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Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial

Philadelphia, United States of America

Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial

The Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial is a sculpture garden located in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The garden, located along the left bank of the Schuylkill River between Boathouse Row and the Girard Avenue Bridge, was established by the Fairmount Park Art Association (

now the Association for Public Art) and dedicated in 1961. The idea for a series of sculptures came from Ellen Phillips Samuel, a philanthropist who left a significant amount of money to the art association in her will, with the stipulation that it be used to erect public sculptures that would represent the history of the United States. Following the death of Ellen in 1913 and her husband several years later, the association organized a committee to oversee the creation of these monuments, with architect Paul Philippe Cret developing a plan for three connected terraces with distinct themes represented by the sculptures present in them. To select the sculptors for the memorial, the association organized three international art exhibitions held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1933, 1940, and 1949, that attracted hundreds of sculptors and saw attendances in the hundreds of thousands. The...

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