In the summer of 2022, Medieval Treasures from the Glencairn Museum opened at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In this issue of Glencairn Museum News, we will introduce some of the important stained-glass panels, stone sculptures, and ivories now on view at the PMA, and provide our readers with a peek behind the curtain to see why and how the exhibition came about.

Dr. Jennifer Houser Wegner, associate curator in the Egyptian Section at the Penn Museum, examines the ways in which magic and medicine intertwined in ancient Egypt to promote health and healing from both illness and dangerous creatures such as poisonous snakes and scorpions.

In this issue of Glencairn Museum News we have a conversation with Dr. Wendy Closterman, Professor of History and Greek at Bryn Athyn College, about how she makes effective use of the Glencairn collection in her courses.

Art museums, which preserve and exhibit the tangible products of human creativity from around the globe, can be an ideal environment in which to develop empathy-building skills. In this issue of Glencairn Museum News, we explore Glencairn’s efforts to cultivate empathy through our exhibitions, programs, and tours.

Glencairn, the castle-like Bryn Athyn home of Raymond and Mildred (Glenn) Pitcairn and their children, was built between 1928 and 1939. In this issue of Glencairn Museum News we will examine the variety of reasons given by Raymond Pitcairn himself for building Glencairn, and how his motivations evolved over time.

In this article for Glencairn Museum News, artist, professor, author, and curator Mark Sfirri will explain Hanna Weil Fischer-Binder’s personal history, how she ended up in Bucks County, and how her career eventually led her to carve the wooden Nativity figures she made for the Eisenhower and Pitcairn families.

This is the 13th year for World Nativities, Glencairn Museum’s annual exhibition of three-dimensional Nativity scenes. This year the exhibition presents 60 three-dimensional Nativities collected from 39 countries around the globe, including 16 on loan from the Knights of Columbus Museum, Inc. Collection, in New Haven, Connecticut.

In 2021 Glencairn Museum is offering an online Advent calendar. The Glencairn collection contains many examples of depictions of the Nativity and infancy of Jesus Christ, including paintings, illuminated manuscripts, sculptures, and stained-glass windows. Collected by Raymond Pitcairn, some of these artworks date to the medieval period. Others were original works commissioned by Raymond and Mildred Pitcairn during the first half of the 20th century.

In this issue of Glencairn Museum News, art historian Julia Perratore, Assistant Curator at The Met Cloisters, profiles one of the more enigmatic works in the Glencairn collection of medieval art: an ivory box with scenes from the Book of Kings carved in Spain in the tenth or eleventh century. Dr. Perratore reflects upon its thousand-year journey through time and examines the ways in which it teaches us about the past.

We’re excited to announce a new online resource for families with children: Glencairn Museum Kids! There are six different sections to visit, each with a different type of activity, project, or puzzle, including a section that shares family-friendly ideas of what a visit to Glencairn might include.