WHYY
By
William Valerio, director of the Woodmere Art Museum sits in the Rose Room at St. Michael Hall, envisioning the room as a performance venue. (Emma Lee/WHYY)
For almost 100 years, the Sisters of St. Joseph in Chestnut Hill have lived in the grandeur built by 19th-century industrialists. What has been St. Michael’s Hall since 1924, when the nuns acquired it, started as an opulent estate for a string of wealthy Philadelphia families.
Now the religious order, which runs Chestnut Hill College, wants to sell the 15-room mansion and its 4 acres of landscaped grounds. The last residents moved out in September, and the sisters hope to hand the house over to a good steward.
WHYY
By
Artists Steve Donegan (center) and Syd Carpenter (right) created the hugel mound project, La Cresta, with the Woodmere Museum. (Peter Crimmins/WHYY)
The Woodmere Museum’s stone Victorian mansion has been a landmark in the Chestnut Hill neighborhood for 80 years, but few know what lies behind it. The museum is on a 6-acre estate whose back half slopes down toward the Morris Arboretum. Until relatively recently, that rear acreage has been largely ignored.
“I’ve been living here in the area for 30 years, and I come up here to the museum a bunch of times, but I’ve never walked back here,” said Anna Herman, a neighbor who teaches urban agriculture in the Philadelphia School District. “I didn’t realize there was a whole property.”
Woodmere unveils exhibition telling story of Tom Judd s new subway mural
Installation photo of portion of Portal to Discovery mural depicting an early rendering of Independence Hall with unknown female portrait, 2020, by Tom Judd. Courtesy of the artist.
PHILADELPHIA, PA
.- On Saturday, February 27, 2021 Woodmere Art Museum unveiled its latest exhibition, History in Motion: Tom Judds Subway Mural. Judds mural is an important addition to the citys rich landscape of public art. Woodmeres exhibition includes preparatory studies for the mural as well as in-process photographs of the installation.
The Mural
In connection with the reconstruction of the 5th Street-Independence Hall Station on the Market-Frankford Line, artist Tom Judd was selected to create a permanent installation for the station. Portal to Discovery, Judds mural on the eastbound and westbound platforms, presents figures who contributed to the founding of the United States as well as those who fought for