an $ 85-million renovation to convert it into its new home. The museum opened its doors to the public on October 18, 2008. Memorial Hall's eastern lawn serves as the home field for Athletic Base Ball Club of Philadelphia ,

2450-641: Was held two days later on the same outdoor stage from the Live 8 concert while a preceding ball was held inside the museum. On September 26, 2015, the Festival of Families event, attended by Pope Francis , was held along the Ben Franklin Parkway with musical performances by various acts within Eakins Oval in front of the museum, as well as in Logan Square . On April 27, 2017, the 2017 NFL draft

2500-627: Was not until 1907 that plans were first made to construct it on Fairmount, a rocky hill topped by the city's main reservoir . The Fairmount Parkway (renamed Benjamin Franklin Parkway ), a grand boulevard that cut diagonally across the grid of city streets, was designed to terminate at the foot of the hill. But there were conflicting views about whether to erect a single museum building, or a number of buildings to house individual collections. Horace Trumbauer and Zantzinger, Borie and Medary , both architectural firms, collaborated for more than

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