[American City Chronicles] Stumbling in arts and words
- Thao Pham
- 4 days ago
- 9 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
I had a blast in Philly. If one city gives me the vibe of being at home, it was Philly, for its walkability, boutique shops, and convenient public transportation. I also realized the accidental curriculum a city has to offer. It gave me a feel for the perks of living in big cities. Museums and libraries expose you to accidental discovery. If you're a reader of my blog, you might be aware of the Terence Tao interview. Since we're so drawn into AI these days, meeting something by accident has become the thing I'm always looking for. There's actually a concept called the hallway effect, where spaces (like Harvard's hallways) are intentionally designed to foster random encounters and spark creativity. I truly embraced that spirit in Philly—letting myself wander and be surprised.
Here are some snippets of my accidental curriculum in Philly, for you to feel the vibe.
ALBERT BARNES AND THE ART OF ARRANGEMENT
The Barnes Foundation began with Dr. Albert C. Barnes, a physician who made his fortune from Argyrol, an antiseptic silver compound used to prevent and treat infections. He began collecting seriously in 1912, first sending his school friend, the painter William Glackens, to Paris with $20,000 to buy modern art. Glackels returned with thirty-three works, including Vincent van Gogh's The Postman. That shopping trip became the beginning of an astonishing collection: Barnes eventually acquired 179 paintings by Renoir and 69 by Cézanne — the largest holdings of either artist in the world — alongside major works by Matisse, Picasso, and Modigliani.
Because of such intense exposure (normally I only see one or two Renoirs and Cézannes; now it's nearly a hundred), I kinda know which art I'm particularly drawn to. Beyond my fascination with Monet and the whole Impressionist approach, I also found a deep interest in Matisse and Rousseau. I'm into the mythical way of drawing — the use of color and story and storytelling. Here's some of the paintings from Matisse at Barnes that I feel the urge to share with y'all.
What interested me most was not simply what Barnes owned, but what he did with it. He organized the objects into what he called "ensembles." A Renoir might hang beside a Pennsylvania German chest, an African mask, and an ordinary iron door hinge. The objects are arranged through echoes of line, color, light, and shape rather than by nation, century, price, or prestige. The hinges and spatulas are not treated as background decoration. They are part of the visual argument.
Once I sat in one of the Cézanne rooms, a group came in. There was a senior artist who told her friends that she used to come to this room to study how Cézanne used his brushes. I thought about what it means to have that kind of access—to return, again and again, to nearly a hundred Cézannes and let them teach you something. We like to believe great painters are born. But nurture matters just as much as nature. It's proximity to greatness, accumulated over time, that turns raw ability into mastery.
Cities like Philadelphia carry enormous cultural capital—museums and collections built over centuries that quietly shape the people who live near them. A Vietnamese artist, however talented, rarely gets this—not because of ability, but because of geography. That's a quiet form of segregation, not between neighborhoods, but between countries.
A MUSEUM MADE FROM MANY COLLECTORS
I went when, for the first time, two Sunflowers paintings by Van Gogh were displayed on the second floor. On Friday, there was pay-as-you-wish admission with a DJ on the first floor. I became so envious of Philly folks for their abundance of art choices, with such affordable entry and such integration of classical art and modern life. Imagine wandering an old building surrounded by art. It's a feeling that I don't want to forget.
I also noticed, through walking around, that Picasso was a damn good classical painter — his foundation in drawing still objects is phenomenal. Here's the painting I saw that awed me with his intense use of color. I also read that he had his Rose and Blue periods before getting into Cubism and other styles. But other than that, he has a very strong foundation in painting. Should you be strong in the basics before getting creative?
Another thing I noticed is that, unlike other art museums, the Philly art museum brings the whole freaking building into the surroundings of their art pieces. On the 3rd floor, you see a whole church and a Japanese pagoda together with the art. Art here expands to architecture and decor, and it was a very immersive experience that left my friend and me in awe.
JULES MASTBAUM'S TWO-YEAR OBSESSION WITH RODIN
The Rodin Museum returns to the story of a single collector. Jules Mastbaum was a Philadelphia movie-theater magnate who owned the Stanley Corporation of America, then the country's largest cinema operator. In September 1924, he visited the Musée Rodin in Paris and, within two years, had acquired more than 150 sculptures — enough to commission architects Paul Cret and Jacques Gréber to build this museum, which opened in 1929, three years after his death. It's the single museum that holds the most Rodin works outside of Paris.
The collection traces Rodin's working process as well as his famous finished forms. The Thinker began not as a generic man engaged in philosophy but as Dante, positioned above The Gates of Hell and contemplating the suffering below. Individual figures escaped from that enormous doorway and became independent sculptures. The collection also includes The Burghers of Calais, The Kiss, studies for Balzac, and drawings. Being able to see The Thinker and other Rodin works in progress, with Jake Bugg playing in the background, truly left me shaken with happiness.
What's interesting is that I kept comparing Rodin's The Kiss and Klimt's The Kiss. Both are full of passion, but in one the woman faces the audience, while in the other the girl's face hides from it. Which counts as more like a kiss? Also, Rodin had a very modern take on art — his study for Balzac, in its honest form, was then considered a humiliation of the man himself. He also left some of the sculptures unfinished and kept his fingerprints somewhere on them. Everything keeps a raw take on the process.
Another thing that stirred me was his use of others to help finish the work. He also created multiple versions of The Thinker—something I didn't know before coming here—inherited from his time working as a commercial sculptor. What blurs here is art and commerce, a tension that resurfaces with Andy Warhol and his factory model. But maybe that's the wrong argument to have. As long as art speaks to the heart before the brain has time to rationalize it, does the process really matter?
Or maybe we've been trying to godify art all along—to lift it above ordinary life—when in reality it is deeply embedded in the same human desires, ambitions, and contradictions as everything else. If art could truly exist independent from commerce and social recognition, perhaps we wouldn't have had as many tragic artists as we do. Van Gogh, who sold only one painting in his lifetime. Modigliani, who died in poverty at 35. Vivian Maier, who spent her life as a nanny while quietly producing one of the greatest street photography collections ever made, discovered only after her death. The work outlived the recognition. It almost always does.
DEBBIE SANFORD, GREG SCHIRM, AND THREE HUNDRED CATEGORIES
House of Our Own Books offers a less monumental form of collecting. The store occupies two floors of a Victorian house at 3920 Spruce Street, near the University of Pennsylvania. It has been there for more than fifty years. In a 2002 interview with Penn Today, Sanford said the store contained more than three hundred categories. Even the fiction reflected an argument about how knowledge should be organized, with separate sections for Caribbean, Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Southeast Asian writing rather than one undifferentiated shelf labeled "world literature."
That is a kind of curatorship too. The store's crowded rooms may look accidental, but the subjects reveal decisions. Someone kept a book in circulation, bought it from a previous owner, placed it in a category, and made it available to a reader who did not know to search for it. This is different from an online recommendation system. An algorithm presents a book because it resembles something you already wanted. A used bookstore lets physical proximity create the relationship. You look for one author and find another. A title you have never heard of sits beside a subject you have been thinking about for months. The discovery feels personal even though it is partly an accident. This is what I feel like we're missing in the modern world.
This was also the spot where Lin Huiyin (whom I didn't know of before coming to this place) used to be, back when she was at Penn — long before it became a bookstore. I then had some time to read about her and her husband. Such a treat to run into different people while strolling around the city.
THE ROSENBACH BROTHERS AND THE EVIDENCE OF WRITING
At the Rosenbach, the collector and the bookseller become the same person. Brothers Abraham Simon Wolf Rosenbach and Philip Rosenbach lived in the Delancey Place townhouses that now hold the museum. Their Rosenbach Company dealt in rare books, manuscripts, and decorative art from 1903 to 1953. A.S.W. Rosenbach became one of the most influential rare-book dealers of the twentieth century, helping wealthy American collectors build libraries while reserving extraordinary objects for his own shelves. The brothers left their home and collections to create the museum, which opened in 1954.
Among its treasures is James Joyce's manuscript of Ulysses, purchased by A.S.W. Rosenbach in 1924. The museum also holds Bram Stoker's working notes for Dracula; first editions and letters by Emily Dickinson; presentation copies of Herman Melville's books, kept in a bookcase that once belonged to Melville; and virtually all the manuscripts and papers of the modernist poet Marianne Moore. Moore left the contents of her Greenwich Village living room to the museum, which reconstructed the room in Philadelphia. He was also the one who advocated for Moby-Dick.
What interests me is the man's intense love for literature alongside his expansive engagement with geography. His collection of geography books ranged across different lands, and he spoke both English and Spanish with fluency. Being a polyglot isn't as celebrated nowadays, but it stirs something in me—as a new learner of Chinese myself, I've found that learning languages unlocks genuine intellectual stimulation. Stepping into his world made me feel more assured about my own interest in different lands and languages.
I also noticed copies of Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People on his bookshelves. It was curious—why would this established collector be interested in immigration stories? I learned later that Rosenbach himself was the child of Jewish immigrants. He was an active member of efforts to preserve and foster Jewish-American community and culture. The question of who counts as American never really goes away. It just gets asked of someone new.
To browse his collection, you can go to the library's website. The library now has two tour guides who are deeply passionate about the buildings. I had a chance to hear them talk about the space. You can actually take their audio tour without even getting into the house, just to satisfy your curiosity. They also host podcasts and readings for the public — please consider a virtual visit to support their effort. Such a hidden gem in Philly.
ROCKY
Rocky deserves its own section, since before coming to Philly I had zero exposure to the movie and the man. Since everyone was talking about the Rocky statue, I got curious. Until the very end of the visit, I hadn't watched the movie, so I didn't have any urge to visit the statue. Once the training was over, I finally sat down to watch the series and got seriously hooked. What Stallone created in his world was the underdog story — he created hope and wishful thinking in a very beautiful way.
The movie was very artistically pleasing, as I love how blue and red pair with each other. It's lovely to see hope in a movie and to be boosted up during down times. The scene where Rocky proposes to Adrian at the Philly Zoo, under the snow, in a leather jacket, with a red trench coat and a tiger behind them, is one of the most beautiful scenes in my movie journey.
OUTRO
Philly was a city to remember for me. We often describe the advantages of cities in economic language: jobs, universities, transportation, professional networks. But there is also a less measurable advantage. A museum is near a bookstore. A lecture is happening a few blocks from a park. A poster in a window leads to a reading. You follow a street or enter a building because the door is open. The city keeps offering small invitations to become interested.
Access, of course, is not evenly distributed. The ecology of learning is profoundly important, and we can't facilitate education in an AI-driven world until we first facilitate the physical spaces—the enclaves—where stumbling happens. Stumbling is not the opposite of learning. It may be one of its oldest and most valuable forms. That was my deepest lesson from Philly.
I hope this post sparked something for you—a desire to visit Philly, to notice the curated accidents around you, or simply to embrace the wandering. I'm happy if it landed. Finally, come stumble with me: watch this favorite YouTube video about the history of Philadelphia.
Until next time!
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