Ask just about any tourist in Philadelphia to name one of the city's many museums, and it's quite unlikely they'll mention the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, regardless of the fact that it is the nation's oldest art museum and school. And that's partially why, after many years of planning, PAFA has finally begun construction on an outdoor civic space that will be known as
Lenfest Plaza.
The Plaza's official groundbreaking ceremony took place on Feb. 2. It revealed the stretch of Cherry Street between Broad and 15th that will soon be closed to traffic and developed with a slew of urban amusements open to the public. The Plaza will feature an upscale restaurant, for instance, which will go into PAFA's Hamilton Building. It will be home to an outdoor exhibition of rotating artwork. There will also be a very welcome series of curved benches, and then, of course, the piece de resistance: a 53-foot-tall paintbrush designed by the pop artist Claes Oldenburg, the bristles of which will be illuminated like a torch.
According to Marsha Braverman, PAFA's Executive VP of Marketing and Communications, the idea to create the plaza initially came about after PAFA's purchase of the Hamilton building; it was agreed upon by the board that a plaza would naturally unite the school and museum buildings. "The idea (now)," says Braverman, "is when the conventioneers (at the newly expanded Convention Center) leave the front door, we're their first stop. And then if you walk down Lenfest Plaza, that leads right to the Parkway. So we're saying that we're really the start of the Museum Mile."
Construction of the $7.5 million Lenfest Plaza, which was designed by the local
Olin landscape architectural firm, is expected to be complete this August, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony scheduled for October.
Source: Marsha Braverman, PAFA
Writer: Dan Eldridge
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