Greetings from a recent trip to Philadelphia, where I and several other PFA staff members attended the annual American Association of Museums Conference.  It was a typical conference complete with educational sessions, networking, and expo-walking.  However, it was special in that it was a time and place that I decided–museums are for me. 

The talks I went to ranged from the Public Relations aspects, finance, volunteer services, etc.  I covered multiple topics and found out more than I probably ever need to know on running a museum.  I also learned about wonderful experimental programs being developed at museums around the United States.  In fact the theme of experimentation was wound throughout the conference and I found myself feeling like the Pulitzer isn’t the only Laboratory in the world.  

It wasn’t all seriousness though–there were museums a plenty to visit! The Mütter, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art were all wonderful and made me have those great moments that only art provides for me.  Each is a very different type of institution and each shows a very different type of art or artifact–but each is reliant upon ideas and viewers to witness them. 

In a full wall at the PMA, I discovered the brother to one of the current paintings at the Pulitzer.  St. Sebastian, off his tree stump and being healed by St. Irene, opened my eyes to the rest of the story presented on our walls.  Art is a dialogue and museums are necessary to house the story. It was a wonderful treat to hear so many other stories and ways of making them available. 

St. Sebastian cured by St. Irene, by Luca Giordano at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, by Giovanni Battista Caracciolo, Harvard Art Museum, Fogg Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Pope, Edward W. Forbes and Paul J. Sachs, 1924.31, Photo by Imaging Department, President and Fellows of Harvard College