{"id":286337,"date":"2025-10-08T11:00:25","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T11:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/286337\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T11:00:25","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T11:00:25","slug":"philadelphia-art-museum-changes-its-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/286337\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia Art Museum changes its name"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is now the Philadelphia Art Museum.\n<\/p>\n

To some it may not seem like a huge change, but to many it may feel more natural. The institution has been colloquially called the Art Museum by Philadelphians for years.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I mention to folks who aren\u2019t engaged in the arts and culture community and I say the PMA, they have no idea what I\u2019m talking about,\u201d said PMA director and CEO Sasha Suda. \u201cI just have to say, \u2018the Art Museum.\u2019\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"SashaPhiladelphia Art Museum Director and CEO Sasha Suda embraces the new branding with a logo sticker on her laptop. (Emma Lee\/WHYY)<\/p>\n

The name change comes with a new logo: A round badge centered by a griffin encircled by the words Philadelphia Art Museum in bold type. It replaces the previous logo that put the title on three lines, the words \u201cPhiladelphia\u201d and \u201cMuseum of\u201d in small type, anchored by \u201cArt\u201d in oversized letters.
\n\"GriffinsThe griffins on the roof of the Philadelphia Art Museum are the inspiration for the logo. The bronze sculptures were an important part of the building\u2019s lightning protection system. (Emma Lee\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

With the new logo, Suda wants to restore \u201cPhiladelphia\u201d to the fore.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, it is a nuanced nod to people who feel that coming to the top of the steps was enough for their visit to the museum,\u201d Suda said. \u201cTo be throwing the doors wide open and saying this is an institution that\u2019s here to serve you and welcome you.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

The Philadelphia Art Museum began during the 1876 Centennial Exposition as the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art. It was later called the Pennsylvania Museum of Art, a name few people used conversationally. According to the museum\u2019s website<\/a>, everyone called it the Philadelphia Museum of Art, so that is what it became in 1938.\n<\/p>\n

Eighty-seven years later, similar reasoning went into this new name change: If everyone calls it the Philadelphia Art Museum, why not lean into that?\n<\/p>\n

\u201cYou think it\u2019s a local thing, but in fact it is much bigger than that,\u201d Suda said. \u201cWhen I\u2019m abroad seeing colleagues elsewhere in the world, they refer to it as the Philadelphia Art Museum. Or just, Philadelphia: \u2018We\u2019re going to Philadelphia to see the Duchamps or the Van Goghs.\u2019 What defines this institution locally and around the world is the fact that it\u2019s here in Philadelphia.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

The Art Museum worked with the Brooklyn-based design firm Gretel<\/a>, which wrapped the new name around a griffin, a mythological creature half lion and half eagle associated with protection and power. Griffin pediments adorn each corner of the museum\u2019s roof. The symbol had been used previously in the museum\u2019s branding but was left out in recent versions.
\n\"BannerA banner at the east entrance to the Philadelphia Art Museum previews a new name and a logo featuring a griffin. (Emma Lee\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a nod to our primary mission,\u201d Suda said. \u201cTo keep the treasures within our building safe.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Overall, the logo is meant to be bold and immediately eye-catching in a digital environment awash with competing messaging. Gone are the delicate lines of the museum\u2019s previous font. It is now written in Fairmount Serif, which Suda described as \u201cchunky.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":286338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,1448,2830,1311,122441,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-286337","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-pa","10":"tag-pennsylvania","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-philadelphia-museum-of-art","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-united-states-of-america","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","17":"tag-us","18":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}