The Experience
The Woodmere Museum’s building, an elegant stone mansion in the Chestnut Hill area, makes the perfect backdrop for shows of art in the realist tradition, from the 19th century to the present. Recent exhibits have featured landscape painter William Trost Richards, Susan Macdowell Eakins, and Philadelphia’s modernist icon Arthur B. Carles.
The museum’s permanent collection of over 2,500 artworks is also strong in art of the region, with paintings by Pennsylvania Impressionists Edward Redfield and Daniel Garber, illustrators N.C. Wyeth and Violet Oakley, and many others.
History
Charles Knox Smith left his home on six acres, and his collections of art and furniture to create what he hoped would be “a very lively art center,” and Woodmere opened its doors in 1940. Both the art on view and Knox Smith’s own furnishings are but a small sampling of Woodmere’s holdings, so items are rotated several times during the year.
Its nine gallery rooms include the spacious Kuch gallery, with a long, curving outer wall, skylights and a balcony-level viewing area. The museum’s art exhibits are supplemented by tours, lectures, music concerts and other special events.