This wonderful and very fun building represents the first major expansion of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In fact, we didn't even know what it was until a bus ferried the kids and I over from the main building for the Museum's Splash event, a program for children. The building is lavishly decorated with sculpture, color and gilding, and is regarded as one of the finest Art Deco structures in Philadelphia. The building is now a hot spot for kids and moms & dads, with five family-friendly exhibitions, Pay What You Wish family festivals, interactive art and play zones, and daily family programs. We explored every inch of the building as well as learned how to make embossed art. I was most impressed with the outside of the building. I spied over 20 examples of relief art, and that was only the front and the two winged sides; lord knows what's going on in the back of that thing. The most impressive of the outer adornments were the five allegorical figures representing the insurance industry, one of which is this squirrel.
Sculptor Lee Lawrie created this building's decorative scheme, which features this polychrome facades adorned with these figures symbolizing attributes of insurance: the owl of wisdom, the dog of fidelity, the pelican of charity, the opossum of protection, and the squirrel of
frugality. The pelicans, an Egyptian-inspired creation, are located second to the last sculpture on both ends, high atop the front facade. The pelican has a quizzical expression on its face. it looks straight ahead, its head cocked to the side, its slightly opened beak is down about its armor-clad chest. A wreath of leaves is at its feet. Its wings stand at attention on either side. The feathers are wonderfully sculpted and fully detailed on the back of its neck. I am not sure what kind of metal of which it is composed but it is golden, so I guess it is not bronze. It's something gilded.
The symbolism of the pelican can be traced back to the Physiologus, an early Christian work which appeared in the second century in Alexandria, Egypt. Written by an anonymous author, the Physiologus recorded legends of animals and gave each an allegorical interpretation. The legend of the pelican feeding her young is described: "The little pelicans strike their parents, and the parents, striking back, kill them. But on the third day the mother pelican strikes and opens her side and pours blood over her dead young. In this way they are revivified and made well..." If that is not protection (and charity) than I do not know what is! SOURCE
The building originally housed the Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance company, and the polychrome sculpture adopted Egyptian-inspired flora and fauna symbolizing attributes of insurance: the owl of wisdom, the dog of fidelity, the pelican of charity, the opossum of protection, and the squirrel of frugality. With numerous other reliefs such as the Seven Ages of Man and the Perils of Land, Sea, and Air on the Earth's Four Great Continents, it remains the most elaborately sculpted facade of any 20th-century building in the city of Philadelphia." Fisk Kimball, Director, Philadelphia Museum of Art. SOURCE
Lee Oscar Lawrie (October 16, 1877 – January 23, 1963) was one of the United States' foremost architectural sculptors and a key figure in the American art scene preceding World War II. Over his long career of more than 300 commissions Lawrie's style evolved through Modern Gothic, to Beaux-Arts Classicism and finally into Moderne or Art Deco. His work includes the details on the Nebraska State Capitol building in Lincoln, Nebraska and some of the architectural sculpture and his most prominent work, the free-standing bronze Atlas (installed 1937) at New York City's Rockefeller Center.