The Reading Public Museum is a museum in Reading, Pennsylvania, located in the 18th Ward, along the Wyomissing Creek. By the size and scope of its collection, numbering more than 280,000 objects and specimens, it is the largest private museum and largest collection of artwork, numbering over 50,000 works, located between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The museum's permanent collection focuses primarily on art, science, and cultural artifacts and its site also features the Neag planetarium and a arboretum filled with rare plants and champion trees.
The Museum has a long history of innovative programming and exhibitions, including hosting major solo exhibitions and retrospectives for artists such as Alexandre Iacovleff (1947); Claude Venard (1969); Valfred Thelin (1969); Tetsuro Sawada (1970); Gloria Vanderbilt (1971); Marsden Hartley (1971); Robert Indiana (1983); Jimmy Ernst (1991); Liliana Porter (1993); Brigitta Bertoia (1994); Reuben Nakian, (1999); Dan Namingha (1991) and David Lynch (2003) among others. It was one of the first museums in the United States to exhibit, in 1937, the original cartoons and drawings of the noted animator and film executive Walt Disney (1901–1966); and was the very first museum in the world to both exhibit a work by and award a prize to the internationally recognized pop artist and Pennsylvania native Keith Haring (1958–1990).Reading Public Museum Institutional Exhibition Records, 1904-Present, originals held by the Reading Public Museum Archives, Reading, PA.
History The Museum was founded in 1904, when the Reading School District board authorized the purchase of exhibits from the Saint Louis World's Fair. These new purchases were added to the private natural history collections of Dr. Levi W. Mengel. The Museum opened its doors, at the old school administration building on Washington and Eighth streets, to the general public in 1913; that same year, The Museum started collecting works of art. While the name 'public' has always been a part of the museum's name, it was, in fact, founded as a private institution. Originally the museum was not open to the general public, but was only accessible to the students of the Reading School District to support their studies.
Levi Mengel was The Museum's first director and was its founding father. Christopher Shearer, a well-known landscape artist was The Museum's first curator of art. Ground was broken at its current location in February 1925; the foundation stone was laid on May 1, 1925, and by 1928, the Museum was officially opened to the public in its new Beaux-Art style structure that was designed by Alexander Forbes Smith. In 1998, architect Der Scutt was commissioned to add an atrium entrance to the existing structure. The Arboretum was planned in the late-1920s by renowned American landscape architect John Nolen and outfitted with rare plant and flower specimens from the personal collection of noted Irisarian Bertrand H. Farr (1863–1924). Since 1991, The Museum has been operated by The Foundation for the Reading Public Museum. The Museum has been accredited by the American Alliance of Museums since 1982.
Art collections
American art
American art has anchored the Museum's collection since 1913. What began with the purchase of a winter landscape by the local artist Victor Shearer quickly expanded as curators regularly acquired works from the Annual Exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, securing examples by leading national figures.
A very early acquisition of a painting by Mary B. Leisz proved especially significant, establishing a century-long commitment to collecting works by both emerging and prominent women artists. The Philadelphia Ten, a group of women who exhibited together between 1917 and 1945, is well represented in RPM's collection. Artists include Theresa Bernstein, Cora Smalley Brooks, Fern Coppedge, Nancy Maybin Ferguson, Harriett Frishmuth, and Arrah Lee Gaul. Other prominent women in The Museums’ holdings include Susan McDowell Eakins, Peale Family descendant Ella Sophonisba Hergesheimer, Mary Parker Kornhauser, Tillie Neville Prizer, Mary Heister Reid, and Ida Waugh, as well as the sculptors Lillian Baer, Sonia Gordon Brown, Malvina Hoffman, Anna Hyatt Huntington, Brenda Putnam, and Katharine Lane Weems, among others.
The collection includes important historic paintings from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by artists such as Thomas Birch, Jacob Eichholtz, Raphaelle Peale, Peter Rothermel, Gilbert Stuart, and Benjamin West. The Museum also holds strong examples of the Hudson River School, with works by Frederic Edwin Church, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Hermann Herzog, George Inness, Frederick Kensett, William Trost Richards, William Louis Sonntag, Paul Weber, and Worthington Whittredge, among others.
American Impressionism is a particular strength of the collection, represented by works by Cecilia Beaux, Frank Weston Benson, Emil Carlsen, William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Charles Webster Hawthorne, Ernest Lawson, Frederick Mulhaupt, William McGregor Paxton, Jane Peterson, Robert Lewis Reid, John Singer Sargent, Abbott Handerson Thayer, John Henry Twachtman, Martha Walter, and Guy Wiggins. The collection also features substantial holdings from the impressionist-leaning New Hope School (Bucks County School), including works by John Folinsbee, Daniel Garber, William Langson Lathrop, Arthur Meltzer, Edward Willis Redfield, Paulette Van Roekens, Charles Rosen, Walter Elmer Schofield, George Sotter, and Robert Spencer.
American modernism is represented by members of the Ashcan School, including George Bellows, William Glackens, Robert Henri, George Luks, and John Sloan, whose work shaped the avant-garde scenes of Pennsylvania and New York. Additional modernist works include paintings by Arthur B. Davies, Werner Drewes, Leon Dabo, and Joseph Stella.
Among mid-century artists, the Museum holds one of the largest collections of works by William Baziotes in the United States. This extraordinary holding includes nearly 1,000 works—oils, watercolors, drawings, and approximately 900 sketches across 43 sketchbooks—by the artist, who was born in Pittsburgh and raised in Reading. The sculptor and designer Harry Bertoia is also well represented, with more than 50 works in the collection. Additional mid-century strengths include Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting, with works by Friedel Dzubas, Helen Frankenthaler, Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Robert Motherwell, Jules Olitski, and Kenzo Okada.
The Museum also serves as the primary repository for works by historic Berks County artists. Notable holdings include more than 30 works by Christopher H. Shearer, over 25 by Ben Austrian, more than 15 by Augustus Adolphus Behne, and more than a dozen works by Francis Devlan. Schweigert, Scott, "Reading Public Museum Collection Overview," original held by the Reading Public Museum Archives, Reading, PA.
European art From its earliest years, the Reading Public Museum actively sought to build a distinguished collection of European art. These include a group of Old Masters with works by Domenico di Zanobi (Master of the Johnson Nativity), a very rare fresco by Domenico di Michelino, and a painting by the Spanish/Neapolitan artist Giovanni Dó. In addition there is a pair of sculptures attributed to a follower of Tilman Reimenschneider, a pair of coppers by Jan Brueghel the Younger, and compositions by Peter Lely, John Hayls, Joshua Reynolds, Simon de Vos, Jacomo Victors, and Pieter Wouwerman.
Early benefactors—including Henry Janssen, Ferdinand Thun, and Gustav Oberlaender—played a pivotal role in shaping the collection, securing important paintings by leading nineteenth-century artists associated with the Munich and Düsseldorf Schools, including Andreas Achenbach, Oswald Achenbach, Rudolf Epp, Adolf Schreyer, and Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller.
The Museum's holdings are particularly strong in nineteenth-century French painting, with notable examples by academic artists such as Julien Dupré and Léon Augustin Lhermitte, as well as members of the Barbizon School, including Charles-François Daubigny, Narcisse Virgilio Díaz de la Peña, and Théodore Rousseau.
French Impressionism is represented by three significant works by Edgar Degas, generously donated by members of the Henry K. Dick family, alongside paintings by Jean-Charles Cazin, Maximilien Luce, Albert Lebourg, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Victor Vignon. The collection also features outstanding examples of Spanish Realism by Marià Fortuny, Martín Rico y Ortega, Emilio Sánchez Perrier, and Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta, as well as important works by other nineteenth century masters, including Eugène Cicéri, Hermann Corrodi, Hans Dahl, German Grobe, Frits Thaulow, and Anton Mauve. Schweigert, Scott, "Reading Public Museum Collection Overview."
Sculpture The Museum holds an extensive collection of sculpture from around the world, including works from Asia, Africa, Europe and America. These include works by Auguste Rodin, Edward McCartan, Harriett Whitney Frishmuth, Cyrus Dallin, James Earl Fraser, Henry Moore, Harry Bertoia, George Segal, Nancy Graves, Frank Stella, and Deborah Butterfield. A selection of these works are rotated throughout the Museum on a regular basis, although Edward McCartan's "Drinking Girl" is out on permanent display in the Founders' Gallery.
Works on paper More than 12,000 works on paper are housed at the Museum, including etchings, woodblocks, watercolors drawings and photographs. The holdings include illuminated manuscripts, works by Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, Francisco Goya, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, through the prints of Andy Warhol, Jim Dine, Chuck Close, and Keith Haring. Photographs by Eadweard Muybridge, Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Ansel Adams, Berenice Abbott, Harold Edgerton, Dorthea Lange, Barabara Morgan, and over two hundred works by Brett Weston are also represented.
The Reading Public Museum received a number of important works on paper from Edwin DeTurck Bechtel (1880–1957), a prominent New York City lawyer and native of Bechtelsville, Pennsylvania, a town founded by his ancestors. Bechtel earned his degrees from Harvard and developed a lifelong passion for art collecting and rose gardening.
Over the years, he maintained a close friendship with Levi W. Mengel, the founder and first director of the Reading Public Museum. This relationship resulted in the gift of nearly 80 works of art to the Museum, spanning the 1910s through the 1950s. Bechtel’s donations included etchings by Rembrandt, Francisco Goya, James McNeill Whistler, Joseph Pennell, Martin Lewis, and Rockwell Kent, along with Old Master drawings and bronze sculptures.
Bechtel also shared his extensive collection with other institutions. Among his gifts to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York were prints by Honoré Daumier, Jacques Callot, Hendrick Goltzius, and other pioneers of printmaking.
The collection of works on paper includes a significant group of medieval and early modern manuscript leaves acquired through Otto F. Ege (1888–1951), a Reading-born bookseller, manuscript specialist, and educator who later served as a professor of art history and dean of the Cleveland Institute of Art. Nearly all of the Museum’s illuminated manuscript pages entered the collection through Ege, primarily as gifts from his widow.