Augustus Saint-Gaudens's Diana presides over the museum's Great Stair Hall
(Image by Meryl Ann Butler) Details DMCA
OpEdNews Senior Editor Marta Steele and I visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art to see Workshop
of the World: Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia, part of the museum's 150th-anniversary year
celebration. The exhibition, on view through October 11, 2026, showcases over 250 beautiful objects
-- ceramics, furniture, metalwork, textiles, stained glass, paintings, drawings, and printed works--
while exploring Philadelphia's distinctive role in the American Arts and Crafts movement.
On our way in, we were greeted by the nearly 15-foot-tall golden statue of Diana holding court from
above the Great Stair Hall of the museum. Augustus Saint-Gaudens's 700-pound copper goddess
once turned as a weathervane atop New York's Madison Square Garden. Perched atop what was
then Manhattan's tallest building, she reflected the sun by day and glowed under then-novel electric
lights at night-- and she could be seen from as far away as New Jersey! The Philadelphia Museum of
Art has been her home since 1932; the museum obtained her after the original Madison Square
Garden was demolished.
I was excited to see a couple of my favorite Mary Cassatt paintings in the collection, too--but first we headed for the Workshop of the World: Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia exhibition. The collection showed that handwork and craftsmanship were not always in opposition to industry. They overlapped, borrowed from each other, and sometimes worked side by side in the important work of making ordinary life more beautiful.
The Centennial also stirred support for better design education, leading to the founding in 1876 of the
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