Reading Public Museum

Coordinates: 40°19′38″N 75°57′5″W / 40.32722°N 75.95139°W / 40.32722; -75.95139
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Reading Public Museum
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LocationWest Reading, Pennsylvania
Coordinates40°19′38″N 75°57′5″W / 40.32722°N 75.95139°W / 40.32722; -75.95139
Alice Kent Stoddard (American, 1883 -1976), Leila, 1915, oil on canvas, 30 x 25 inches, Reading Public Museum, Gift, George D. Horst
Julien Dupré (French, 1851 - 1910), The Balloon, 1886, oil on canvas, 95 1/4 x 79 inches, Reading Public Museum, Museum Purchase

The Reading Public Museum is a museum in Reading, Pennsylvania located in the 18th Ward, along the Wyomissing Creek. The museum's permanent collection mainly focuses on art, science, and civilization and contains over 280,000 objects. It also has a planetarium (the Neag Planetarium) and a 25-acre (100,000 m2) arboretum.

History

The Museum was founded in 1904, when the Reading School District board authorized the purchase of exhibits from the Saint Louis World's Fair . These new purchases were added to the private natural history collections of Dr. Levi W. Mengel.[1] The Museum opened its doors to the general public in 1913; that same year, The Museum started collecting works of art. Levi Mengel was The Museum's first director and was its founding father. Christopher Shearer, a well-known landscape artist was The Museum's first curator of art. Ground was broken at its current location in 1925, and by 1928, the Museum was open to the public in its new Beaux-Art style structure that was designed by William Forbes Smith.[2] In 1998, architect Der Scutt was commissioned to add an atrium entrance to the existing structure. The Arboretum was planned in the late-1920s by renowned American landscape architect John Nolen.[3] Since 1991, The Museum has been operated by The Foundation for the Reading Public Museum.

Collections

A Study in White (undated), by Charles Webster Hawthorne.

The Museum's art collection contains works from many cultures but the strengths of the collection include American works of art. Its fine art collection includes more than seven hundred oil paintings by American and international artists. Paintings by

.

These join a group of European paintings by

are represented in the collection.

The Museum's collection includes Nefrina, a mummy from the Ptolemaic period in ancient Egypt.[4] The ancient collection also includes a notable collection of Greek vases (including the Herakles Vase attributed to the Alkmene Painter), and Greek and Roman marbles.[5] The Arms and Armor gallery features European examples from the sixteenth[6] and seventeenth centuries--including a Maximilian suit of armor-- as well as examples from Japan, the Islamic world, Africa, and the South Pacific.

Frank Weston Benson (American, 1861 -1951), On Grand River, 1930, oil on canvas, 36 x 44 inches, Reading Public Museum

Hundreds of historic North American Indian artworks from the Lenape, Montagnais, Inuit, Blackfoot, Acoma, Hopi, Sioux, Crow, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Chippewa, Cochiti, and Mandan peoples are housed at The Reading Public Museum. The Museum also includes Asian collections with artwork from China, Japan, India, and Thailand.

The Museum also houses a large collection of Pennsylvania German objects that include fraktur, painted furniture--including one of the finest examples of a dower chest by the Black Unicorn Artist,[7] glazed earthenware, and paintings.[8] The Museum also has galleries dedicated to American Art, Modern and Contemporary Art, European Art, the arts of North American Indians, Ancient Civilizations, Arts of the Ancient Americas,[9] and Natural History, among others.

The Museum's natural history collections include thousands of specimens of moths and butterflies (many of them collected by Levi W. S. Mengel), as well as other insects, birds, nests, bird eggs, mammals, fossils, minerals, botanical specimens, and animal skins.

See also

  • List of botanical gardens in the United States

References

  1. ^ "Who was Levi Mengel? Founder of the Reading Public Museum". Reading Eagle. 2021-10-07. Retrieved 2023-07-16.
  2. ^ Webb, Joseph (2023-01-16). "History of The Reading Public Museum". GoReadingBerks / Reading Berks History. Retrieved 2023-07-16.
  3. ^ "The Arboretum at the Reading Public Museum Historical Marker". www.hmdb.org. Retrieved 2023-07-16.
  4. ^ "Nefrina". collection.readingpublicmuseum.org. Retrieved 2022-01-13.
  5. ^ "Herakles Hydria - Attributed to the Alkmene Painter". Google Arts & Culture. Retrieved 2023-07-16.
  6. ^ ""Maximilian" armor". collection.readingpublicmuseum.org. Retrieved 2023-07-16.
  7. ^ "Dower chest - Unknown (Black Unicorn Artist)". Google Arts & Culture. Retrieved 2023-09-16.
  8. ^ "Pennsylvania German Collection". collection.readingpublicmuseum.org.
  9. ^ "Jaguar Vessel - Guanacaste-Nicoya peoples, Costa Rica/Nicaragua". Google Arts & Culture. Retrieved 2023-07-16.

External links