New Museum

It's just after noon on a cool Saturday, and a young man, dressed in a fitted baseball cap, loose jeans, and a white T-shirt that hangs about six inches past his waist, strolls through the Museum of the City of New York. His iPod headphones are stuck deep into his ears, and he shakes his head to a song - a rap song surely, judging by the head moves - as he stares at a glass-cased display. "No Jordans?" he asks, directing his alarm to no one in particular. Then he sees them, the 1999 red-and-black replicas of the 1985 Nike Air Jordan 1. His face lights up. Interestingly, on display just a few feet away is an outfit nearly identical to the one the young man is wearing except for the sneaks, which are replaced on a mannequin with "butter" Timberland boots.

A proposed Revolutionary War museum in Valley Forge, long stalled by bureaucratic wrangling, moved closer to reality yesterday after a crucial endorsement by the U.S. secretary of the interior. Fresh support for the plan came, fittingly perhaps, on the day the nation celebrated the anniversary of its independence. Gov. Rendell and U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) appeared at a holiday parade in Glenside to announce that Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne had written to Congress on Monday urging the project's approval.

The vision of the renowned Barnes Foundation throwing open its doors on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and enticing swarms of visitors to the city with the sweet smell of art moved quite a bit closer to reality yesterday. At a news conference in the Grand Ballroom of the Park Hyatt at the Bellevue, Gov. Rendell announced that the state would contribute $25 million toward construction of a new home for the Merion museum on the site of the Youth Study Center, between 20th and 21st Streets.

One morning about two months ago, Bruce Katsiff, director and chief executive officer of the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, was sitting in his office when he received a hold-on-to-your-hat kind of phone call. Lawyer Rod Eastburn was on the line, and he simply said, "The museum is going to get somewhere between $6 and $8 million. " The money, it turns out, is a bequest from William Denison Williams, a retired and retiring physicist, who died in October at the age of 95. It is the largest cash gift in the Bucks County museum's history, said a still somewhat thunderstruck Katsiff, who had not the slightest advance inkling of this good fortune.

In 1976, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania sold Valley Forge State Park to the federal government for $1. Now the state may want it back. Angry over inadequate maintenance and the federal government's failure to approve plans for a new museum at Valley Forge National Historical Park, Gov. Rendell wrote to Interior Secretary Gale Norton last week offering a do-over. If the United States "is unwilling or unable to protect and preserve Valley Forge . . . the commonwealth is prepared to accept that responsibility," Rendell wrote.

Keep up the push for new museum at Valley Forge I want to thank The Inquirer for its clear reporting of the facts and forthright support of the American Revolution Center at Valley Forge ("Show good faith with private partners," Nov. 13). It is both a national travesty and, quite simply, monumentally shortsighted of the National Park Service to have invested so much effort in undercutting at every turn a small group that merely wanted to share its historic treasure with the world - and help Valley Forge rebuild its long-neglected physical environment.

The National Museum of American Jewish History is expected to announce today that it has exercised an option to buy the KYW building at Fifth and Market Streets on Independence Mall in June. As soon as KYW vacates, the museum intends to raze the building to construct a new museum on the site. KYW has a lease to stay in the building until March 2007, said the museum's director, Gwen Goodman. The station is the only tenant, she said. "We hope to be in the new building by fall of 2009.

During the nearly five years of negotiations to establish an Alexander Calder museum on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, everyone involved seemed eager for the museum to happen. Yet despite encouraging signals since November, including the Calder Foundation's offer to give the new museum 100 works, the courtship between the city and the foundation collapsed in late summer, apparently because of missed communications and misperceptions. Exactly why the project fell apart after so much time and energy had been poured into it is difficult to determine; each side believes it was left dangling by the other.

They met regularly for nearly a decade, but confined their conversation to one topic: the Civil War. The 40 amateur historians who made up the Bucks County Civil War Round Table knew as much about charter member Frederick W. Holzwarth Jr. as they knew about each other. He was a fan of Abraham Lincoln and a font of battlefield knowledge from Fort Sumter to Appomattox. But who among them wasn't? What they didn't know was that the quiet bachelor from Richboro was wealthy, generous, and devoted to his beloved group.

Now that a stunning design has been unveiled for the Center for the American Revolution at Valley Forge National Historical Park, it is easier to believe that the museum will get built. At the design's debut on Tuesday, Gov. Rendell pledged $12 million in state economic-stimulus funds to the $100 million project. Joining the governor was Montgomery County Commissioners chair Jim Matthews, who added another $2.5 million. Both understand the wisdom of investing in the project as a potent regional tourism attraction.