The Poet

The writer who helps to shape the imagination of the country is represented in José de Creeft’s sculpture of a draped poet clutching his writings to his breast. The Poet was commissioned by Association for Public Art (then known as Fairmount Park Art Association) and installed at the Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial. Even before emigrating to America from Spain in the late 1920s, de Creeft had established a substantial reputation as a carver of wood and stone. This was his first major public commission in the United States; a few years later, he created a bronze Alice in Wonderland for New York’s Central Park.

The Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial

The Association for Public Art established and maintains the Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial, which includes three terraces and seventeen sculptures that were commissioned over a period of thirty years.

Ellen Phillips Samuel (1849-1913) was an active member of the Fairmount Park Art Association (although she could not serve on the all-male Board) and a philanthropic supporter of many cultural activities in Philadelphia. When she died in 1913, she left the bulk of her estate in trust to the Art Association, specifying that the income be used to create a series of sculptural monuments “emblematic of the history of America.” Her bequest was said to be one of the largest of its kind in the country at the time. When these funds became available upon the death of her husband J. Bunford Samuel in 1929, the Association appointed a planning committee, which decided that the Samuel Memorial should express major ideas and spiritual forces as well as chronological developments in American history.

To identify sculptors for the Samuel Memorial, the committee organized three international exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. These Sculpture Internationals, in 1933, 1940, and 1949, brought together the works of hundreds of sculptors from the United States and abroad. The exhibitions contributed not only to the Samuel Memorial but also to the general awareness of contemporary sculpture throughout the Philadelphia area and beyond.

North Terrace

The development of the North Terrace inaugurated the final stage of the Samuel Memorial. Here the intention was to express not historical periods or movements but rather the “inner energies” that shaped the nation. Two major bronze groups were to represent “social consciousness” and “constructive enterprise,” and the commissions were offered to Jacob Epstein and Jacque Lipchitz. As Epstein and Lipchitz progressed, it became apparent that their two massive monuments would not fit comfortably in the same terrace. Thus, Epstein’s Social Consciousness was installed at the west entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Lipchitz’s The Spirit of Enterprise served as the centerpiece of the North Terrace until, in 1986, it was moved to the Central Terrace.

Other Sculptures in the North Terrace of the Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial

The Preacher (1952) by Waldemar Raemisch

The Scientist (1955) by Koren der Harootian

The Laborer (1958) by Ahron Ben-Shmuel

Titles Unknown: Eye and Hand (1959) by J. Wallace Kelly

Content on this page was adapted from Public Art in Philadelphia by Penny Balkin Bach (Temple University Press, 1992). Bach was the longtime Executive Director of the Association for Public Art, working with the organization from 1980 to 2022.