Rosenbach Museum & Library

About the client:

The Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia seeks to inspire curiosity, inquiry and creativity by engaging broad audiences in exhibitions, programs and research based on its remarkable and expanding collections. The museum was founded by legendary book dealer A.S.W. Rosenbach and his brother and business partner Philip. With an outstanding collection of rare books, manuscripts, furniture and art, the Rosenbach is a museum and world-renowned research library, set within two historic 1865 townhouses, that reflects an age when great collectors lived among their treasures.

Visitor Information

Rosenbach Museum & Library
2008-2010 Delancey Place
Philadelphia, PA 19103

Museum Hours:
Tuesday: 12-5pm
Wednesday & Thursday: 12-8pm
Friday: 12-5pm
Saturday & Sunday: 12-6pm
Closed Mondays and National Holidays

Admission: Admission is $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and groups of 10 or more, $5 for students and children ages 5-18, and free for children under 5.

Information: (215) 732-1600 or visit www.rosenbach.org

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	Photo of A.S.W. Rosenbach by Haeseler. Rosenbach Museum & Library, 2006. Titanic: The Rise of Rosenbach	1.88 MB
	Philip H. Rosenbach (1863-1953), telegram (carbon) to A.S.W. Rosenbach, Philadelphia, April 16, 1912. Rosenbach Museum & Library. Titanic: The Rise of Rosenbach	96.93 KB
	In Rosie’s Backyard, dummy book for The Sign on Rosie’s Door. Pen and ink, watercolor. © 1954 by Maurice Sendak. Pen to Publisher: The Life of Three Sendak Picture Books	831.78 KB
	Maria Gratz, Thomas Sully photo by Douglas A. Lockard. Maria Gratz acquisition	7.24 MB
	Photo of Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library. Rosenbach Museum & Library, 2006. Titanic: The Rise of Rosenbach	1.5 MB
	Unknown artist, portrait of Harry Elkins Widener. Rosenbach Museum & Library, 1954. Titanic: The Rise of Rosenbach	164.63 KB
	Sendak in Spring: The Wild Things Whirligig	2.24 MB
	Three storyboard designs for Outside Over There. Pen and ink. © 1976 by Maurice Sendak. Pen to Publisher: The Life of Three Sendak Picture Books	692.34 KB
	Final drawing for Brundibar. Pen and ink, pencil, colored pencil, watercolor. © 2002 by Maurice Sendak. Pen to Publisher: The Life of Three Sendak Picture Books	834.61 KB
	Autograph note for Outside Over There. Marker on paper. © 1975 by Maurice Sendak. Pen to Publisher: The Life of Three Sendak Picture Books	306.9 KB
	Script for Brundibar, adapted by Tony Kushner. Pen and ink. © 1999 by Tony Kushner and Maurice Sendak. Pen to Publisher: The Life of Three Sendak Picture Books	461.89 KB
	Corrected proof of dust jacket for Outside Over There. Pencil and pen corrections on tracing paper over color proof. © 1981 by Maurice Sendak and HarperCollins Pen to Publisher: The Life of Three Sendak Picture Books	568.16 KB
	Inside the Rosenbach Museum & Library’s Historic House	2.73 MB
	Hands-On Tours, offered weekly, allow visitors to get in touch with historic objects from the Rosenbach's collection	2.49 MB
	Visitors explore the Rosenbach Museum & Library; photo by Bryan Karl Lathrop	1.16 MB
	Legendary book dealer Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach, founded the Rosenbach Museum & Library with his brother and business partner Philip. [ca 1920-1930]	3.72 MB
	Mural: "Conservator Cassie Myers performs a conservation treatment on Maurice Sendak's 1961 The Chertoff Mural at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia. Photo by Michael O'Reilly."	944.55 KB
	Mural: "Detail prior to conservation, The Chertoff Mural. © 1961 by Maurice Sendak, all rights reserved."	1.29 MB

Press Mentions

Rosenbach Museum obtains whimsical Sendak mural

Philadelphia Inquirer

One night, in Larry and Nina’s room, a mural grew.

A joyful procession - a dog, two boys, two birds, a lion, a girl, a bear, and a sun - was being painted by a dear family friend, who spread paper and paint jars on the floor and sometimes stood on their beds to work.

It was 1961, and the family friend - Uncle Moo Moo - was Maurice Sendak, 33.

Fifty years later, the mural - in two hefty slabs - has made its way from the 13th-floor apartment overlooking Manhattan’s Central Park to a new home: the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Center City, which houses Sendak’s papers, books, art, and ephemera.

“As a kid, it was just an amazing experience,” said Larry Chertoff, 55, who with his sister Nina, 53, donated the mural in memory of their parents, Roslyn and Lionel Chertoff, and Sendak’s longtime partner, Eugene Glynn.

The Civil War Begins: An Exhibition at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia

California Literary Review

The horrors of the American Civil War, wrote Walt Whitman in 1863, “open a new world somehow to me, giving closer insights, new things, exploring deeper mines than any yet, showing our humanity … tried by terrible, fearfulest tests, probed deepest, the living soul’s, the body’s tragedies, bursting the petty bounds of art.”

A century and half after the bombardment of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861 sparked the conflict, Americans are still trying, as Whitman did, to comprehend our nation’s most “terrible, feafulest tests.”

Maurice Sendak Mural Has New Home In Philadelphia

CBS News

(AP) PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Long before award-winning illustrator and writer Maurice Sendak’s world of wild things charmed millions of young readers and changed the notion of what children’s literature could look like, some of his now-classic characters frolicked on a wall overlooking New York’s Central Park for an audience of two.

A mural Sendak painted in 1961 was removed - wall and all - after his friends, who were the apartment’s longtime residents, had passed away. Now, it is being restored in a Philadelphia museum devoted to his work.

“What’s nice is it’s like a time machine,” the 82-year-old Sendak told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his Connecticut home. “It captures a part of the past for a moment, and friends who were very dear to me.”

Rosenbach acquires portraits of Gratzes, The museum is "very excited" to have likenesses of Rebecca and her brother, Joseph.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

On Tuesday, visitors to the Rosenbach Museum and Library will see what museum officials call their most important acquisitions in many years - a Thomas Sully portrait of Rebecca Gratz, Philadelphia’s renowned 19th-century Jewish American educator, philanthropist and social activist, and a portrait of her brother, Joseph Gratz, by G.P.A. Healy.

The Rosenbach now has two of Sully’s three portraits of Rebecca Gratz, as well as portraits of other Gratz family members, and major holdings of family papers and artifacts.

“We are very excited,” said museum director Derick Dreher. “It’s the most significant purchase in my 12 years as director, both in terms of dollars paid and the intrinsic value of the work to audiences in Philadelphia.”

The Impulsive Traveler: An art weekend in Philadelphia

The Washington Post

At the Rosenbach Museum & Library, for example, contemporary artist Enrique Chagoya has put a new spin on a 19th-century print called “The Head Ache.” Chagoya substitutes the face of Barack Obama for the man in the George Cruikshank original as a commentary on today’s health-care debate, which has been enough to make anyone reach for the aspirin.

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