Funerary art offers a window into the lives of the living as well as the dead. In this essay for Glencairn Museum News, Dr. Wendy Closterman, Associate Curator at Glencairn Museum and Professor of History and Greek at Bryn Athyn College, introduces us to an Athenian funerary monument in the shape of a lekythos (a vessel used to store oil and perfume) in the Glencairn collection.

Raymond Pitcairn assembled a significant collection of artwork from a variety of cultures and time periods, executed in a variety of media. However, it is well known that he purchased very few paintings from auctions or galleries. Instead, Pitcairn preferred to commission paintings. This short essay will consider three paintings commissioned by Pitcairn from American artist John Pike (1911-1979), and also two smaller works that were gifted by Pike to the Pitcairns.

In this essay for Glencairn Museum News, Dr. Jennifer Houser Wegner, Associate Curator in the Egyptian Section at the Penn Museum, introduces us to the fascinating subject of ancient Egyptian creation myths, including the cosmological context for a number of objects in Glencairn Museum’s Egyptian gallery.

Glencairn is decorated with hundreds of original artworks in a variety of media, created by the artists and craftsmen who worked for Raymond Pitcairn’s Bryn Athyn Studios. A new exhibit in the Great Hall, Craftsmanship at Glencairn: Five Artists, explores the work and lives of just a few of the artists who worked at Glencairn. Beginning this September, the Museum will also be launching a guided tour about craftsmanship at Glencairn.

Rev. Christopher Augustus Barber explores several objects in Glencairn’s collection in the context of his research into the history and overlapping legacies of Glencairn and the old Cherry Street Temple in Philadelphia. As a result of this research, Rev. Joel Christian Glenn has created a detailed 3D digital reconstruction of the Temple.

A Pietà acquired by Raymond Pitcairn, previously in the Demotte Collection, is an extraordinary panel from Valencia, Spain, painted around 1435-40. This essay by Dr. Mercedes Gómez-Ferrer, Professor of Art History at the University of València (Spain), sheds new light on this remarkable painting.

The “clouds of heaven” motif—an arching, multilayered band of clouds, usually appearing at the top of a medieval work of art—is used repeatedly in the original art and decoration created for Glencairn in the 1920s and 1930s. It is found in various locations in the building in stained glass, sculpture, and metalwork. This article will provide examples of the “clouds of heaven,” both in the art made for Glencairn and in Raymond Pitcairn’s personal medieval collection.

In 2020 Glencairn has significantly expanded our web-based resources and our social media presence on Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, and YouTube. As 2020 comes to a close, this special “Year in Review” issue of Glencairn Museum News highlights some of these efforts.

The Glencairn Christmas Sing and our “Christmas in the Castle” tour have moved online in 2020 as video programs. We’re thrilled that so many people who will never have the opportunity to travel to Glencairn have been able to “visit us” virtually this holiday season.

This year Glencairn Museum’s annual World Nativities exhibition is taking place online for all to enjoy. Every day, from December 1 through December 25, a new Nativity scene from Glencairn’s collection will appear in the online Advent calendar on our website.