With the closing of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Drexel University has blundered into a spectacular public relations disaster. I could almost feel sorry for them, had their actions not been so cruel and heartless. When the news first broke, the reaction was a stunned grief. According to Drexel, this beloved museum, the public-facing side
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Just before 10 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 27, dozens of people stood in line outside the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, waiting in the spitting rain for the museum to open its doors to the public for the final time. Artie Cohen, 6, who’d been going to the Academy since he was 2
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Two hundred and fifty years ago, as a new nation was being born in Philadelphia, botanist William Bartram was on the Altamaha River in Georgia — the edge of the infant United States — nearing the end of a three-year plant-collecting expedition. In addition to Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, he had traversed the “powerful
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Throughout July 18 and 19, visitors arrived at South Philadelphia’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park with a unique task — to perform for a tree. The production, “Arborlogues,” is a touring piece developed by Other Forms Of (OFO) Theater, a company led by set designer Dan Daly that emphasizes theatrical experimentation through unorthodox sets. Billed as
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When cinephile and Germantown resident Stephanye R. Watts entered the world of independent cinema, she discovered a troubling pattern. “I started to notice there were no other Black people in the theater, unless they were like 60-plus,” Watts says. “Black millennials are on the internet, talking about wanting to see more Black films, and …
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When a fellow volunteer at the Crossroads Kitchen Project announced that she didn’t like rice, Philipa Laster sensed a challenge. Laster, a native of Nigeria, grew up eating rice every day. She began thinking about a dish that would change her colleague’s mind. Masa cakes, a traditional northern Nigerian food that Laster’s mother made weekly,
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Early in 2026 in the Oxford Circle neighborhood, 115 Philadelphians representing 15 different nationalities sat down to enjoy dinner at the first in a series of 21 events across seven diverse neighborhoods. The social impact project, called “Breaking Bread, Breaking Barriers” and conceived by president and CEO of The Welcoming Center (TWC) Anuj Gupta, rests
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An empty shopfront on South Street is in the midst of transformation. Ennis Carter, the founder of Social Impact Studios, a Philadelphia-based “creative hub,” affixes bolts of colorful paper to a wall and unfurls a vibrant, refrigerator-sized hand-painted canvas beneath a banner proclaiming “Made with Artistry & Activism.” For the month of July, the space
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On June 5, 1926, a family of five from Iowa, the McHenrys, arrived in Philadelphia to visit the recently opened Sesquicentennial International Exhibition. John Wanamaker, who had proposed the idea 10 years earlier, envisioned the greatest world’s fair in history — an “astounding presentation of the capacity and productive power of the United States,” he
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As the oldest of nine children, Shevy Sputz was her mother’s kitchen assistant in their Brooklyn household. Sputz’s mother, a talented cook and baker, wisely gave her daughter responsibility for making desserts. Decades later, that early family apprenticeship and an heirloom recipe led to the formation of Sputz’s burgeoning Fairmount-based business, Shevy’s Babka Paradise. Although
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