Explore the sculpture that marked the partnership between landscape architect, Thomas W. Sears and Dr. R. Tait McKenzie of the Philadelphia Art Alliance, to produce three years of groundbreaking Philadelphia Flower Shows.

Monday, October 6, 2025 – Monday March 30, 2026
Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, McLean Library
100 N. 20th Street, Philadelphia, PA
Free
Virtual
Link to the virtual exhibit: https://phsmcleanlibrary.omeka.net/exhibits/show/sculpture-at-the-philadelphia-/sculpture-at-the-philadelphia-

Between 1934 and 1936, landscape architect Thomas Warren Sears (1880-1966) served as designer of the Philadelphia Flower Show held in the Commercial Museum in West Philadelphia. His innovative layout for the 1934 show organized exhibits around a central axis and connected them with pathways leading to, for example, a massive orchid display, a rose garden, or to the acacia collections of Joseph Widener. The designer’s active collaborator was the head of the Philadelphia Art Alliance Sculpture Department, Dr. R. Tait McKenzie (1867-1938). Together they arranged for sculpture to be placed in major exhibits and Sears’s “central feature.” Many of the sculptural works featured in the Flower Show made their first appearance in Philadelphia at the Sculpture-in-the-Open Air exhibition held every two years in Rittenhouse Square; an exhibition founded by McKenzie.

Brought to you by the Archives of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, this virtual exhibit will focus on the works of seven of the figurative sculptors who exhibited at the flower show during the Sears-McKenzie years – Edward Field Sanford, Harriet Frishmuth, Louis Milione, Beatrice Fenton, Harrison Gibbs, Lawrence Tenney Stevens, and Dr. R. Tait McKenzie.