by Diana Cercone
Some called it civic pride. Others said it was to honor and continue an artistic legacy begun so many years before. A few even whispered that it was nothing shy of chutzpah to start an art museum that area residents would want to support and, even more audacious, a wider audience would want to visit. But to a group of like-minded art lovers, they saw it as a community vision and rightful mission. Nothing was going to deter them. And before they were through, the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown was no longer a dream but a reality.
As the story goes, it all started in the ’60s when a group of residents banded together to campaign for an art center in Doylestown. For almost 20 years the group’s arguments and pleas went unheeded. Then in the early 1980s the group succeeded in becoming recognized as the Bucks County Arts Council—and quickly began laying the groundwork for a museum. James Michener, who grew up not far from the future Museum’s site, was by that time a best-selling author and living in Florida working on a new novel. Nonetheless, members from the group, most notably his good friend Herman Silverman, persuaded him to give his support by lending the Museum his name as well as giving a sizable monetary gift.
Bruce Kastiff, the director of the Museum until his retirement this past spring, says that the success of any museum relies on three things: the site, a location easily accessible from major cities and a noteworthy collection. For the Michener, the first and second were easy. The year was 1985. Doylestown was the perfect location: near New York City, Philadelphia and New Jersey. The County had just built the new library in town and most of the 19th-century county prison, located on a three-acre site on Pine Street behind the library, had been demolished. Still standing, however, were the guardhouse and a small portion of the building enclosed by a section of a 30-foot-high stone wall. In addition the site was a mere few steps away from the famed Mercer Museum. An art museum would make the area a cultural triumvirate.
Three years later the James A. Michener Art Museum opened its doors. At the time there was only one gallery (in the space now called The Silverman Pavilion), and for the inaugural exhibition, all the paintings, a random selection of insignificant works, were owned by the County. With the location and site now secured, the only things missing were a prominent permanent collection of works of art by regional artists and exciting traveling national and international exhibitions. But that also was about to change ...
To finish reading this article go to page 74 in Summer 2012 issue of Bucks County Magazine.