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Fairmount Park Art Association records
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Held at: Historical Society of Pennsylvania [Contact Us]1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19107
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
The Fairmount Park Art Association (FPAA) was the United States' first private, nonprofit organization that worked to integrate public art and urban planning. The FPAA was founded in 1872 by concerned citizens who wanted to use public art to beautify Philadelphia during a period of industrial expansion. Charles H. Howell and Henry K. Fox initiated the association, and Anthony J. Drexel was its first president. The FPAA initially focused on enhancing Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park by purchasing and commissioning sculpture, but by 1906 it had embraced a broader goal: "to promote and foster the beautiful in the City of Philadelphia, in its architecture, improvements and general plan."
The FPAA supported planning projects such as the design of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, a grand boulevard punctuated by outdoor sculpture; the Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial Sculpture Garden along Kelly Drive and the Schuylkill River; and the International Sculpture Garden at Penn’s Landing on the Delaware River. The FPAA also advocated the establishment of Philadelphia’s Art Jury, which later became the city’s Art Commission and the first "percent for art" ordinance, under which a percentage of construction costs for city projects must be set aside for fine arts.
In 2012, the Fairmount Park Art Association changed its name to the Association for Public Art (aPA), to more clearly reflect its work and to distinguish the organization from other local and national public art agencies. The aPA continues to commission, preserve, promote, and interpret public art in Philadelphia.
The Fairmount Park Art Association records span from 1872, when the association was formed, until 1972. The collection includes the association’s constitution, meeting minutes, correspondence, committee files, reports, financial records, contracts, membership records, photographs, scrapbooks, essay drafts, and printed materials. There are also files about special exhibitions and many of the sculptures, historic sites, and artists represented in Fairmount Park, and other items.
The collection’s arrangement was established either before or shortly after it was deposited with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in 1975. At that time, the records were organized into nineteen groups, which have now been formalized into numbered series, as detailed below. There is a significant amount of overlap between the series. For example, there is a specific series titled Photographs but there are also photographs spread throughout the collection.
List of series:
1. Artists - biographies of the artists with whom the association worked to put their work on display, arranged alphabetically (Boxes 1-19)
2. Books [including non-printed volumes] and other printed materials - pamphlets and clippings relating to different works of art, letter press books, minute books, and scrapbooks (Boxes 20-39)
3. Draft Essays for Sculpture of a City (Box 40)
4. Financial Records - arranged chronologically (Boxes 41-45a)
5. Fountain Competition and Correspondence (Box 46)
6. Philadelphia Fountain Society - arranged chronologically (Boxes 47-50)
7. General Correspondence - arranged chronologically (Boxes 51-52)
8. General Miscellaneous files (Boxes 53-67)
9. Historical sites and related files - arranged alphabetically (Boxes 68-69)
10. Letters concerning special exhibitions, etc. - chronologically arranged (Boxes 70-96)
11. Membership - arranged chronologically (Boxes 97-100)
12. Memorials - includes Ericcson, Price, and Shakespeare memorials, among others; arranged alphabetically (Boxes 101-110)
13. Receipts - arranged chronologically (Boxes 111-115)
14. Sculpture - mainly clippings, articles, photos (Box 116)
15. Sculpture exhibitions (Boxes 117-118)
16. Samuel Memorial:
a. General Files - arranged chronologically (Boxes 119-124)
b. Sculptors Associated with Samuel Memorial (Boxes 125-127)
17. Smith Memorial (Boxes 128-132)
18. Treasurer’s Office Files - includes monthly statements, information on different funds (Boxes 133-134)
19. Photographs - subdivided into Cities, General, and those used in Sculpture of a City (Boxes 136-150)
Deposited by Fairmount Park Art Association, 1975.
The creation of the electronic guide for this collection was made possible through generous funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, administered through the Council on Library and Information Resources' "Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives" Project.
Finding aid entered into the Archivists' Toolkit by Garrett Boos and Courtney Smerz.
Organization
Subject
Place
- Publisher
- Historical Society of Pennsylvania
- Finding Aid Date
- 2013
- Sponsor
- The creation of the electronic guide for this collection was made possible through generous funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, administered through the Council on Library and Information Resources' "Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives" Project. Finding aid by Garrett Boos, Courtney Smerz, and Matthew Lyons.
- Access Restrictions
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This collection is open for research use.
- Use Restrictions
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Copyright restrictions may apply. Please contact the Archives with requests for copying and for authorization to publish, quote or reproduce the material.
Collection Inventory
See also Samuel Memorial
Essays about artist's work, edited by Nicholas Wainwright, former director of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
1933 Correspondence (see Series Letters concerning special exhibitions, etc., chronologically arranged).