The 1960s & 1970s
Under the 1964 capital program of the City of Philadelphia, the Armory was constructed at the top of the Great Stairs to display the Otto Kretzschmar von Kienbusch Collection of Arms and Armor, the finest holdings of their kind assembled by a private collector in this century. When these galleries opened to the public in 1977, they instantly became among the Museum's most popular.
The Museum's eminence in the field of nineteenth- and twentieth-century art was further assured during the 1960s by the acquisition of several major collections, such as Mr. and Mrs. Carroll S. Tyson's group of 22 extraordinary masterpieces of French painting, bequeathed in 1963. That same year, the Louis E. Stern Collection, comprising 250 works ranging from nineteenth- and twentieth-century French paintings to ancient and modern sculpture, as well as prints and drawings from various countries and periods, was also bequeathed. In 1967, the collection of Samuel S. White, III, and his wife, the artist Vera White, added over 300 objects to the Museum; encompassing modern European and American painting as well as Japanese ukiyo-e prints.
Dr. Evan H. Turner became Director in 1964, continuing the work of his predecessors as well as setting new directions for the Museum. During his tenure, the Museum increased its commitment to collecting and exhibiting photographs by establishing the Alfred Stieglitz Center in 1968. This was made possible in large part by the generosity of Mrs. Dorothy Norman, who donated a magnificent collection of photographs by Stieglitz and works by other artists they both knew and admired, as well as yearly acquisition funds over the next decade.
In 1973, plans to air-condition the Museum's huge building were approved. The ambitious program funded by the City of Philadelphia to provide stable levels of temperature and humidity throughout the year was completed by 1976. Concurrently, the first floor galleries in the south wing were designed for the collections of American art and a new 13,500-square-foot special exhibition gallery was constructed.
In celebration of the Museum's centennial, over 500 works of art were received in 1976 as part of the "Gifts to Mark a Century" campaign. The Woodward Foundation donated an important group of contemporary American paintings, strengthening the Museum's position as a serious collector of works by living artists. Among other notable gifts was a group of 100 photographs by Ansel Adams, purchased from the artist with funds given by Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Hauslohner. The receipt of the Albert M. Greenfield and Elizabeth M. Greenfield Collection in 1974 brought 50 objects—paintings, sculptures, drawings, and watercolors—by modern artists; many previously unrepresented in the collections. An important early work by De Kooning and paintings by Monet, Miro, and Pollock were among the many highlights.
In November 1977, responding to the increased interest nationwide in the revival of fine craft art, the Women's Committee organized the first Philadelphia Craft Show. Quickly acclaimed as one of the finest juried exhibitions and sales of contemporary American crafts in the country, the show has since become the largest annual fund-raising event for the Museum.
In 1978, the Museum received two important bequests which strengthened its holdings of European art: The Charlotte Dorrance Wright Collection of 51 Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, and the Anthony Morris Clark Collection of over 500 Italian prints and drawings, with a particular strength in Roman artists of the eighteenth century. The following year, Mrs. Francis P. Garvan and her son Dr. Anthony N.B. Garvan made the first of several gifts, transferring their encyclopedic assemblage of approximately 4,000 decorative Dutch tiles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, making the Museum's collection the largest and most comprehensive in the country.
