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Clockwise from top-right: Fonthill Castle/Mercer Museum/Moravian Pottery and Tile Works, Image from Secret Cinmea screening from 2011, John Ollman, Wagner Free Institute of Science, The Henry Charles Lea Library
TOP FIVE
By KATE KRACZON
Posted: 5/13/12

1
FONTHILL CASTLE/MERCER MUSEUM/MORAVIAN POTTERY AND TILE WORKS
It’s difficult not to reveal my latent Tolkien obsession when discussing Fonthill, the Middle Earth vibe via bizarre architectural mash-up and damp, cave-like chill. Historian Henry Mercer (1856-1930) spent four years building a massive concrete castle imbedded with his extensive tile collection (from everywhere on every surface) with additions from the nearby Moravian Pottery and Tile Works. The other concrete castle is the Mercer Museum, which houses 30,000 handmade tools and objects that Mercer accumulated as they became obsolete with the advent of machine-made goods. Not technically in Philadelphia, but an essential day trip. The grounds are open to the public, so pack a picnic and end the day at the deco movie theater in nearby Doylestown. 
http://www.mercermuseum.org/




2
THE HENRY CHARLES LEA LIBRARY
Henry Charles Lea (1825-1909) was a Philadelphia historian and scholar who focused on the Middle Ages, specifically the Spanish Inquisition and the medieval Catholic Church. Following his death, his entire library was moved piece by piece, wood panel by wood panel, to Penn, where it is now installed on the sixth floor of Van Pelt Library as part of the Rare Book and Manuscript collection. Lea used his own cataloguing system—which Penn maintains—and you can request volumes from the collection to view (with white gloves) in the reading room. His late career studies on the history of witchcraft and demonology, though never finished, are also available. I tried to find Lea’s summer residence one ambitious weekend in Cape May a few years ago, but it has been replaced with some kind of pancake house.  
(The sixth floor of Van Pelt Library is currently closed for renovations.)
http://www.library.upenn.edu/collections/rbm/mss/lea/lea-library.html




3
WAGNER FREE INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE
The Wagner is my favorite place in Philadelphia.  A Victorian-era natural history museum literally unchanged since 1891, the Wagner’s wood and glass cabinets house thousands of fossils, minerals, shells, dinosaur bones, insects and other animals, including dozens of mounted specimens. William Wagner (1796-1885) was a gentleman scientist who founded the museum in 1855 to provide free scientific educational programming to the public, which was both unprecedented and exceptionally popular. The Wagner continues to offer free admission to the galleries as well as to events in their brilliant lecture hall with the original wooden seating, though please slip at least $5 in their donation box.  (The wires underneath each chair were meant to hold your hat in the 1800s.)
http://www.wagnerfreeinstitute.org/




4
SECRET CINEMA
Jay Schwartz is currently celebrating twenty years of his roving cinema program.  Strictly celluloid, Secret Cinema pulls films from his substantial archive of various millimeter formats to share at venues around the city, from the long-standing and now (sadly) defunct series at Moore College of Art & Design to bars and coffeehouses to the terrace of the Institute of Contemporary Art, where he programmed a series last summer. Obscure, frequently campy educational films, television programs, shorts and full-length features are quirkily, often loosely themed—ICA’s July 2011 events were Summer Means Fun! and Art for Art’s Sake.   
http://www.thesecretcinema.com/
Channel 29 News report on Secret Cinema: http://www.thesecretcinema.com/ch29.htm




5
JOHN OLLMAN
A few years ago I turned a corner at Fleisher/Ollman Gallery and was reunited with a beloved work of art, one I assumed I would never see again having reluctantly performed the provenance research for its museum deaccession and eventual sale at auction: Forrest Bess, Here is a sign, 1970. John Ollman, standing nearby, explained that he had seen the work at an art fair and immediately called a collector friend: “I am standing in front of the best Forrest Bess I have ever seen.” And now I know who owns it and where it lives. But the point is that every object you see at Fleisher/Ollman Gallery is hinged to some incredible story that only John can tell. With work by Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, James Castle, Martin Ramirez, and numerous Chicago imagists (I’d kill for the Christina Ramberg they had last year), Fleisher/Ollman Gallery helped legitimize “self-taught” artists while dissolving the segregation the term implies.  (John also has the best gossip in the city.)
http://www.fleisher-ollmangallery.com/




Kate Kraczon is the Assistant Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia.


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