Philadelphia's early national history represented in Thomas Sully's portraits Thomas Sully is widely regarded as perhaps the most important portrait painter of the antebellum years. Using those portraits, Thomas Sully's Philadelphians: Painting the Athens of America reconstructs many of the people, institutions, and events that combined to make Philadelphia, from the Revolution until the 1840s, at once the most cosmopolitan and most racially embattled city in America. The book approaches Sully's portraits as visual documents in the history of Philadelphia in the first half of the nineteenth century. The faces of the men and women who appear in his portraits are alive with intelligence and personality. His best work has been summed up by Carol Soltis, of the Philadelphia Museum of Art:  luminous color, a dramatic or nuanced quality of light, a rich but refined handling of paint and description of form, tightly integrated compositions that underline a narrative or dramatic moment.  Gathered under headings that include individuals, institutions, professions, and contemporary events, Sully's portraits offer points of entry into much that was going on in early nineteenth-century Philadelphia. Conn explores education, politics, theater, medicine, journalism, commerce, philanthropy, religion, and the fierce debate over slavery. In each case, Sully's portraits bring to vivid life the men and women who were making the city's antebellum history. Drawing upon wide research, including previously unpublished archival material, Thomas Sully's Philadelphians brings to life the men and women who were making the history of early national Philadelphia. Peter Conn retired from the University of Pennsylvania as Vartan Gregorian Professor of English and Professor of Education and was a member of the graduate groups in the history of art and American civilization. His publications include The Divided Mind: Ideology and Imagination in America, 1898-1917 (Cambridge University Press) and Literature in America (Cambridge). Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography (Cambridge) was chosen as a  New York Times Notable Book.  The American 1930s: A Literary History was published by Cambridge in 2009. Conn wrote and presented a video course and book on  American Best Sellers  for the Teaching Company. He has given talks at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Whitney Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and other institutions, on a number of American artists, including Edward Hopper, William Christenberry, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Maxfield Parrish, Charles Sheeler, Winslow Homer, Wharton Esherick, and The Eight. A John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, Conn has also received several awards for distinguished teaching. He has served as literary consultant on numerous television projects, including the Emmy-winning series,  The American Short Story,  adaptations of novels by James Baldwin and Saul Bellow, and a video biography of John Dos Passos. Since 1993, Conn has served as visiting professor at the University of Nanjing in the People's Republic of China. In 2011 and again in 2013, sponsored by the Ford Foundation, Conn lectured in West China on topics in American studies. Review Quotes:
 Thomas Sully's Philadelphians is a work like no other. At once an expression of fierce love and elegant elegy for the city, in strokes as artful as Sully's own, Peter Conn's clean, swift prose paints a brilliant portrait of Philadelphia in the long half-century before it gave way to New York as the cultural capital of the United States. --Michael Zuckerman, Professor Emeritus, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania
 With a diverse and fine selection of Thomas Sully's portraits, Peter Conn introduces us to a variety of socially and politically engaged men and women who contributed to the growth of important Philadelphia institutions dedicated to education, science, business, and the arts during the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century. --Carol Soltis, Project Associate Curator, Philadelphia Museum of Art
 I have never read a book quite like it. It discusses two dozen portraits--and their subjects--by Thomas Sully, the prolific portrait artist of nineteenth-century Philadelphia. As we read Conn's biographies of Sully's sitters, we realize that he is slyly giving us the history of the city itself, its institutions and ideas, as told through the makers of those institutions, and their critics. --  Michael J. Lewis, Faison-Pierson-Stoddard Professor of Art, Williams College 
 Peter Conn has compiled what amounts to a splendid group portrait of early-to-mid nineteenth century Philadelphia by a single talented artist, Thomas Sully. Engagingly, this assembly of notables also reads as a tour of the great institutions, buildings, and milestones in the city celebrated in Sully's day as  the Athens of America.  --Kathleen A. Foster The Robert L. McNeil, Jr., Senior Curator of American Art, and Director, Center for American Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art
 Peter Conn has written an engaging and accessible exploration of Thomas Sully--the leading mid-19th-century portrait painter who should be better known today--situating him in his fertile Philadelphia environment. Underlining the importance of place for Sully's portrait practice, Conn surveys his layered relationship with the city's culture and society. --Sylvia Yount, Lawrence A. Fleischman Curator in Charge of the American Wing, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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老肖瞧瞧

I have to say that the Penn Museum is also a variety of academic and unique exhibits in the NO1 category museum. Especially in the Asian Pavilion, the Chinese national treasure-level cultural relics are moving... The consultation service is also very satisfactory. The Egyptian Pavilion is under renovation, but some cultural relics are merged into other pavilions. The national treasure cultural relics of the Middle East Mesopotamia and the New America Maya Aztec civilization are eye-catching. The ancient Greek and Roman artifacts are really a pile of piles, and the underground special exhibition actually has a 1960 u2 plane incident introduction... In short, the Penn Museum is a worthwhile trip!

Philadelphia Museum of Art

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poohwubear

Philadelphia was once the capital of the United States, so there is plenty of history, museums, monuments, and sites around the city. The Philadelphia Museum of Art boasts a nice array of exhibits. I visited on a Friday evening after work because museum admission is free Friday evenings (pay what you wish). I did pay for parking at their garage, which was only $5.

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palettes_ny

I feel that the attractions in downtown Philadelphia are really excellent. The historic sites near the Liberty Bell are under the unified management of National Park. Opposite the Liberty Bell is a large visitor center where you can consult Philadelphia&#39;s travel guide. The staff and volunteers here are also very enthusiastic to help give travel advice and answer consultation questions. There is also a small souvenir shop here, where you can buy refrigerator magnets, notebooks, postcards and other related Philadelphia souvenirs.

There are also exhibition explanations in the visitor center. Although it is relatively miniature compared to the museum, it still does not affect the number of tourists here. If you come by car, there is a parking lot in the basement of the Independence Hall Visitor Center for everyone to park. Although parking in the city center of Philadelphia is not very convenient and parking spaces are not easy to find, it is recommended that everyone park in the underground parking lot of the visitor center. If you come during the peak season, you need to apply for the ticket to the Independence Hall at the visitor center first, but I don&rsquo;t know if it is because of the epidemic. You don&rsquo;t need to take a ticket when you come, you can go directly to visit.

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A great piece of US history. You can easily spend a very informative afternoon roaming its halls and learning more about the declaration of independence.

Liberty Bell

Needless to say, the fame of the Liberty Bell is so great that it feels like it can be a must-visit place in Philadelphia, just like the Independence Palace. It seems that every time I come to Philadelphia, I will repeat the ritual of checking in. The two are very close, just walk across the road. The exhibition hall is open to the public for free, and there is no need to buy tickets. The Independence Palace needs to be booked in advance on the official website, with a ticket booking fee of 1 yuan. The Liberty Bell has an independent exhibition hall for visiting, and the entrance requires security check. You can visit it up close and walk to the Liberty Bell. It was previously possible to circle 360 ​​degrees, but this time it was only open 180 degrees, and the other half was blocked, but the advantage is that you can unlock a Liberty Bell with no one in the background.

The Liberty Bell was originally in the palace of the Independence Palace, and then it was displayed in the memorial hall on the lawn because the bell body cracked. This time, the display stand at the visitor center was also empty. Another knowledge point was that cracks first appeared when it was transported to Philadelphia in 1752, and then after several repairs, there were still cracks, so they gave up repairing it. And it was this bell that rang on July 4, 1776. The Liberty Bell has also been relocated several times. Although the locations of each relocation were not far away, people were still worried that there would be more serious cracks. They also installed a micro-variable displacement sensor on the bell that can test the movement of one millionth of a meter to test whether it is suitable for relocation. Every visit seems to unlock different little knowledge points, which is probably one of the pleasures of traveling.

Time:	Apr 24, 2025 (UTC-5) ENDED
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