posted 02-20-2009 12:46 PM            

quote:

---

mostly Philadelphia silver, some pieces of which have never been exhibited before and none of which have been on view since 1981. The exhibition was long overdue since the museum's collection of Philadelphia silver, both Colonial and Federal, is the most comprehensive and finest anywhere. Mrs. Garvan organized the show as her farewell to the museum, where she has headed the American decorative arts department for 23 years. She leaves at the end of this month.

The exhibition, which will remain on view indefinitely, has no catalogue. Mrs. Garvan is currently completing two volumes on the museum's American silver and metals collections, which the museum hopes to publish in late 1990. "There isn't a good book on Philadelphia silver," she said...

---

Got that right. Has her work on Philadelphia silver been published? If not, is anyone reading here familiar enough with the Philadelphia Museum or Mrs. Garvan to hold out hope that it might be published in the foreseeable future?

Beatrice Garvan was still alive as of last April, when her first husband, publishing magnate Barton Lippincott, died. A search on books published by the Philadelphia Museum of Art turns up only her catalogue for the 1987 exhibition (all decorative arts, not just silver) Federal Philadelphia 1785-1825: the Athens of the Western World and her 1970s books on Pennsylvania German items and craftspeople.

She wrote a foreword to a well-received 2002 book on Violet Oakley's murals at the Pennsylvania Capitol Building.

It would be hard to imagine someone better positioned to produce a book on Philadelphia silver. Beatrice Bronson Lippincott married Anthony Nicholas Brady Garvan, the son of decorative arts collectors Francis P. and Mabel Brady Garvan, in 1969. From notes accompanying N.B. Garvan's archives at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught for decades and led/created the American Civilization program:

quote:

---

[Their] marriage was a personal and professional partnership. The Garvan team-taught classes are well remembered by students of material culture.

---

Her successor at the Philadelphia Museum, Jack Lindsey, was a graduate student in her husband's program at Penn when he was hired to help with the 1987 Federal Philadelphia exhibit. His great enthusiasm is furniture, but he continued to build the museum's silver collection as well.