No Philadelphia history of photography can omit Robert Cornelius (1809-1893), whose famous "selfie" of 1839 "is generally accepted as the first known photographic portrait of a person taken in the United States, the second in the world, and a significant achievement for self-portraiture."2 Shortly after Cornelius took this photo he opened the first photography studio in Philadelphia. There’s no UArts connection to Cornelius, but what a nice photo, and it’s fun to start with this.

You can learn a great deal about Cornelius and other Philadelphia photographers in a Franklin Institute journal article from 1893.3 Today we think of the Franklin Institute as a science museum that attracts blockbuster exhibits, but in its early days it was a scholarly society similar to the American Philosophical Society.

The Photographic Society of Philadelphia was founded in 1862 and still exists today. Two years later The Philadelphia Photographer began publication. I have a special affection for The Philadelphia Photographer because the UArts Greenfield Library had about ten volumes of this publication; the Free Library of Philadelphia appears to have a full print run of this title.

The Photographic Society and The Philadelphia Photographer have a PMSIA/UArts connection through Coleman Sellers II (1827-1907), who was the first president of PMSIA. Sellers, a well-known engineer, also invented the Kinematoscope, an early precursor to motion picture cameras. Of all the Philadelphia photographers at the time, one author wrote that

• "none was more active than Coleman Sellers. I believe, in fact, that he was the most energetic amateur of his day. Not only did he spend considerable time and money in the actual practice of the art, but he was a prolific correspondent of the photographic journals. All three of the American journals of photography contain numerous articles from his pen, and, in addition, he was the American correspondent for a similar British publication. The first volume of The Philadelphia Photographer, which appeared in 1864, contains ten contributions of Sellers, some of considerable length; and a similar number appeared in the American Journal of Photography in the two volumes published between 1861 and 1863."4

  

The earliest and biggest photography- and UArts-related event, though, is surely the appearance of Eadward Muybridge (1830-1904) giving a lecture at PMSIA in 1884.

Muybridge is known for his animal and human locomotion photographic studies. In 1884 Muybridge was in Philadelphia, working at the University of Pennsylvania and creating his best-known work, Animal Locomotion, which included humans as well as animals. His studies of horses galloping proved that all four of a horse's hooves do indeed come off the ground at the gallop.

In doing this research I found relatively little scholarly material devoted to the history of photography specifically in Philadelphia, so I was glad to see a very interesting essay by Peter Barberie (Brodsky Curator of Photographs and Head of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art) in the book, Workshop of the World: Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia.5 Barberie discusses the Pictorialist movement in Philadelphia and its connection to the Arts and Crafts movement. (The Pennsylvania Museum & School of Industrial Art was certainly an outcome of the Arts and Crafts movement, even though it had been founded to support better design for manufactured goods.)

Barberie tells an interesting story of the efforts by the Pictorialist-minded photographers, who "treated their prints as autonomous, unified aesthetic objects, often mounting them on beautifully toned papers" (p. 167), as opposed to the more technical, scientific, and business interests of others such as Coleman Sellers and William H. Rau. These groups were not truly opposed to each other, but certainly had different aims.

Here’s one more Philadelphia and photography tidbit for this post: if you took the history of photography course at UArts you undoubtedly used Beaumont Newhall’s book, The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present (NY: Museum of Modern Art, first published 1937).

But did you know Newhall began his professional career at PMSIA? He was hired by the museum as a lecturer for 1931-32, and would later go on to the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and other institutions.

That’s all the room I have today, but there will be more on photography at PMSIA/UArts. With alumni like Richard T. Dooner and Irving Penn, and faculty like Alexey Brodovitch and Sol Mednick, there’s more to come.

—Sara MacDonald, author. A UArts librarian, 1987-2020.

This is of interest to University of the Arts (UArts) history because Leslie William Miller (1848-1931) served as the first principal of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (PMSIA, later the UArts art school) from 1880 to 1920.1 He took PMSIA from a school that had opened in 1877 with just a few drawing classes and developed a curriculum that would come to include art education, illustration, architectural drafting, interior design, sculpture, painting, pottery, stage and costume design, metal and iron work, furniture, stained glass, bookbinding, and museum curatorship. For more information on Miller please see this archived web page I wrote (please note that most of the links on this page will not work): https://web.archive.org/web/20240607064114/https://library.uarts.edu/archives/lesliewmiller.html

But we’re here to look at this painting, which is of special historical interest to UArts people because Eakins came to work on the painting in PMSIA’s building at 320 South Broad Street, formerly known as Hamilton Hall and now owned by the Village of Industry and Art. Look at the painting’s background and you’ll see what is likely student work or study pieces to the left. Happily for us, an eyewitness account given by PMSIA alumnus Charles Sheeler was recorded in Lloyd Goodrich’s book, Thomas Eakins:2

• “One day a stocky little man, gray-haired and gray-bearded, passed through our workroom. His trousers were tucked into short leather boots and fitted so snugly as to make the braces over his dark sweater superfluous. Neither his appearance nor his manner offered a clew [sic] as to the reason for his visit. A few days later he returned and passed to the life-class room, just beyond where we were working. Knotholes in the board partition were used at intervals and permitted us to satisfy our curiosity. The stocky little man was beginning a portrait of the principal of the school, Leslie Miller, and before long the plan of the picture was indicated. The subject was to be portrayed standing easily with one hand in his trousers pocket and the other holding a manuscript from which he raised his eyes as if to direct them toward an audience. As the artist’s work continued we witnessed the progress of a perspective drawing which was made on paper and then transferred to the canvas, to account for charts of ornament receding into the background—those charts which we knew only too well. This careful procedure led us to the conclusion that the man, whoever he was, couldn’t be a great artist, for we had learned somewhere that great artists painted only by inspiration, a process akin to magic.

  Several months were thus consumed; then came the day, as we discovered through the convenient knotholes, when another perspective drawing was made and transferred to the canvas, on the floor and to one side. The letters spelled Eakins. The name was not familiar to us.”

Miller himself did not love the portrait yet valued it highly:

• "The primitive, even shabby frame represents Eakins' taste rather than mine as do the old nondescript clothes in which the subject is garbed which he begged me to rescue from the slop-chest and put on for the occasion, and personally I should be very glad to have the frame at least spruced up a bit.
  

  Ever since I found out how much of a picture he was going to make of it, I have been haunted by a mild regret that I didn't insist on his painting me,—if he painted me at all,— in habilments that would at least have been more like those I would have worn when appearing in any such character as that in which he has done me the honor to portray me, but, as is evident throughout all his work, he had a passion for the ultra informal which sometimes carried him so far as to lead him to prefer the unfit to the fit if it were only old, and worn and familiar enough.
  But all that is part of the Eakins hallmark and of course it cannot be spared. He was one of the great ones and I value the picture very highly."3

This painting can usually be found hanging in the American art section of the museum, so I am very glad to see it in this excellent exhibition. It’s 7 feet tall, you can’t miss it.

—Sara MacDonald, author. A UArts librarian, 1987-2020.

On Saturday, July 5, 2026, I attended the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s members’ preview of the exhibit “Workshop of the World: Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia”. (In fact, I renewed my museum membership just for this show.) The exhibit and the accompanying exhibition catalog (it’s really a book - 391 pages) tell a fascinating story, looking closely at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition, at Philadelphia industries such as the railroads, the textile industry, the Arts and Crafts movement and how it affected the city, and much more. It’s a great work of scholarship on a tremendously important part of Philadelphia’s history, not just PMSIA/UArts. Kudos and congratulations go to curators/editors/authors David L. Barquist (H. Richard Dietrich, Jr., Curator of American Decorative Arts) and Colin Fanning (Louis C. Madeira IV Assistant Curator of European Decorative Arts) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and to the many contributors.

The preview was preceded by a fantastic artist’s talk given by the one and only Judith Schaechter, a long-time University of the Arts (UArts) faculty member in the Crafts Department. You can read a shortened version of her talk at https://judithschaechterglass.blogspot.com/.

I consider this show to be a landmark exhibition because, as far as I know, it is the most detailed, most scholarly, and most complete history of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (PMSIA, chartered 1876). The museum in the name is of course the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the School of Industrial Art was the original name of what became the University of the Arts (egregiously shut down in 2024 - for more on name changes please see my post on the name changes and mergers.). Though never housed together in the same location, the museum and the school were founded as one institution during a great age of design reform and industrial art education, at a time when Philadelphia was one of the great manufacturing cities of the world. The exhibition catalog covers this in wonderful detail.

It’s also tremendous that the Philadelphia Museum of Art did this because, for many years (though not recently - see footnote1), the museum swept its industrial art beginnings under the rug after becoming a fine arts museum, but that’s another story.

What’s truly wonderful to me, though, is seeing all the work by UArts faculty and alumni/ae over the many years. Other museums and schools such as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts are represented, of course, as well as art colonies such as Rose Valley and the Arden Craft Shop, but the thrill for me is the UArts-connected people.

Go to the show and you’ll see:

Mark Burns (taught 1975-1981)

Doug Bucci (Class of 1995)

Sharon Church (taught 1979-2014)

Virginia Wireman Curtin (taught 1943-1953)

Nicola d’Ascenzo (attended1891-92 and 1892-93; taught Mural Decoration, 1892-93, 1894)

William P. Daley (taught 1957-1990)

Donald A. Davenport (attended PMSIA Textile School)

Ethel R. Ramsey Davenport (earned PMSIA Certificate A, 1893)

Parke Emerson Edwards (PMSIA Class of 1915; faculty, 1920-21,1922-23)

Wharton Esherick (attended PMSIA 1907-08)

Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (Class of 1898)

Elizabeth Shippen Green (taught at PMSIA 1924-25, 1925-26)

Daniel K. Jackson (taught 1964-1974)

Roland Jahn

Jack Larimore

MiKyoung Lee

Paul McCobb (taught 1953-1957)

Leslie William Miller: first PMSIA principal from 1880-1920, depicted in a portrait by Thomas Eakins painted at the school

Thornton Oakley (taught 1915-1946)

William D. Parry (taught 1948-1963)

William L. Price (see William Lightfoot Price and Siblings at PMSIA)

Richard H. Reinhardt (Class of 1947; long-time faculty and administrator)

Warren Seelig (long-time Crafts Department faculty)

Olaf Skoogfors (Class of 1953; taught 1959-1975)

William Laird Turner (taught 1893-1903)

Leon Volkmar (taught 1904-1912)

Samuel Yellin (attended 1906; taught wrought iron, 1907-19)

No doubt I missed some alumni and faculty; please forgive any omissions.

Go see the show!

A good documenting of past PMSIA/PCA faculty was done at the school in 1982 with the exhibition Affects Effects 1: Past Faculty of Philadelphia College of Art: [exhibition] November 19-December 21, 1982, Howard A. Wolf Gallery, Edith Rosenwald Gallery, Philadelphia College of Art. This was followed by Affects Effects 2: Work by the Faculty of Philadelphia College of Art: [exhibition] October 22-December 14, 1983, Howard A. Wolf Gallery, Edith Rosenwald Gallery, Haviland/Strickland Complex, Philadelphia College of Art. I always found the information in these titles to be accurate, thanks to the work of gallery director Eleni Cocordas with research assistance by Sid Sachs, who later served as director of the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery.

—Sara MacDonald, author. A UArts librarian, 1987-2020.

Dr. Donald “Doc” Chittum (1930-2020) was a beloved and legendary teacher at the University of the Arts (UArts) School of Music and was a product of one of its predecessor institutions, the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music (founded 1877), where he did most of his education. The Conservatory merged with the Philadelphia Musical Academy in 1962 and continued under the Academy name, thus his doctorate was granted from the Academy - one of the last doctorates granted, as you’ll read in the interview below. Dr. Chittum retired from UArts in 2016.

The tapes of the interview mentioned in the interview might be at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, which took the UArts archives following the UArts closure in 2024.

Credit goes to former UArts Music Librarian Dr. Mark Germer and to library employees Aaron Meicht and Lars Halle, both UArts School of Music 1996, for the newsletter and the interviews.

Dr. Chittum’s remarks are in blue.

UArts Music Library Reading Room Notes Newsletter, 2000-2001.

In Conversation with Donald Chittum

Professor of Music Donald Chittum, a long-time faculty member and former director of the School of Music, sat down with the UArts Music Library staff to record for us his perspective on the School in its various incarnations. The following excerpts from this conversation have been condensed and edited for continuity, though we have tried to retain the informal tone. Those who would like to hear the complete interview may do so in the Music Library. We began by asking Professor Chittum how he first came to the Philadelphia Conservatory.

The Philadelphia Conservatory of Music was patterned on the European type of conservatory. In other words, it was not a comprehensive type of university-oriented school that was post-secondary, necessarily, and that gave degrees. There were all kinds of instruction going on in the conservatory for musicians as early as four, five, six years old, all the way up through degree-bearing [i.e., granting] programs. I say that as a prelude to mentioning that I started at the conservatory when I was in high school [in Atlantic City]. And I was accepted in the degree program--this was in 1948, my senior year in high school. So, that was a wonderful time for me, and in 1948 I was taking music theory, ear training, orchestration, counterpoint, and music history--all of these kinds of things that were very important--piano, violin--when I was still in high school. I had started studying theory and harmony when I was about 12 or 13, privately with some members of rather prestigious orchestras. I remember one especially, who was a principal clarinetist at the Pittsburgh Symphony. His name was Herbert Cuff and he taught me theory while I was still taking drum and percussion lessons. When I was in high school, there were a couple of students from Atlantic City who were enrolled in the [Philadelphia] Conservatory, and who were having trouble with their harmony assignments, and asked me to help them. And they said, “Well, why don’t you go and check out the school? You look like you might do very well there.” I did, and that started my career. I guess I’ve now been connected with the school in one way or another for 52 years!

I stayed on with the school through two years at the collegiate level and then “made myself available” for military service. I went into the Army for nearly two years. I [joined] in October of 1950 and came out in the early summer of 1952. It was a wonderful experience. I was a band-training, non-commissioned officer. I was a conductor. It was wonderful for me because I learned how to teach, really to teach, in the Army. I learned that, first of all you have to make things very clear to people. And also you have to not ask anybody to do anything you wouldn’t do yourself. There are just a few simple rules but they are very, very important.

In the 1950s the Conservatory boasted an internationally acclaimed faculty. Professor Chittum recalled some of the important figures teaching there at that time.

I took a year off and came back in the Fall of ‘53. [So I came back to] the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music. And [the composer Vincent] Persichetti was there, the composer-conductor Boris Koutzen was there, and [the composer and pianist [Eduard] Steuermann was there; [the pianist Olga] Samaroff-Stokowski--was no longer there when I got back, but [had been] there when I left. [Also the famous pianist] William Kappel was at the school slightly before I started as a student, or had finished working with Olga Samaroff-Stokowski. I didn’t know him personally. Evelyn Christman-Quick was the music history teacher. There was a string teacher named [William] Bless. Abe Pepinsky was a very, very fine violist, and he also had a very strong background in the science of music--in acoustics, in the psychology of perception, things of that nature. So he came to the Musical Academy before the merger of the Conservatory with the Academy, and taught courses in psychology and acoustics and related academic areas to music. He was very brilliant; he also served as Academic Dean of the Academy. Joe Arcaro was on the piano faculty. John Carlin was very important to me--he was a piano teacher and a guide to me. He gave me all contemporary piano music to play instead of the usual five-finger exercises. Allison Drake was on the piano faculty. Joseph Castaldo [came to study at this time, and] we were classmates together. Steuermann above all was phenomenal. Phenomenal teacher. Olga Samaroff-Stokowski was also one of those teachers who almost become a mother to her students.

We asked Professor Chittum about his transition from student to credentialed faculty member.

I finished the degree program, I think, in 1955 [he earned his BM in 1956, master’s in 1957, and PhD in 1963]. But, because of the way my program was arranged--there was a two-year master’s[-degree] program--I started the master’s program concurrently with the bachelor’s. A very important teacher for me was Katherine Grube. [The director at this time was] Maria Ezerman-Drake. And her son was Hendrik Drake. He ultimately became the director of the school when it merged with the Academy. But Katherine Grube was phenomenal. As a matter of fact, when I was in the master’s program I was her graduate assistant. And that’s how I got the job here. She developed an incurable cancer, and so she talked to Mrs. Drake and said “Look, it doesn’t make much sense to hire a substitute when Don has been working with me, now, for two years.” When it came to make the appointment for the following year, Mrs. Drake said: “Would you like the job?” [Katherine Grube taught] theory, eartraining, keyboard harmony. And she was wonderful to me.

Professor Chittum continued his education while evolving into a full-time professor.

I studied conducting privately with Persichetti. We [worked on] literature that went well beyond what the conducting classes did. My master’s degree concentration was in 20th-century harmony and he was working on the 20th-century harmony book at the same time. So we had a lot to talk about. His conducting class, for me, was priceless. We covered a lot of the 20th-century literature. I worked with Sol Schoenbach and Oscar Shumsky [as] chamber music coaches, in the summer program for about five years in Ventnor, New Jersey, called the Ventnor Youth Orchestra. Here I was in my twenties with two guys that were phenomenal in their knowledge of repertoire and experience. I was just quaking in my boots whenever I was around Shumsky especially. I was on the faculty and I was working towards a doctorate part-time, ‘till ‘63 when I got my doctorate, with a major in theory and a minor in conducting. I studied both with Koutzen, formally, and [on my own] with Persichetti.

Professor Chittum also spoke about the problems beginning to face many of the smaller institutions in Philadelphia at the time.

There had been waves of G.I. Bill students flooding colleges and schools everywhere throughout the country from the Second World War and even after the Korean War. So the schools had an influx of students whose tuition was being paid for by the government, and they were flourishing. By the end of the ‘50s those students weren’t there anymore. But these were, most of them, proprietary institutions. In other words they weren’t public, just musicians [who] banded together and created a school--got a charter from the state. But it became rather evident to many of them that [survival would be difficult] because of the working conditions. There were theaters in Philadelphia employing musicians, there were hotels employing musicians. But the jobs for live musicians were [disappearing] and that was the beginning of the end; and we can see that [this process] is still continuing today. With the recording and electronic means of reproduction all of those [employment opportunities] started to go away. The schools really found out that they couldn’t attract students to remain viable.

Apart from The Curtis Institute of Music and The Academy of Vocal Arts--small, exclusively scholarship institutions--there were several conservatories of music in central Philadelphia: Combs Conservatory (from 1885), The Neupauer and Sternberg schools (about which little is known), Temple’s School at 1521 Locust, The New School of Music (from 1943), the Philadelphia Musical Conservatory, and the Musical Academy. We asked Professor Chittum to locate for us the original spot of the Conservatory and the Academy. [Note: these were not the original locations but rather the locations Dr. Chittum was familiar with.]

The Conservatory was at 220 S. 20th St.--the building no longer exists; there were two buildings there, 220 and 224. And the Academy was at 1617 Spruce St., where the Garden Restaurant is now, and you can seen the plaque out in front that they’ve been kind enough to keep: that is the plaque from the original school.

Most small schools with a life as long as this one will go through difficult times. Professor Chittum talked about the first of several transformations that would eventually lead to the University of the Arts.

Hendrik [Drake] and Joe Castaldo and I were very close friends, and we kept talking about the plight of both institutions; and over many long evenings and much beer we said: “Why don’t we talk to the powers that be in our own schools and see if a merger couldn’t be facilitated.” It came to pass in 1962--in the spring of that year the schools had completed a merger. And [thus] began their first year as the Academy--’62-’63 was the first year that we taught as one body and both student bodies were merged. The reason why the name “Academy” was kept rather than “Conservatory” or Conservatory-Academy, or something like that, was that the Academy’s charter was a multifaceted, multi-purposed [one] from the State. In other words, it allowed for a greater number of programs to be created without seeking a revision of the charter. So the Conservatory charter was returned to the State and the Academy’s was kept. I think we still have the Academy’s charter upstairs in [the current director] Marc Dicciani’s office. The schools came together and became one school with a new program, a whole new curriculum, and put it very solidly on a collegiate level.

Pepinsky remained as dean during the time of the merger of the Conservatory and the Academy, [under] Castaldo. After he retired [the composer] Arthur Custer came in. [With this appointment,] we were looking to become more and more collegiate in our physiognomy, so to speak. We felt that we had to get Middle-States and NASM accreditations. The accreditation was a matter of standing in the profession, [and] it opened up the possibility of foundation support. It also gives the students [a] greater sense of legitimacy. And it makes student transfers easier, in and out of the school, [or] going on to higher education.

Arthur Custer worked very hard to help us get a curriculum together and credit-hour things--the kinds of things that are just standard in colleges, where in the old days people used to pay by the courses. Another school, outside music, that was having a problem--the same kind of problem these other schools were having--was the Philadelphia Dance Academy; same problems, but in another field. Ultimately, they merged [in 1977] with the Academy so that we had a dance department.

The new institution still had little in the way of capital. It had its buildings and some pianos, but the student body supplied orchestra instruments and scores. We asked Professor Chittum what it was like for the students during those early years.

[There was] a mini-chamber orchestra. Maybe three or four violins, just enough to cover the parts. Not many brasses. Most of the students in the conservatory were either composers, pianists, or singers. I would say ninety percent. And consequently the chamber music ensembles were things like: Class for piano trio (with piano, violin, and cello), or there would be maybe a sonata class (if there was a trumpet, then there were certain trumpet sonatas that could be played with piano), but everything was built around the piano. There might have been a quartet every once in a while--a string quartet. They did a lot of solo vocal literature, and arias, but not opera productions. Every once in a while there might have been a one-acter put on. You know, maybe Pagliacci. There were programs in which there would be a spring concert, and [the] chorus would be involved. And they would perform big choral [works] like the Brahms [Deutsches] Requiem. Or if they wanted to do Cavalleria [Rusticana] they’d have to hire an orchestra, you know, to give the singers an opportunity. Almost every faculty member would play at least one major recital [during] the school a year.

In the Academy [the great American composer] Roy Harris taught as visiting professor. He still lived out West, but he came once a week. At the time of the merger there were a number of people on the faculty who had a long-standing relationship with both schools. It was almost like a love, a “family kind of thing.” And some of them really were pressed--for instance, Vincent Persichetti came in two days a week to the Conservatory at the same time he taught two or three days at Juilliard. It was really draining him, and his career was just flying at the time. That’s when Persichetti decided that he would [only] keep his three days or so at Juilliard [and discontinue his teaching in Philadelphia]. So then Castaldo became the head of the composition department for both schools. And I was heading musicianship and theory. A lot of faculty from both schools merged into one faculty, but a lot of new people started to come in [also]. [The composer] Mike White came in. He’s now still at Juilliard. And there was Bob Suderberg. Andy Rudin came in from Penn, [and there were other] young composers. It was a very exciting time. Then, of course there were a lot of very fine perfomers who came in as well. Philadelphia Orchestra people were the base of the performance faculty. Maureen Forrester [taught voice] for a number of years. [This exciting period lasted,] I would say, a good ten years.

Late in the ‘60s Andy Rudin had come over [having received] his graduate degree from Penn. He was the [electronic] studio assistant at Penn. [With his help and Castaldo’s support,] we got the second Moog synthesizer [ever built]. Robert Moog came and installed it and spent a week or two here with Andy, showing us how to use it. I was using it, Mike White was using it, Castaldo was using it. But Castaldo didn’t stay with it long at all because it was just too “mechanical” for him. Andy brought that technology over to the school and taught classes, and all the faculty members were very excited about the potential. We would make trips a couple times a year to the Princeton-Columbia studio with [Vladimir] Ussachevsky and [Mario] Davidovsky. [Milton] Babbitt [of Princeton University] was also involved. Babbitt was the Princeton representative and Ussachevsky [represented] Columbia. [The composer of electronic music] Davidovsky also did some teaching for us, [and led the] New Music Ensemble. Also Bob Morris was here. He came in the 1980s and taught several years. There were a lot of good composers coming through. There have been some very exciting times, and I think that Castaldo was the guy that made that happen.

Another evolutionary step began to take shape in the 1970s under the directorship of Joseph Castaldo.

We expanded along Spruce Street and then [into] the Lu Lu Temple building, which was 313 South Broad Street, [when it] came on the market. By that time, Hendrik Drake, who had been the first director of the combined operation back in ‘62 resigned from the position and Joseph Castaldo became the director in the late ‘60s. He saw the opportunity to get that building to move the school over. And with that movement over to 313, the name was changed to the Philadelphia College of the Performing Arts as it exists now within our institution, to allow for theater, dance, and music.

While we were in that building the name of the school changed from the Philadelphia Musical Academy to the Philadelphia College of the Performing Arts, [which it was called for] about ten years. And at that time Castaldo was really interested in making us--in terms of administrative structure--a real academic institution. So he created a new administrative structure and had three deans brought in. [He established positions for] dean of students, dean of administration, [and] dean of faculty. Richard Castillion was the dean of students. He was a pied piper [who mentored many students]. And he was a wind ensemble person. The best I’ve ever seen. The best conductor--and [skilled in working] with the students. He’d make them play so well they surprised themselves.

[Another important figure was] Clem[ent] Petrillo, a phenomenal pianist from the “old school” [with an] Italian conservatory-type training. He was very thorough in his teaching, very demanding. He taught solfeggio when the schools merged, and piano, at the Academy. Ultimately he became head of the piano department, [but he also served as dean, after Arthur Custer]. He was a facilitator and an implementor, and made sure that things got done. He served Joe very well in that way. He was dean for, I would say, about eight years. Then [Fred] Kaufman briefly served as dean and director of the School of Music. When he left the institution, they decided that they wanted to have a separate dean and a separate director of the school. So they hired Steve Jay and in the same year they asked me if I would be director of the School of Music. Finally, the same thing happened, in a way, at the Philadelphia College of Art [and Design]: again, the separateness didn’t seem to insure a healthy viability for the future. And Joe Castaldo had always had a dream of a college, or university, of the arts. In Pennsylvania, the university charter stipulated a certain number of graduate programs. What we had all done--both the College of Art and PCPA--[was make the decision] not to offer [advanced] graduate degrees. I got one of the few doctorates, one of the last ones. The idea was to build the school up from below--to have a solid undergraduate program and then to work on master’s programs. Both [also] had extensive preparatory departments, [as when] I first came almost 20 years earlier.

Professor Chittum was involved at each phase of these developments.

[Eventually] I held a variety of--you name whatever--positions. I was Chairman of Composition and Theory, and then I was Director of Graduate Studies for a while and then I was in charge of certain specialized programs. I was kind of like the troubleshooter I guess, [whenever] they needed somebody to do a certain kind of a thing, just like my being the Director of the School of Music here [after the merger with PCAD]. [After the merger which was formulated in ‘86-’87,] the plan was that I would take the school through [the NASM] process in 1990 and then stay on for another year. It took a couple years--I think I stayed 2 or 3 years after--until about 1993, and then I went back into the teaching faculty, and my administrative assistant at the time, Marc Dicciani was appointed director.

We asked Professor Chittum to discuss in more detail some of the influential people present throughout his time at the School.

Edward Steuermann

I never studied with Steuermann, but I knew the students who did study, my fellow students. He had a way of teaching at the Conservatory where the student would take a two-hour lesson every other week instead of an hour lesson. And they could play anything they wanted, it didn’t matter what they brought. The studio had glass doors, it was like French doors, [and] you could see what was going in there when you walked by. And they would put the music [unopened] up on the piano, and it would sit there, and then they would start to play. And then, maybe about after ten minutes you would hear Steuermann say, “No...” He’d go over to the piano and play [from memory] the piece that they were working on. He knew everything! He played everything! And that’s the [kind of] mind that I was exposed to.

Oscar Shumsky
With Shumsky [it was similar]. He and I and Shoenbach were working in the summer and my job was to coach woodwinds and brasses--chamber music. But one night I was conducting one of the Mozart Serenades and I said to Oscar, “Why don’t you come in. I’d like you to hear a rehearsal and maybe talk to me about it.” So, I had the students set up in the conventional way which was, I think, an octet--2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons was the instrumentation. And he listened for the first half and then I said, “I’m having trouble with balances, and I’m also having trouble when the flute and clarinet or the flute and oboe are playing in octaves, [with] intonation and ensemble.” So he says, “can I try something?” And I said, “Yeah.” So he says, “We’re going to sit the two flutes and the two oboes together right in a row [of] four, [with] the two oboes, the two clarinets and two bassoons right behind them, so there [will be] two rows of four with the first players in the middle of the box.” He says, “Now try it.” And the problem went away. He says, “Well, you know it sounds much better, but you know that part where such-and-such is happening?” He goes over and starts to play the piece on the piano--a woodwind piece. He’s a string player! And he played for, like, five [or] ten minutes, talking--just playing this piece. And I’m saying to myself, “What am I doing here?”

Vincent Persichetti

Persichetti--the same thing. We walk into class, and I remember specifically, students would bring scores--full scores of their own work--and he’d play through them [with] no problem, all [parts] transposed--nothing to it. What he couldn’t play he’d sing. And I remember that we all thought “He’s seen the piece a couple weeks in a row, so he’s got a feel for it.” One day a kid went down to [the music publisher] Elkan-Vogel, and they had just published Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks Concerto. He put it up [on the piano and] showed it to Persichetti. Persichetti was like a vacuum cleaner. You put a score [in front of] him, he had to grab it and put it on a piano, you know. And he starts to play this thing, this full orchestral score. [I also had] conducting lessons one-on-one with him. Our lessons were: He’d play the piano and I would conduct him. He would give me pieces like Ruy Blas--the overture by Mendelssohn--where it starts and stops, and starts and stops. Or things like Beethoven[’s] First Symphony, at the end of the introduction where the tempo changes, and how do you get that four-five note descending passage in the time of the new movement, from the old to the new one. It’s very tricky. We were doing the Stravinsky Symphony in Three Movements, I think. We got to a place where there’s a big oboe solo, and he doesn’t play it. And he’s just playing along, playing along. And I said: “Dr. Persichetti, I’m not hearing the oboe.” He says: “Oh yeah!” I say: “What [do you mean] ‘Oh yeah’?” He says: “He’s not playing!” I say: “Why isn’t he playing?” He says: “He’s lost. You remember back on page 22, you missed a very important cue after he had rested for about five minutes, and you didn’t cue him.”

Theodore Antoniou

One of the important things that Joe Castaldo did was to hire [the Greek composer and conductor] Theodore Antoniou to teach [at first] some of the theory classes, like the fugue class [and] orchestration. What then happened was that a tremendous emphasis on [the musical] avant-garde--not only 20th-century music, but [experimental] avant-garde music--developed very quickly. Then [as I described before] we had composers coming in: [Morton] Feldman, [Ernst] Krenek, [Milton] Babbitt, [Vladimir] Ussachevsky--anybody that was anywhere in New York, or any passing through Philly, going from Philly to Chicago or New York to Chicago. Also [John] Cage, [Pierre] Boulez. Boulez was here conducting the [Philadelphia] Orchestra. Theodore had him come in. Theodore knew all of these people because he conducted their music in Greece and here, so he was in correspondence with these people with questions about the pieces and things of that nature. [Karlheinz] Stockhausen [visited] the School--he was teaching at Penn. [In the late ‘60s to the early ‘80s,] there was just one big-name composer after another. Theodore stayed, I guess, ‘till about ‘85. He’s a wonderful, wonderful person. Again, an inspiration to me. There’s an old adage: If you want to be better you’ve got to play with players who are better than you. Not where you’re the best player in the group, but where you’re the worst. And that’s when you get better. Fortunately, I think I owe whatever success I’ve had in my career to the fact that I’ve always been surrounded by people who have been so much better at what they do than I could be at what they do, and then I’ve learned from them.

[In these years, too, the students and faculty performed major works with Antoniou, such as Stravinsky’s] Les Noces--we did that twice. We did Les Noces twice because there were always good pianists at the School. And you need four pianos to do Les Noces. Theodore did a lot of large orchestral works. Sometimes Theodore was the conductor, not always--and he was a marvelous conductor. We used to do annual concerts in the Convention Hall, the one up on 34th Street. I heard some of the standard works conducted in those concerts like Tchaikovsky’s Fourth [Symphony], or Debussy[’s] La Mer or the Nocturnes--Theodore conducted these--that were just mind-shattering performances. With the School orchestra!

By all accounts, the Castaldo-Antoniou years were a most exciting time when the School had a distinctive focus. Integrated into the conservatory curriculum, experimental and avant-garde music was being championed with an awareness of new developments--some ultimately of lasting interest, some not--throughout the world. The students were part of a vital community. We asked Professor Chittum why, apart from the economic advantages of the influx of students, the school seemed to thrive so wonderfully at this time.

It has much to do with personality, because strong leaders of a school--if they are there any appreciable amount of time--put their stamp on the school, and give it a focus, an orientation. No school can do everything. The administration simply wanted it, not tolerated it--wanted it! [Castaldo] wanted it, and worked [to sustain] it. Consequently, a lot of people did things for nothing; Boulez never got a nickel for coming here as a guest! I remember that many of our courses had a very heavy concentration in 20th-century literature--[notably] the ensembles. I also taught courses in Music Lit[erature] that were devoted to specific things. I taught a course in Beethoven quartets, just the Beethoven quartets, to undergraduates. There were courses in music literature or vocal chamber music--very specialized for a small group of people. That’s expensive, to have ten kids in a class, you know--and for that to be a quarter, maybe, of a teacher’s load--to teach just those ten students is very expensive. Somebody has to say, “that’s important”--somebody at the top. But somehow there was support in the [School and beyond in the local] community, and there were people who believed in what was going on, and so a lot of these things came off.

I hope you enjoyed remembering a fine person who was a wonderful part of UArts history.

Thank you for reading!

— Sara MacDonald, author. A UArts librarian, 1987-2020

After sharing this post with a UArts Facebook group the following comments were made about Dr. Chittum:

• “Doc Chittum changed my life and how I looked at everything in music. While our composition department was excellent, I would be lying if I said he wasn’t the single most influential teacher I had, and I’m pretty sure all the other teachers there probably thought the same thing. One of one.”— David De Lizza, Class of 2005.

• “Wonderful teacher, mentor, and all-around mensch!”— Evan Solot, Class of 1967.

• “My favorite and most influential professor in all my college years.”— Robert Hersh, Class of 1983.

• “Don Chittums decision to admit me was a major turning point in my life. Rest in peace, Dean.”— Charlie Rutan, Class of 1991.

• “My favorite professor!”—Steve Montenegro, Class of 2007.

• “Also my favorite. Great memories. I looked forward to every class with Boom Boom Chittum.”—Mike Trombetta, Class of 1980. Mike says that Dr. Chittum played drums in strip clubs in his early days, thus the nickname Boom Boom.

While most 20th- and 21st-century people think of it as Hamilton Hall, named in 1996 for UArts trustee and benefactor Dorrance Hamilton, Scout has opted to call it Haviland Hall in recognition of architect John Haviland. It’s interesting to note that Scout is only the third owner/occupant of the oldest extant building on Broad Street. (Side note: aside from small outbuildings,UArts never occupied a building constructed specifically for it. Lots of renovations and buildings purchased, but never built their own building.)

Note the pastoral qualities illustrated in the rendering above: no paved street much less a street, and the building is set amid tall trees. Broad Street in 1824 was considered to be “the country”, as most of Philadelphia and its citizens were still clustered along the Delaware River. While the rendering is of course not based on fact, the building did soon become a destination for sightseers on foot and in carriages.

June 15, 1824, was an exciting day, as we can see from these newspaper articles:

• Democratic Press [Philadelphia], June 16, 1824:
  "I yesterday attended at the corner of Broad and Pine streets to witness the ceremony of laying the corner stone of the new building now erecting by the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb. I can truly say that never was time passed more entirely to my satisfaction. The day was fine and the event well calculated to arouse public attention, for it gave assurance of permanency and stability to one of the most valuable of the numerous charitable institutions which adorn the city of Philadelphia. The company assembled was, therefore, large and respectable. At an early hour the children of the institution, 74 in number, accompanied by Mr. Weld, the principal, the assistant teachers and the matron appeared upon the ground, and took their station within the foundation walls of the building. The ceremony was opened by an impressive address and solemn prayer from the Rt. Rev. Bishop White, President of the institution. A charity which calls forth the active and efficient services of one so venerable, so universally respected and so generally beloved as is Bishop White cannot but be entirely worthy of public patronage, and will assuredly never make a vain appeal to the benevolence of the citizens of Philadelphia. An address was then delivered by J. R. Ingersoll, Esq., which was characterized by his usual ability and eloquence.
  
  In the plan of the building the Tuscan and Doric orders are stated to be harmoniously united and when finished it is expected to be as great an ornament to the city as the institution itself is honorable to the citizens of Philadelphia. ‘We participate,’ says the New York Evening Post, ‘in the pleasure which it gives to every philanthropic mind that measures are thus taking to render such an institution permanent. The gratification would be greatly increased if a similar spirit prevailed in our own city.'"

• National Gazette and Literary Register [Philadelphia], June 17, 1824, page 2:

  

In the first image at the top of this article you can see that the niches on either side of the portico were there to hold statues, but we don’t see the statues in the 1827 print just above this paragraph. You’ll find this explained in the book Penn’s Great Town: 250 Years of Philadelphia Architecture by George B. Tatum (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961).

According to Tatum, the statues were to be of "Charles Michel, Abbé de l’Epée (1712-1789), a French Jansenist who developed this system of communication for deaf-mutes, and that on the right as Roch-Amboise Cucurron, Abbé Sicard (1742-1822), who carried on the work of de l’Epée. … No evidence has been found that the statues intended for the niches were ever put in place."3 No doubt this was a financial decision.

No drawings or plans of either the Haviland or Furness parts of the building are known to exist, but there is a wonderful little 1859 floor plan drawn on page 3 of an insurance company survey (see Mutual Assurance Company fire surveys of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, 1859-1896, Mutual Assurance Company (Green Tree) Records, https://digitallibrary.hsp.org/index.php/Detail/objects/11870). The north-south wings were added to the Broad Street front of the building in 18544.

If you can read 19th-century handwriting you’ll enjoy reading this document.

Joshua Beckman, the archivist at PSD, informed me in 2024 that the PSD archives, held for a number of years at Gallaudet University’s archives in Washington DC, had been processed and that images were digitized and available online. This was thrilling, as I’d never seen any photos of PSD students in the building. Here are a few of my favorites, courtesy of Gallaudet, that show the PSD students at Broad and Pine.

In closing I would like to recognize my former UArts colleague, Eugene A. Bolt, Jr., who passed away in 2024. Eugene was my co-author on The University of the Arts published by Arcadia in 2006, but more importantly was my great colleague in his interest in and enthusiasm for UArts history and buildings. We discussed it almost every time we saw each other, and always called or emailed each other to gleefully celebrate Cornerstone Day and Charter Day5, two days we declared to be significant and worth marking. Happy Cornerstone Day!

— Sara MacDonald, author. A UArts librarian, 1987-2020.

Out of nine children born to James M. Price (1825-1899) and Sarah Lightfoot (1832-1905), two of whom died very young, five of them - Susanna M. Price, Frank L. Price, William Lightfoot Price, Mary Louisa Price, and Walter F. Price - attended the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art (PMSIA, later the University of the Arts’ college of art and design). The best-known of those siblings is surely William Lightfoot Price (1861-1916), an architect, theater aficionado, and utopian community co-founder (Rose Valley, PA, and Arden, DE). To learn more about Price, I highly recommend the book William L. Price: Arts and Crafts to Modern Design by George E. Thomas, ISBN 1568982208. Many of the houses he designed still exist such as his own home for a time, “Kelty”, in Merion Station, which has a small theater in it. I had the pleasure of seeing this home myself during a 2008 tour.

While there are very few PMSIA student records from the 19th century that allow us to verify someone’s attendance, the early school catalogs from 1881-82 through 1898-99 listed enrolled students from the previous year. From 1889-90 through 1921-22 the catalogs listed former students and their current occupations (to show that yes, you could get a job). These sources plus other research show us that five out of seven of the Price siblings who lived to adulthood attended the school.

The 1889-90 PMSIA catalog included at the back a list of students enrolled for the previous year, and here we see Frank, Mary Louisa, and Susanna (Sue M. here). In 1889 Susanna earned her diploma in Drawing and Painting, Mary Louisa earned a certificate in Drawing, and Frank earned the modelling (i.e., sculpture) certificate. Susanna and Mary Louisa became art teachers, and Frank became an architect. Walter, also an architect, attended in 1892-93 and later gave a lecture on "Athens and Its Memories" at the school on March 18th, 1892.

The image below is a list of former students and their professions in the 1898-99 PMSIA school catalog.

While none of the above sources list William L. Price while he was a student, it was quite common for people at that time to take only the courses they wanted to take, which could certainly have been the case with a free-thinker such as him. He does, however, appear in a very intriguing PMSIA student theater program from 1888. We also see a number of future Rose Valley community members such as Henry Troth, John Bissegger, and Carl de Moll participating.

Such programs were usually fundraisers for the school but that isn’t indicated in newspaper article below, so perhaps it was a class project. Howard F. Stratton, mentioned in the article below, would serve as the director of the PMSIA art school for many years and was a friend of the Price siblings.

Several years ago I learned, to my great delight, that a descendant of Walter F. Price, Eleanore Morris Mather Potter, had a photo album from this 1888 occasion. Walter photographed every scene in the program, and here we find Will and friends in costume.

Further evidence of the Price siblings at PMSIA is in several reproductions of student work typically featured in the school catalogs.

There’s much more to say about the Price family but it would take many more words to do it. If you’re intrigued I highly recommend visiting the Rose Valley Museum in Rose Valley, Delaware County, PA, where many PMSIA alums were involved in this utopian Arts and Crafts community and whose work can be seen there. Two of my favorite pieces at Rose Valley are an iron fire screen by Parke Emerson Edwards (PMSIA Class of 1915) and this wooden chest carved with “PMSIA” by Antonio Minerva, who earned the certificate in modelling in 1907.

Again, I highly recommend the book William L. Price: Arts and Crafts to Modern Design by George E. Thomas, ISBN 1568982208.

— Sara MacDonald, author. A UArts librarian, 1987-2020

At any rate, it’s quite extraordinary that a museum would take up a student-proposed exhibit, but it happened.

As part of the exhibit, Christo wrapped the interior stair area of the museum.

Did you attend this exhibit? Did you participate as a student? Please comment!

Thanks again to Sid!

— Sara MacDonald, author. A UArts librarian, 1987-2020.

I was recently thinking about the May 4, 1970, Kent State University (Ohio) event known as the Kent State Massacre, in which four unarmed students were shot to death and nine were wounded by the Ohio National Guard, and then I realized that the anniversary was approaching and I must have heard news stories about it. It has a special meaning in UArts history because of how a group of Philadelphia College of Art Crafts students reacted. (Philadelphia College of Art (PCA) became the University of the Arts College of Art following PCA’s merger with Philadelphia College of the Performing Arts.)

I came to learn about it because of an undated unidentified archival photo of Hamilton Hall draped in black. I reached out to alumni somehow, perhaps through the UArts publication called The Columns, and asked if someone could tell me what the occasion was. I wish I still had all the correspondence, but it’s somewhere in the UArts archives now in the good hands of the Historical Society of Pennsylania. At any rate, an alumnus (Johnny Jackson, perhaps?) replied and told me what it was about. Below is a photo I found in a newspaper database that provides the information I didn’t have: PCA draped Hamilton Hall in black and declared themselves on strike for peace following the Kent State shootings.

Immediately following the shooting, PCA students set to work. Jewelry professor Olaf Skoogfors (for more on Skoogfors see Olaf Skoogfors, 20th Century Goldsmith) was quoted as saying that the design work took four days and the fabrication took two and a half days. According to the Winter 2019-2020 CAN Journal (Collective Arts Network Cleveland), the jewelry students were “Susan Cabnet, Julia Claus, Christopher Darway, Jacqueline Ott, and Diane Marie Rosetti. Students in Dan Jackson’s woodworking class, Jonathan Bonner and Johnny Jackson, designed and carved a box for the medallion out of hickory. Julia Claus then travelled to Kent, Ohio on June 7, 1970 and presented the piece to Kent State University president, Robert I. White.”

In 2020, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Kent State tragedy, Kent State held an exhibition called “Constructed Answer” featuring work by contemporary metals artists in response to the PCA medallion, as well as the PCA piece itself. The photos below are from that website.

This 2020 article from Cleveland Scene describes how the new director of Kent State’s School of Art Collection and Galleries was tasked with locating the medallion after many years. He did indeed find it in a dusty loft space. It is now cataloged in Kent State’s School of Art online catalog: https://kentgalleries.catalogaccess.com/objects/1385

— Sara MacDonald, author. A UArts librarian, 1987-2020.

Native Philadelphian Marcus Samuel Blitzstein (1905-1964) was something of a child prodigy musically as well as in his general education. At the age of sixteen, having studied piano with Maurits Leefson from 1917 to 1918 (Leefson had been on the staff at the Philadelphia Musical Academy) and with Dirk Hendrik Ezerman from 1918 to 1922 at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music (the Conservatory and the Academy are both predecessor institutions to the former University of the Arts School of Music), he earned the Philharmonic Society of Philadelphia’s gold medal. In the fall of 1921 he had entered the University of Pennsylvania at age sixteen.

In 1924 Blitzstein was one of the first students who enrolled at the newly founded Curtis Institute of Music, and he later traveled to Europe to study with Nadia Boulanger and Arnold Schoenberg.

In addition to The Cradle Will Rock (made into a 1999 film directed by Tim Robbins), Blitzstein is known for his translation and adaptation of The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. "His works also include the opera Regina, an adaptation of Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes; the Broadway musical Juno, based on Seán O'Casey's play Juno and the Paycock; and No for an Answer. He completed translations and adaptations of Brecht's and Weill's musical play Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and of Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her Children with music by Paul Dessau. Blitzstein also composed music for films, such as Surf and Seaweed (1931) and The Spanish Earth (1937), and he contributed two songs to the original 1960 production of Hellman's play Toys in the Attic."2

Charles Gilbert, author of the Substack account Making Musicals Matter and the first director of the University of the Arts’ musical theater program in the Ira Brind School of Theater Arts, noted that UArts had produced “Cradle” in the Fall 2007 semester and that the production had been selected for the American College Theater Festival. There should be plenty of UArts alumni who remember that.

One of Blitzstein’s closest friends was Leonard Bernstein, who gave Blitzstein’s work, Airborne Symphony, its premiere in 1946.3 Bernstein "expressed dismay in 1976 at 'the rapidity with which his name’s been forgotten,' calling him 'the greatest master of the setting of the American language to music.'"4

Openly gay, Blitzstein was murdered in 1964 in what was very likely a hate crime on the island of Martinique after meeting three sailors in a bar.5 His death had originally been announced as being due to a car accident, but the news was soon released that he had been beaten to death. Blitzstein had initially survived the beating but died a few weeks later due to undiagnosed internal injuries.

To learn more about Blitzstein and hear his work performed visit Marc Blitzstein: Official Website of Composer Marc Blitzstein from the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music. Several books have been written about Blitzstein:

Gordon, Eric A. Mark the Music: The Life and Work of Marc Blitzstein, cited below in footnote 1.

Pollack, Howard (2012). Marc Blitzstein: His Life, His Work, His World. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199977086.

Schmid, Rebecca. Weill, Blitzstein, and Bernstein: A Study of Influence. (Eastman Studies in Music.) University of Rochester Press, 2023. https://search.worldcat.org/title/1356894331

For the completist, there is

Lehrman, Leonard. Marc Blitzstein: A Bio-Bibliography. Praeger, 2005.

Among the early board members and administrators of the Pennsylvania Museum & School of Industrial Art (PMSIA, the school of which was later the University of the Arts’ art college), one of my top-five favorites is the indomitable Elizabeth Duane Gillespie (1821-1901). I think it very likely that few did more for the school than she did.

The great-granddaughter of Benjamin Franklin and the daughter of William John Duane (Stephen Girard’s attorney), Gillespie was a powerhouse in Philadelphia society. A tireless organizer and fundraiser, her first major success was the 1864 Great Central Sanitary Fair, a three-week event that raised millions ($1,010,976 in 1864, about $20,000,000 today) for the U.S. Sanitary Commission, a forerunner to today’s Red Cross.

As a result of the display of her administrative skills at the 1864 Sanitary Fair, she was asked to raise money for the Centennial Exhibition, an event that would showcase Philadelphia to the world. Gillespie, asked to head of the Women’s Centennial Executive Committee, agreed to do so on the condition that there would be a Women’s Pavilion, and this was agreed to by the male organizers, but after Gillespie’s committee of women had raised the money they were then told this would not be possible. Undeterred, they raised additional money, and the Centennial’s Women’s Pavilion was the first women’s building at any world’s fair. (See the books Philadelphia: A 300-Year History and The Fair Women (which focuses mostly on the 1893 Columbian Exposition but mentions Gillespie in the foreword)).

As a result of the Centennial, the Pennsylvania Museum & School of Industrial Art (PMSIA) was founded in 1876, and the PMSIA Associate Committee of Women was formed in 1883 with Gillespie as president, an office she held until she died. A 19th-century associate committee of women may sound like tea parties and such, but the PMSIA Associate Committee of Women was a vital fundraising body focused on the students. The women’s committee was originally primarily concerned with the school, raising money for prizes and scholarships and looking out for the welfare of the students. Costume parties and teas and dances took place every year to raise money. Mrs. Gillespie handed out the prizes and diplomas herself at every commencement. Alas, when the school and the museum separated in 1964, the Women’s Committee went with the museum, where they now organize events such as the Craft Show.

It can be inferred that Mrs. Gillespie’s strong advocacy of women’s rights contributed to the PMSIA trustees’ decision that both men and women could enroll as students when classes opened in 1877. An undated unsourced newspaper clipping in a scrapbook at the Philadelphia Museum of Art archives tells us:

“A REMARKABLE BLUNDER

We published on Saturday the names of the gentlemen who have been elected Trustees of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art. More eminently respectable gentlemen than these Philadelphia does not possess, and among the twenty names are at least five who have done much to encourage the fine arts in Philadelphia.

The institution of which these gentlemen have been elected trustees is designed to make the permanent buildings erected by the State of Pennsylvania on the Centennial grounds an enduring memorial of the great event which it has been erected to celebrate by establishing in it a Museum and School of Industrial Art. The purpose is a happy one, and but for the remarkable blunder which characterizes the organization, would deserve the cordial support of the public. Memorial Hall must not be a mere empty, dead monument of the National centenary. It must be a living expression of American growth and progress, and no better department of that progress could be selected for the purpose than that of Industrial Art.

But the remarkable blunder perpetrated at the threshold of the enterprise will not only rob it of half its interest, but will seriously jeopardize its success. We refer to the studied exclusion of women from an undertaking in which there is a peculiar fitness that they should bear a conspicuous part. [emphasis is mine]

Passing by the obvious argument drawn from the large share which woman has in the development of industrial art, so large and important as to place her right to representation in such a body as this beyond the reach of any logical opposition, we call this attempt to ignore woman in any memorial of the Centennial a most remarkable blunder, because without her there would be nothing to commemorate. There are certain facts in the history of the Centennial enterprise that cannot now be undone or re-written; they must stand forever, as the proofs of what woman’s work was in bringing about the great celebration that is to concentre the world’s attention and interest upon America next year.

It was the women who were chiefly instrumental in securing Philadelphia’s subscription of a million dollars, at a time when success turned upon that subscription [emphasis mine]. There was a certain Monday morning, still fresh in the recollection of the Centennial Board of Finance, when that body called upon the women for help in bringing a proper expression of public sentiment to bear upon Councils to influence that appropriation. The men had no organization to effect the desired object, but the women had. The cause was stated, the telegraphic wires were set to work, the women’s ward committees were quickly converged, and on the following Thursday petitions signed by sixty thousand persons went in to Councils and satisfied them that the appropriation was demanded by the popular voice. The women did that. … 1

Did Mrs. Gillespie have a hand in writing the above? I don’t know, but it was certainly the women’s committee that aided in making sure the Centennial took place in Philadelphia. I like to think that she would have insisted that women be admitted to the school - which they were.

One might think she would have worked for women’s suffrage, but she disappointed Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and scores of other women at the Centennial by placing a National Woman Suffrage Association’s exhibit in a hidden corner.2

Given how much she did, I always imagined her, fairly or not, as a person who was hell on wheels around town. It’s difficult to accomplish a great deal without ruffling feathers. One Centennial committee member described her as “the imperial wizard, the arch-tycoon” of the Centennial.3 Another source said “She is a woman of great talent but it did not take long for those who had business with her to find out that she was dictatorial and disagreeable.”4 Following an argument over a piece of art submitted for display in the Women’s Pavilion that was rejected by Gillespie, someone remarked

she rules with a rod of iron and everyone who approaches is meekly submissive to any commands she may give. Commissioners and all fear her and tremble in her presence, and are careful not to interrupt her in any plans.5

Whatever her personality, she worked tirelessly for the school, as expressed in this newspaper article.

Following her death on October 13, 1901, the PMSIA annual report for 1901-02 was filled with words of praise for her. In that same report the Associate Committee of Women says:

A great shadow fell upon the Committee at the October meeting when we heard of the illness of our President, Mrs. Gillespie, and very shortly afterward the notice of her death came to us. She was gone ! She who was the originator, the heart and centre of the whole work, and the source from which came the impetus to do our best, and for a time we felt as if the end of the work too must come ; but we took heart of grace and have gone steadily on with that work which was so near to her heart.

https://archive.org/details/annualreport190200penn/page/57/mode/1up?q=gillespie

The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania put out a 4-page booklet to memorialize Gillespie, saying that:

Endowed with a strong personality which impressed itself on every one with whom she came in contact, she was essentially human, her very faults were the shadows of her virtues—a good hater makes a good lover. Her keen sense of humour and her brilliant wit can never be forgotten—and withal she walked humbly with her God.

Source: https://www.familysearch.org/library/books/records/item/775863-in-memoriam-elizabeth-duane-gillespie-1821-1901

— Sara MacDonald, author. A UArts librarian, 1987-2020.

If you want to know more about Gillespie see her autobiography, A Book of Remembrance, published 1901. Krista Kinslow’s 2019 dissertation, Contesting the Centennial: Politics and Culture at the 1876 World’s Fair, is a good recent source on the Centennial. For more about the Centennial try these sources.

Brown, Dee. The Year of the Century: 1876. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1966.

Cordato, Mary Frances. “Toward A New Century: Women and The Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, 1876.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 107, No. 1 (Jan., 1983), pp. 113-135.

Gilberti, Bruno. Designing the Centennial: A History of the 1876 International Exhibition in Philadelphia. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2002.

Kinslow, Krista. Contesting the Centennial: Politics and Culture at the 1876 World’s Fair. 2019. Boston University, PhD dissertation. https://open.bu.edu/items/47b07376-c325-4e16-8b9a-bba3d93d0990

Maass, John. The Glorious Enterprise: The Centennial Exhibition of 1876 and H.J. Schwarzmann, Architect-in-Chief. Watkins Glen, New York: American Life Foundation, 1973.

Nash, Gary B. First City: Philadelphia and the Forging of Historical Memory. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

Orcutt, Kimberly. Power & Posterity: American Art at Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exhibition. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017.

Rydell, Robert. All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876-1916. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

This made me think about packaging design, which always makes me think of the book, How to Wrap 5 Eggs: Japanese Design in Traditional Packaging (1967), by Hideyuki Oka, an always-popular title in the University of the Arts Greenfield Library.

This book makes me think of another popular UArts Greenfield Library title, Open Here: The Art of Instructional Design. Not the same thing, but really fun to look at. We’ve all read terrible instruction manuals and can appreciate good instructions.

But what I’m really getting to is the famous Philadelphia College of Art (later UArts) egg drop, an event created by the Industrial Design Department and featured often in the newspapers as another kooky art school event. The 1981 event pictured below was for a summer school class for high school students.

The egg drop went back to at least 1964, when Industrial Design students dropped their eggs from the rear of the Haviland building.

And finally, among the University of the Arts archival clippings and photos now held at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, we have this image, circa 1965, likely taken during an Industrial Design Education Association conference or seminar - note the signs on the left. Industrial design faculty member Joseph A. Carreiro, who deserves a longer write-up, was a force behind creating this organization.

Did you participate in the egg drop? Did your egg make it?

— Sara MacDonald, author. A UArts librarian, 1987-2020.

So what’s the big deal? Why does it matter? It matters because someone will cite that source containing the misinformation. The misinformation gets repeated, and each repetition reinforces the misinformation until it seems like the wrong information is the right information, and you have to be really determined to track down the correct information (dogged determination is one of my attributes).

Case in point: a February 6, 2025, article in the Philadelphia Inquirer by Susan Snyder and Jake Blumgart stated

“Hamilton [Hall] and Furness were given to UArts for $1 in 1994, city records show.” [this is wrong]

What!! The City of Philadelphia never gave UArts a building for a dollar. The Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art (PMSIA, founded 1876), the original name of the UArts art school, purchased what I now think of as the John Haviland/Frank Furness complex at 320 South Broad Street in 1893 from the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf and Dumb (today’s Pennsylvania School for the Deaf). As a matter of fact, according to the PMSIA annual report for 1893 pictured below, it was considered “the greatest event” thus far in PMSIA’s history.

So why did someone think those buildings were a gift from the City? Someone misinterpreted a 1994 confirmation deed to specify lot lines, registered with the City of Philadelphia. The deed was from the University to itself. I don’t know why this was done, but my guess would be that perhaps it was connected to the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 1988 purchase of the ARCO Park lot just north of the Haviland/Furness building. The ARCO Park site would eventually be covered over by the Kimmel Center.

The moral of this story: verify your facts before you put them in writing. Otherwise you’ll have to be like me and write about That Time I Was Wrong.

— Sara MacDonald, author. A UArts librarian, 1987-2020.

Did you know that the UArts School of Music wasn’t always a jazz-based curriculum? Like most music colleges, the bulk of the curriculum was classical music for many years. The change, instigated by School of Music director Marc Dicciani, began in 1992 and was complete by 1994.1 It was quite controversial and made the news. Below is the text from a UArts Music Library Reading Room Notes newsletter, number 4-5, in which the faculty/alumni named above are interviewed by librarian Mark Germer and alumni Aaron Meicht and Lars Halle. Enjoy!

Please note: this content is available digitally via the UArts material on the Internet Archive, a project done in 2010 by the UArts Libraries. The UArts archives are now held by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia.

The Origins and Development of Jazz at UArts: Conversations with School of Music Faculty

On four different occasions between May and November 2002, the Music Library staff asked individual members of the full-time music faculty to reminisce about the development of jazz performance and instruction in the School of Music. The same questions were put to Profs. Evan Solot [UArts Class of 1967], Ron Kerber [UArts Class of 1980], Bill Zaccagni, and Marc Dicciani [UArts Class of 1975], although our conversations were separate, and the responses naturally emphasized different areas of interest. Here we have compiled their answers, editing them for concision and clarity. Also we have spelled out abbreviated titles and corrected a few names without comment, and reconciled conflicting dates when we could identify them. Throughout we have tried to preserve the informal tone of the conversations.


We asked about the early years.

Marc Dicciani (MD): More than anybody, Evan Solot is the single person credited with championing the jazz program. And championing is probably a suitable descriptor because during those years there was a great sentiment against such things. There was a lot of resistance to it early on, mostly philosophical, not so much budgetary. Certainly in those days jazz was not a respected area of conservatory study.

Evan Solot (ES): I came to the Philadelphia Musical Academy as a student during the years 1962 through 1967. When I was a student there was some jazz but it was not officially recognized by the school. The saxophonist Vince Trombetta and the trumpet player Mike Natale were both at the school. They were students already playing jazz. We were always trying to start something. I had experience in starting big bands from when I was a junior in high school. There was a University of Pennsylvania graduate [student] named Jimmy DePreist [now well-known as an orchestra conductor] who was also a drummer. When I was in high school I called him, and he said he would get together a youth band if we would take care of auditioning. We put up notices in all the high schools around the city and set up auditions. Vince Trombetta played in that band. So, when I came to PMA, I worked toward two degrees, a music education degree with a trumpet major and an applied music degree with a composition major. I was studying composition with [Professor] Joseph Castaldo. During my senior year we talked him into letting us have a big band for no credit under the guidance of a faculty member, Peter Lewis, a theory teacher who played some jazz piano.

MD: When I was in high school one of the best jazz festivals in the country was held nearby at Villanova [University]. I went out there on two occasions to hear the PMA Big Band play, and they won the festival [competition]. They also had a small group; Mike Pedicin, Evan, Jimmy Paxson, Stanley Clarke, Sunnie Paxson and maybe a few other students also played. But that was a student-organized thing. They won the festival competition for small group too, and that was a pretty prestigious thing. They had also gone to the Glassboro Jazz Festival. I knew of the PMA Big Band because I was keenly interested in coming to the School; my teacher, Paul Patterson, was also the teacher of Jimmy Paxson, in those days a legend. [University of] Notre Dame at that point hosted the “finals” of college jazz festivals. It was one of the most important [competitions] in the country and the PMA Big Band went there a couple of times.

Bill Zaccagni (BZ): I knew Evan Solot from when I was in high school. Evan studied trumpet with my high school band director who was on faculty at PMA--Tony Marchione--and Evan used to write arrangements for our high school jazz band.


We then asked how the program began to take formal shape.

ES: The year after I graduated [1967], Castaldo decided to experiment and offer the Big Band for credit. I was teaching in the Philadelphia public schools, and came down here two afternoons a week and rehearsed the band offered for credit for the first time. Well, what happened was that we had all this success in the first year, with magazines writing about and praising our great band! Castaldo was looking for a worthy pursuit as another extension of getting the school’s name “out there” and attracting people.

MD: The band was pretty famous then, and they brought a lot of notoriety to the School, not all of which was well received by the rest of the faculty. Some of them were becoming concerned that PMA was becoming known as a school that promoted or condoned this “jazz” thing. This is the time that the festival we are now planning is designed to commemorate. So, 35 years ago the students had a band, but what they wanted to have was the imprimatur from the School, as in the official name Philadelphia Musical Academy Festival Band. They were playing and rehearsing, but they weren’t going out and representing the school and they wanted to. 1967 was the year that they asked for and got the official “ok” from the School to use the name. Joseph Castaldo, who was president during those years, was first and foremost a composer and didn’t really have anything against jazz. He liked Evan a lot and he liked the people who were playing and teaching jazz. So he kind of took up the charge a little bit and allowed it to grow.

BZ: I was still in college at Temple University at the time. In 1967 they didn’t have a saxophone major at PMA. It wasn’t until the next year that Vince Trombetta started the saxophone major. Until then, if students wanted to play saxophone they would come in as clarinet majors with a saxophone minor. There were few college jazz programs around at that point; basically, North Texas State [University] had a program since 1947--they had the “Dance Band” major, as it was called--and Berklee [College of Music] was already in existence. As far as I know there were not many schools of music trying to build any kind of jazz program. I was envious, being at Temple, because we were barely allowed to say the word [jazz] there.

Ron Kerber (RK): Vince Trombetta’s background was “classical”, but he was a great jazz musician and commercial musician, so when he started the sax major it was an “American Saxophone” major as opposed to a classical or jazz major. You learned how to play saxophone and woodwinds in order to make a living. I started as a student here in the fall of 1975. But I’d made my mind up in ninth grade that I wanted to be part of that. The faculty always had a reputation, and it still does: those are the guys who are playing. The guys who are teaching are also the guys performing throughout the area. At least in terms of jazz and commercial music. This was a place that there was a lot of buzz about. It was the place where there were ensembles performing really good jazz, and where the teachers were good jazz musicians.

ES: There was even a time when we had three big bands and lots of small groups. And the thing that was different then--that I miss--is that the same people who played in the Big Band also played in the orchestra, and that was such a wonderful thing to have. It was so much richer. In those days there were more people, say woodwind players, who were more interested in being “doublers” than they are today, because they could make a living in the theater. I remember a saxophone player named Alfie Williams--he later played with Mongo Santamaria--who also played flute and bassoon. The classical teachers who were sensitive to jazz--such as Adeline Tomassone, a flute player--taught a lot of jazz performance majors. So, for instance, I could write for four flutes and bassoon in the sax section and know that they were going to be played by people who were seriously studying those instruments.

MD: We were known at one point as a school that really taught and embraced all kinds of contemporary music. Andrew Rudin, Castaldo, Theodore Antoniou, going all the way back to Vincent Persichetti: all of those people were obviously very “pro 20th century”. Their focus was not conservative. Even when we had the orchestra it was programming some pretty novel pieces. There were always “two different kinds of mindsets” coexisting, maybe uncomfortably, but I think to the benefit of the students. Just being in that stimulating environment was something you can’t get from a recording or a score or a book.

RK: There was a division. There is still a division. As open-minded as this school was, there was a division that often happens when people are fearful of their own territory. There was a jazz snobbery, and what I would call a “classical” snobbery that existed in the mid ‘70s and later. There were so-called “legitters” and “jazzers”, but there were also good musicians who crossed over, playing in both jazz groups and in new music ensembles and in the orchestra.


As the program continued to evolve, local interest from outside the School grew.

BZ: I left school and went on the road for a year with a bus-and-truck-tour Broadway show called Promises, Promises. I came back and led the Big Band at Temple University for one year, for no pay, in 1972-73. Jim Herbert was the guy who had been in charge of it. I wound up conducting the band and writing for it. We had a great trumpet section: Earl Gardner, Stu Satalof, Rick Kerber, Jeff Jarvis, and Kevin Rogers.

ES: I remember hearing Bill’s band at Temple for the first time. They blew me away--how good that Temple band was. I was just really impressed with what he was doing.

BZ: In the mid ‘70s Evan called me and asked me to come in and sub for a guy named John Davis, who was on faculty, with the third big band. As a matter of fact, Mike Quaile, who is now on the faculty, was the guitar player in that band. I was eventually hired in 1979, when [Dean] Clem Petrillo was still head of the school, to lead the Big Band and to teach Jazz History. I was not [yet] a saxophone teacher.


We were curious about rehearsal facilities.

MD: We rehearsed in the 313 South Broad Street building, which no longer exists. On the second floor there was a big rehearsal room. In those early days there was only one drum set--which wasn’t even four pieces of the same set--that we had to take out of the closet to play and then put back. Outside of when the ensemble was rehearsing we weren’t allowed to play the drums. There was no drum set in any practice room.

RK: I have fond memories of also rehearsing in a [former] carriage house behind the music building [313]. It’s where Evan’s office was and it’s where the jazz bands rehearsed. It was a carriage house for [what had been] a hotel. It was basically a big garage, and it was the jazz “getaway.”

ES: We rehearsed there because it was a separate building and the noise didn’t bother anybody else. At one point we also rehearsed in the basement of 313, and when you turned the lights on the roaches would all scatter.

BZ: When I first came on we were in 313, Music Library and all. We rehearsed in the basement which had no air conditioning and no heat, and every time it rained the rugs got moldy. It was a brutal place to rehearse.

MD: I remember playing on the roof one day [at 313] in December when it started to snow flurry. I brought a snare drum up and was playing with brushes and Stanley Clarke was playing bass. Allen Goldenberg brought his alto [saxophone] up and the three of us were playing on the roof because we weren’t allowed to go into a practice room and play jazz.

ES: I have an early recollection of the first time we asked for a jazz group to play in Performance Hour--the equivalent of what we now call First Wednesday. It was a weekly thing. It was a chance for people to play in front of their peers, and the first instance of jazz at the school, officially, was a jazz group playing [in] Performance Hour and [then assistant dean, and original PMA president] Maria Ezerman-Drake rang the fire alarm--emptied the whole school onto the street. She didn’t want to hear that music in the School.


A full curriculum slowly started to gel, beginning with the ensembles as a locus of jazz education.

MD: Initially the only jazz opportunity [formally] was to play in the big band; then after some years there came to be a second big band. That was a period when maybe jazz wasn’t yet so worthy of study at a very deep level in a university setting. I think the way that we’ve promoted or grown the jazz program today makes a lot of sense now. I don’t know how much sense it would have made to have had a full-blown jazz program in a college or university setting in those days. We started with just the [Big] Band, and I think by the time I was a junior they offered a jazz history class and a jazz arranging class. Evan taught them both.

ES: When I became a full-time faculty member in 1970-71, Larry McKenna and Mike Natale taught jazz improvisation. I taught a jazz history course the first time soon after that.

BZ: There were some supplemental theory and composition courses that had a jazz slant to them.

ES: We started adding courses and got to the point where we put enough courses together to have what we called Jazz Emphasis, which was a two-year program.

MD: The first year we had a Jazz Emphasis was 1976. There were more courses and it was ok to take lessons with a teacher who also played jazz, and you could take those lessons as part of your instrument major. People like Bob DiNardo and Vince Trombetta were jazz players, though they were classically trained, and they were teaching “classical” music as well, but they were allowed to incorporate more jazz into their lessons. But you still couldn’t be a jazz major, and the jury requirements were all classically based.

BZ: We started to move towards a jazz major in the early-to-mid ‘80s. And at that point some people came on specifically to teach drum set. Joe Nero came in to teach drums and percussion. Domenick Fiore came on to teach bass. Ed Flanagan, who is now the head of the [jazz] program at Temple, was on the guitar faculty here.

ES: There seemed to be enough interest to put more things together and get a whole four-year jazz program. So the Jazz Emphasis billowed out and became a Jazz Major. Many of the best former students were asked to stay on as teachers: Ron Kerber, Tony Salicondro, Dennis Wasko, Edward Simon, Marc Dicciani; and later Steve Beskrone, Sam Dockery, Tony Miceli and Chris Farr.

BZ: George Akerley was here as a student and played piano in Evan’s band. He was comfortable doing anything, from figured bass on the harpsichord to Moog synthesizers. George wound up on the faculty here. The trombonist Robin Eubanks also comes to mind as a former student who is comfortable in a lot of different idioms.

RK: By the time I graduated it was a foregone conclusion that a jazz major was going to happen. It’s what the School excelled at. The classical programs had great teachers and great musicians, but in an age of specialization, our students weren’t graduating and playing in major symphonic orchestras. If you were going to specialize in that, there were other places to go. But the players who were coming out of this School were in the commercial world. You could look around in any pit orchestra and see the musicians were trained at PMA/PCPA. And many of the people who were going to be performing in the commercial world were graduating from this School.

BZ: To this day--and this is no exaggeration--any gig I go on, fifty to seventy-five percent of the orchestra or band has an association with this School.


The School endured some difficult times.

RK: By the time I was a student in the mid ‘70s, there were 35-36 saxophone majors at a very small school. And I think this is interesting historically: by the early ‘80s it was “broken”. For various reasons the school was broken, and at a low point, in many ways, I think. And it didn’t have the identity it once had. The energy wasn’t there, the spark wasn’t there. But by the mid ‘80s there was what I would call the “second generation” of the jazz program. We got very serious about recruitment. It was really a lot of the will [on the part] of the faculty to go out to different high schools and festivals for recruitment, trying to bring in a better level of student, and also trying to raise the bar while they were here. And by the early ‘90s there were thirty-some saxophone majors again, and the same thing was happening with guitar and percussion.

BZ: We [the jazz faculty] were trying to go out and perform as much as we could, to make that impact, and to make the connections. We also had former students, now going out and teaching or working with jazz bands in the local schools, or getting full-time jobs in area school districts.

MD: As the director, Castaldo was using a different prism to try to understand what was going on. There was a disconnect with respect to jazz. But he was always supportive of the jazz program and he was a really great guy. I think the program was in place by the time Don Chittum came in as director.

RK: Although you may not consider him jazz faculty, Don Chittum was always the one who had the most open of minds, and just wanted to nurture people in any way that they needed to be nurtured. When he was director, he took that to the next level. When Marc Dicciani took over as director, he had some very difficult [economic] decisions to make. Sleepless nights. That whole period was difficult. But I really think that the problem turned into an opportunity.

MD: When we had to let go of the orchestral programs, we all considered it a loss because of how much both populations really benefited from each other.


We asked how the jazz program today continues to evolve.

BZ: There have been some very crucial and very basic changes to the program, as we keep trying to make sure we’re on the same page. Now, as the curriculum has developed we’ve been able to make adjustments and move at our own pace. I’d like to believe we can get away from referring to courses as having a “jazz” prefix in front of them. We are who we are at this point. The educational values are still there.

MD: We’re trying to help people to become educated and trained in music, but also to be educated and trained in a larger context. We’ve made curricular changes, and we’re not done making curricular changes, to try to create this balance of skills. We are training people who are going to go out and, for the rest of their lives, work in music, so we need to give them those basic skills. We’ve enhanced those skills, but in so doing we’ve tried to put more critical thought into the individual training process. If you look at where we are now, we’re in this continuum of redefining what a music school should do, what our social responsibilities are. When I look at the jazz program now, I don’t want to separate it from music education--I don’t want to separate it from a university education. One of the foremost things we are trying to do is produce critical thinkers who can assimilate into society and be successful.

BZ: The real question is, “Why is a jazz program necessary?” What does it offer? I think [jazz] has become a huge umbrella that covers many styles.

MD: We are really talking about supporting the individual, letting people think differently, providing opportunities for them to find out not only what kind of music they want to make, but also what kind of people they want to be. Only three-quarters of our students’ studies are in music; inside of the understanding and analysis of music [that this part of their curriculum offers] is also an understanding and analysis of the individual. A jazz program can help build the inner voice, build individual confidence, through improvisation, composition, musical creativity.

There are a lot of fundamental differences between ours and an orchestral training program, but the basis for the difference really is that we use, as a body of information, literature--to form technique and all the elements of control on your instrument and development and style and interpretation and theory and eartraining and composition and form and analysis--we use, instead of the European tradition, a hundred years of a jazz tradition as the foundation.

BZ: It’s important to remember that there’s nothing wrong with a traditional approach, with paying tribute to what has happened in keeping the music alive. But, you have to be careful that the message you’re sending is not that we have to go back and do this over again. When traditionalism becomes the main focus, that is a problem.

MD: The arts require encouraging our students to take risks. Being conservative and traditional is not our mission, was not our mission before, but especially not now in a university setting. If that were our goal, then we’d better change our name to A University of Some of the Arts. I don’t think that’s what we’re supposed to be doing. We’re The University of the Arts--what a bold name that is--and we’d better live up to our name.

— Sara MacDonald, author. A UArts librarian, 1987-2020.

On October 15, 1908, Stevenson began a Course for the Training of Curators at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art (PMSIA, later the UArts College of Art, Media & Design. The syllabus for the two-year course is included in the PMSIA annual report for 1908.

Stevenson (better known in the newspapers of the day as Mrs. Cornelius Stevenson) had by then had a long career at the Penn Museum, but left there in 1905. She became a member of the PMSIA Associate Committee of Women in 1907, and by 1908 was an assistant curator at the Pennsylvania Museum & School of Industrial Art and teaching the Course for the Training of Curators. She taught the course until her death on November 14, 1921, and the course ended with her. The Evening Bulletin (Tuesday, 15 Nov 1921, p. 3) obituary for her remarked “Mrs. Stevenson had frequently been referred to as one of Philadelphia’s cleverest women. Few women occupying her high social position in this city have led busier lives and have been more prominently identified with society, club, and other activities of this city.” She wrote a newspaper column, served as president of the Civic Club and engaged in many civic and educational efforts.

Stevenson’s efforts went far beyond her teaching at PMSIA. Read her Wikipedia page or this article from the Penn Museum’s Expedition Magazine, or see her obituary in the Pennsylvania Museum Bulletin, February 1922 (#70), p. [2]-4.

In a very interesting it’s-a-small-world coincidence, Mrs. Stevenson has other incidental links to UArts. Her son and only child, William York Stevenson, married Christine Wetherill in 1908. Christine Wetherill was quite a character and merits her own story, but part of the UArts connection is that her father was Samuel Price Wetherill, Sr., who had a mansion constructed at 251 South 18th Street. This address was later the home of Philadelphia Art Alliance, of which Christine Wetherill Stevenson was the founder. The Art Alliance “merged” with the University of the Arts in 2018, followed by UArts’ financial failure and closure in 2024. The building was sold to the Curtis Institute of Music and then suffered a terrible fire on July 4, 2025.

But we’ll keep going for one more coincidental connection: Christine Wetherill’s sister, painter Georgine Wetherill, married Charles Shillard Smith, and was known as Mrs. C. Shillard-Smith. Mrs. C. Shillard-Smith, along with our Mrs. Stevenson, served on the PMSIA Associate Committee of Women until she died. Mrs. C. Shillard-Smith’s daughter, Christine “Tina” Shillard-Smith Leser (better known as Tina Leser). In 1955 she and alumnus Irving Penn were given the first Silver Star Alumni awards.

Once you start looking at the people behind the institutions, everything (and everyone) starts to connect.

— Sara MacDonald, author. A UArts librarian, 1987-2020.

Are you in any of these photos? Please identify yourself if yes.

— Sara MacDonald, author. A UArts librarian, 1987-2020.

The shirt is meant to be funny because art schools don’t have football teams - or do they? I was often asked about this and one day in 2017 sent out a UArts history email.

Here’s my email from 2017:

A conversation among staff today brought me back to the topic of whether or not UArts has a mascot (not officially, is the answer), and if we are, in fact, “Undefeated Since 1876” like the shirt in the School Store says. It turns out that there’s some truth to being undefeated.

An item in a Pennsylvania Museum & School of Industrial Art (today’s UArts College of Art, Media and Design) student publication from 1936 is entitled “P.M.S.I.A. Blanks Academy 18-0”, and dramatically (and tongue in cheek: “Sweeping up from the south, like a phalanx of Roman warriors...”) recounts the football game incidents on and off the field. The Academy mentioned is the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. (I particularly like the cheers.) Alumnus William H. Campbell (Class of 1937) donated this and other materials to the archives, now held at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Campbell noted, “We also beat the Academy at Ping Pong.”

Further proof our students' athletic prowess appears in a 1964 yearbook for the Philadelphia Musical Academy (PMA), today’s UArts School of Music. PMA played the Philadelphia Museum College of Art (yet another name change, but still today’s UArts College of Art, Media & Design) twice, with both games ended in a tie (12-12 and 2-2). The PMA students did beat the art school students in a basketball game (score: 72-65), but now that we’re all one institution we can honestly say that (as far as we know) we remain undefeated since 1876.

As for a mascot, none of the UArts predecessor schools ever had one, and there is still no officially adopted mascot. In the past there was the "Aartvark" (it was rather hideous), and there's a current belief that the unicorn is a UArts mascot, but that remains unofficial. The closest we've come seems to be the "A and T" (Art and Textile) baseball shirts from back when what is now Philadelphia University (then Philadelphia Textile School) was part of part of the art school (from 1883-1949).

There had also been quite a good volleyball team at UArts in the 1990s.

No mascot?? Not until September 30, 2019, when the official adoption of Arty the Unicorn as the UArts mascot was announced. Arty was designed by alumnus Ryan Penn, UArts design director.

And for the final UArts Day of Giving in 2024, Jenna Ellis (Illustration, Class of 2024) designed some very cool unicorn socks.

— Sara MacDonald, author. A UArts librarian, 1987-2020.

The future:

This is surely one of the saddest posts (for me) that I’ll ever write. If you’re unaware, the institution I write about, the University of the Arts (UArts) in Philadelphia, closed with a horrible crash on June 7, 2024. The closure was announced on Friday, May 30, 2024, two weeks after what would turn out to be UArts’ last commencement ceremony on May 16. Ugh. Nevertheless, February 26, 2026, is still the 150th anniversary of the founding of UArts.

In my first University of the Arts History Substack post I outlined the history of the school through a list of the name changes and mergers so no need to do that again, but, in brief, the art school of UArts began as the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (PMSIA), chartered on February 26, 1876, in order to take advantage of purchasing items at the Centennial Exhibition for the museum-to-be, and to establish a school of industrial art meant to serve Philadelphia’s great industries.

If you know me, you know I love the Centennial. I think one element that made the Centennial so successful is that it focused on the future. Subsequent markings of American milestones, such as the 1926 Sesquicentennial and the 1976 Bicentennial, seem to have been much more concerned with history, especially Philadelphia’s colonial history. Colonial, schmolonial - look at Philadelphia in 1876! And look to the future.

The museum is today’s Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the School of Industrial Art was of course UArts’ art school. Many Philadelphians are unaware that the Philadelphia Museum of Art and UArts began as one institution under the name Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, but it’s a fact. Though never housed in the same building, they were absolutely one body until 1964 when the school and museum separated, the school becoming Philadelphia College of Art (PCA) (again, later UArts). Another institution that had been part of PMSIA was Jefferson University’s second campus, which began as PMSIA's textile school. The textile school, which served one of Philadelphia's most important industries, separated from PMSIA in 1949 and moved to its current campus in the East Falls neighborhood of Philadelphia.

The UArts performing arts programs date back to 1870 when the Philadelphia Musical Academy was founded, followed in 1877 by the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music and in 1944 by the Philadelphia Dance Academy. These institutions merged to form Philadelphia College of the Performing Arts (PCPA). PCA and PCPA merged in 1985, and in 1987 one final name change was put in place: the University of the Arts.

So what is the bright future? The design and development firm, Scout Ltd., purchased the Haviland/Furness building complex in 2025 and has relaunched it as the Village of Industry and Art (@villageofindustryandart). Among the entities interested in the Haviland/Furness complex, I feel that this is surely the best possible outcome of the UArts debacle. The intention is to fill the buildings with artists as well as artist housing. Early tenants include Black Star Film Festival, AIA Philadelphia, DesignPhiladelphia, and Monument Lab. A number of UArts alumni have already started projects in the Village: The Ceramics Department and The Stained Glass Project: Windows That Open Doors. The first art exhibit, meant to mark the 150th anniversary, opens tonight, February 26, 2026, 5pm-8pm, with work by alumna Kay S. Healy, “Don’t Trash a Good Thing”

The exhibit is presented by Paradigm Gallery and Studio, run by two more UArts alumni.

I’ll be going. It will be difficult and sad to re-enter the buildings, but I’m excited to look to the future. Thank you, Scout Ltd, and thank you, Village of Industry and Art!

— Sara MacDonald, author. A UArts librarian, 1987-2020.

Freelon attended the South Philadelphia High School for Boys, followed by a four-year scholarship (1912–1916) to the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, later the University of the Arts, from which he graduated in 1916 with a diploma in normal art instruction (what would be called art education today).1 From there he attended the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy, an upper division of Central High School created to prepare men for teaching careers. Following a stint in the Army from 1917 to 1919, where he served as a second lieutenant, he attended the University of Pennsylvania and graduated in February 1924 with a BS in education. Further studies ensued at the Barnes Foundation (1927 through 1929), followed by private studies with Emile Gruppe, modernist Earl Horter (1881–1940), neo-Impressionist Hugh Breckenridge (1870–1937), and printmaker Dox Thrash (1892–1965), and the earning of an MFA in 1943 from Tyler School of Art of Temple University.

One of Freelon’s earliest documented exhibitions also happened to be the first exhibition of African-American art in Harlem, at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library, now part of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. He later exhibited from 1928 to 1932 and in 1934 with the William E. Harmon Foundation,2 whose exhibitions traveled widely in the United States. Other exhibition venues included the Albright-Knox Gallery (Buffalo, NY), the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), Howard University Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), New Jersey State Museum (Trenton, NJ), Arthur U. Newton Gallery (New York, NY), Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY), Lincoln University, and Lehigh Art Alliance (Lehigh, PA).

Freelon was one of seven African-American artists who participated in the exhibition Art Commentary on Lynching, organized by the NAACP in response to deaths such as that of Claude Neal. The exhibition was held February 15 to March 2, 1935, in New York. Freelon’s work, Barbecue – American Style, portrays a naked man, tortured and in flames, encircled by the feet of spectators. He wrote:

I have not attempted to portray any particular lynching, but merely to record the horror of what has come to be a major sports event... 3

Freelon was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, Philadelphia Art Teachers Association, Philadelphia Art Week Association, Artists’ Equity, Tra Club, Pyramid Club, Society of New Jersey Artists, North Shore Art Association of Gloucester, MA, American Federation of Arts, and was the first person of color elected to the Print Club of Philadelphia.He served as an editor of and contributor to the short-lived Philadelphia-based literary and art magazine, Black Opals.

You can see all four issues of Black Opals at https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=blackopals

Formed in 1937, the Pyramid Club provided prominent African Americans, who were excluded from most clubs, with opportunities to meet and network. From March 2–16, 1941, the Pyramid Club sponsored the first of its annual invitational art exhibits, 20th Century Negro Contemporary Artists and Memorial Paintings of Henry O. Tanner. Freelon was asked to speak at the inaugural event, and discussed the role of the Black artist and his influence in current events. Freelon exhibited often with artist Henry B. Jones in shows in Philadelphia. He, Laura Wheeler Waring and Henry B. Jones provided artwork for an exhibition by the Negro Study Club at the Berean School in 1930.

Coming of artistic age during the time of the “New Negro“, Freelon found himself in aesthetic disagreement with fellow Philadelphian Alain LeRoy Locke, who urged African American artists to take up African themes as the source for their art in The New Negro (NY: Boni, 1925). Freelon “vigorously defended the artist’s right to freedom of expression”, writing in a 1944 review of James A. Porter’s book, Modern Negro Art:

In his chapter on the “New Negro” movement, Mr. Porter analyzes that most interesting and fecund period of the late twenties, when opposite schools of thought were attempting to direct the Negro artist into this “African background,” or insisting that he be accorded the same freedom of choice as that granted any other artist as regards subject matter and means of expression. The author dispassionately evaluates both theories and his conclusions are valid and sound. He brands the “African background” theory for what it was: propaganda.

Freelon’s work was featured in the 2015 exhibition We Speak: Black Artists in Philadelphia, 1920s-1970s at the Woodmere Art Museum and in Represent: 200 Years of African-American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, also in 2015. (Side note: Represent: 200 Years of African-American Art states that Freelon was the first African-American to receive a four-year scholarship to the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art (PMSIA). This is incorrect, as we know that Meta Warrick Fuller, PMSIA Class of 1898, also received one.)

Following his 1919 graduation from the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy, Freelon became an art teacher and administrator in the Philadelphia public school system. In 1921 he was appointed assistant director of art education, the first African American to be appointed to the district’s Department of Superintendence. In July 1939 he was named “special assistant to Theodore M. Dilliway [sic: Dillaway], director of art in the Philadelphia public schools, and will supervise art work in vocational and junior high schools. He has been supervising art projects in the elementary schools for a number of years, and his promotion follows competitive examination for the new post, held recently by Board of Education.”4 He placed first in that examination5 and held that position until his death. What the article fails to mention is that Freelon’s proposed promotion brought on complaints from white teachers who wanted the job and demanded a test for applicants. You can find more information about this at Temple University’s Urban Archives in a clippings file for Freelon.

Deeply interested in printmaking, Freelon taught etching and lithography at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from 1940 to 1946.

In addition to his public school teaching career, Freelon taught classes at the Telford, Pennsylvania, studio he called Windy Crest.

The Freelon family is quite impressive: Freelon’s grandson, Philip Freelon, was a noted architect married to the musician Nnenna Freelon, whose children include Pierce Freelon and Maya Freelon.

You can view Freelon’s papers at the Archives of American Art.

Does this article read like a Wikipedia entry? That’s because I wrote a lot of it!

— Sara MacDonald, author. A UArts librarian, 1987-2020.

My question to the group had been what did USMC stand for on the garage next to Anderson. Answer: Universal Motor Services Company. Also, looking at the photo below now, why did I ever think it was one building. Anyway.

A favorite historical tidbit is that these parking garage sites were at one time a livery stable — a place to park your horse.

Here’s the email.

So, historians - in my January 30 [2020] post about Anderson Hall I wrote that Anderson and the garage next door used to be one and the same building, but I had it wrong. Not sure why I ever thought that, except they were attached and both were garages. To further cloud the issue, Anderson Hall’s address, 333 South Broad Street, used to often be written as 329 South Broad, or even 329-335 South Broad, so I thought it extended to the corner. Wrong!

How did I find out? I belong to the Philadelphia Industrial & Commercial Heritage group on Facebook, and asked a question about the garage operators. Forty-seven comments later (people are INTO this stuff), we had it figured out. I’ll spare you most of the details, but here are a few fun bits.

Oh, the convenience!

I'd heard that Fidelity Bank had owned Anderson Hall at one time, which is why we have a vault in the basement, and this clipping and other documents confirm it (always cite your sources).

But perhaps most interesting of all, I learned that the basement was also used by the Berlo Vending company, co-owned by Jacob Beresin, from the 1940s probably til Fidelity bought it, for the wholesale popping and packaging of popcorn! But wait, there's more.

The best story of all: don't steal the popcorn truck.

— Sara MacDonald, author. A UArts librarian, 1987-2020.

Born in Philadelphia on June 9, 1877, Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (Pennsylvania Museum & School of Industrial Art (forerunner to UArts) Class of 1898 - architect Julian F. Abele was also in that class), became a well-known award-winning sculptor who is probably best known for her piece, Ethiopia Awakening. She was among the earliest African-American artists to take up themes of racial oppression. Though Fuller wasn’t truly part of the Harlem Renaissance (she is often considered a forerunner), Ethiopia Awakening is considered to be an emblematic piece of that artistic movement.

• Meta Warrick Fuller and her classmate Julian Abele raise an interesting question: was PMSIA always open to all? While I can’t say “yes” with certainty, I searched for quite a long time for some mention in the PMSIA records that it was opening admissions to students other than white people and never found any such notice, and I think it would surely have been in the news if such a change had occurred. The old student records had the student’s name and address and the classes they took, but that was all. There was no demographic information such as race, which makes it impossible to find the “first” African American admitted to or graduated from the school.

Another significant work Fuller did in response to a horrific lynching of a woman in 1918: “In Memory of Mary Turner: As a Silent Protest against Mob Violence”, 1919:

At the time she entered PMSIA there were a number of full scholarships offered to the city's students, and she was awarded one of them. Prior to attending PMSIA she had attended Philadelphia’s Public School of Industrial Art (no connection to PMSIA), which was in the same building as the Locust Street School mentioned below.

She was awarded her diploma in 1898, earning various prizes throughout her education. In fact, she earned another year of study at the school and earned another prize in sculpture in 1899. She was an active member of the PMSIA Alumni Association, exhibiting at the school and chairing the association. Intriguingly, she created a frieze in a corridor of the school for which she probably won the 1899 prize, but, alas, I have never come across any photographs of it.

Happily for us, Warrick Fuller is pictured in the school catalogs for a number of years; the photo below first appeared in the 1898-99 catalog.

She subsequently traveled to Paris for several years of study, where she was mentored by Henry Ossawa Tanner, and met and was encouraged by Auguste Rodin.

Upon her return from Paris she came back to PMSIA again, this time to take classes in the new pottery curriculum begun in 1903. Naturally, she won a prize in 1904.

Surprise! She came back to PMSIA in 1908.

In 1909 she married Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller, a psychiatrist from Liberia, and moved to Framingham, MA. She continued working and exhibiting, and also did theater design (scenery, costumes, masks, props, lighting) and wrote plays for the Framingham Civic League Players and other groups, and was known in Boston as a master makeup artist (see the Perkins article in the bibliography below for a good summary of her theater work). She was also known for her highly detailed tableaux vivants for her church.

An archive of Warrick Fuller’s work is located at the Danforth Art Museum in Framingham, Massachusetts. You can see many images of her work online, as well as a remarkable scrapbook. You can of course see the work in person. The Danforth Art Museum shared Warrick Fuller’s PMSIA diplomas with me. **Please see below for an excellent video from Access Framingham and the Danforth.

In addition to her years of study at PMSIA, she also studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. A Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission historical marker can be found at 254 South 12th Street for Fuller. While the virtual text of the marker includes PMSIA/UArts, the physical marker does not; it mentions the Academy, with which Fuller had a lesser association. PMSIA/UArts was added after the Commission was informed of Fuller’s strong association with this institution. This is why I was always an eager provider of UArts historical information: UArts was so often left out of the stories of art history and art education and merits a place.

To learn more about Fuller please see the bibliography below. This is a good article that is a book review of Renee Ater’s book, Remaking Race and History: The Sculpture of Meta Warrick Fuller.

— Sara MacDonald, author. A UArts librarian, 1987-2020.

The University of the Arts archives are now held by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Bibliography

An Independent Woman: The Life and Art of Meta Warrick Fuller (1877-1968). Framingham, MA : Danforth Museum of Art, [1984].

Armstrong, Julie Buckner. “‘The people…took exception to her remarks’: Meta Warrick Fuller, Angelina Weld Grimké, and the Lynching of Mary Turner.” Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 62, issue 1/2, Winter/Spring 2008, pp. 113-141.

Ater, Renée. “Making History: Meta Warrick Fuller’s Ethiopia”. American Art, v. 17, no. 3, Fall 2003, pp. 12-31.
An in-depth look at the historical context in which Fuller’s iconic piece was made. 35 bibliographic notes.

Ater, Renée. Remaking Race and History: The Sculpture of Meta Warrick Fuller. University of California Press, 2011.

Boime, Albert. The Art of Exclusion: Representing Blacks in the Nineteenth Century. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990.

Bearden, Romare and Harry Henderson. A History of African-American Artists: From 1792 to the Present. New York : Pantheon Books, c1993.
Mentions Fuller as an influence on Augusta Savage and Fuller’s relationship with Lois Jones.

Celebrating Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller [video]. Access Framingham, 2024.

Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America. Studio Museum in Harlem : Abradale Press, 1994.
Good reproductions of “Man Eating His Heart Out”, “Ethiopia Awakening”, “Talking Skull”, “Mother and Child” and more.

Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller Database. https://omeka.flo.org/fsu/s/Meta-Vaux-Warrick-Fuller-Database/page/welcome

“Meta Warrick Fuller, Emancipation.” Smarthistory, 2025. Featuring Dr. Renée Ater and Dr. Beth Harris. Focuses on Fuller’s sculpture, “Emancipation”, in Boston’s Harriet Tubman Square.

Perkins, Kathy A. “The Genius of Meta Warrick Fuller.” Black American Literature Forum, v. 24, no. 1 (Spring 1990), p. 65-72.
Focuses on Warrick Fuller’s theater design activities.

Porter, James A. Modern Negro Art. With a new introduction by David C. Driskell. Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1992. Originally published: New York : Dryden Press, 1943.
Reprint of a book originally written in 1943. Includes the introductions for the 1943, 1969 and 1992 editions. Interesting for its 1943 point of view.

Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance. University of California Press, 1997.

3 Generations of African American Women Sculptors: A Study in Paradox. Philadelphia: Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum, 1996.

250 Years of Afro-American Art : An Annotated Bibliography / Lynn Moody Igoe with James Igoe. New York : Bowker, 1981.
This is a highly recommended source for finding books and articles from a wide range of publications, including The Crisis, Journal of Negro Education, Journal of Negro History, Negro History Bulletin, and a variety of newspapers. A standard reference source in many libraries.