“Beauties of Art Taken to [the] Public”

The Pennsylvania Museum of Art (now called the Philadelphia Museum of Art) had an idea: why not bring art to the public instead of just waiting for them to come to a central institution in a major city? With a $45,000 grant from Carnegie Corporation and space donated by a local building owner, the Corporation and the Museum launched a branch of the museum in a fast-growing neighborhood on the outskirts of Philadelphia. The branch museum—the first of its kind in the United States—opened its doors on May 8, 1931 and was an enormous success, as was noted in a July 15, 1931 New York Times article headed “Beauties of Art Taken to Public.” In just two months, more than 45,000 people visited this experiment in bringing art to where the people were. Visitors entering the museum saw a plaque on the wall that stated: “This first branch has been opened that the museum may be of wider service to the public, in the hope that the branch museums may become as essential a part of American life as branch libraries.”