Pennsylvania Modern
March 1, 2026 - June 7, 2026
In 1926, Wharton Esherick broke ground on a new studio, a building that is now an icon of handcrafted modern design and the centerpiece of the WEM campus. The site Esherick chose was on a slope of Valley Forge Mountain, amidst sandstone outcroppings and young forests that were overgrowing old farms. There, he and a crew of tradesmen raised a stone structure with a profound sense of rootedness in local geography and architecture. Drawn from the WEM collections, Pennsylvania Modern presents drawings, photographs, and archives bearing witness to Esherick’s eye to the local as he began one of his most magnetic creations.
Under what conditions does American art flourish? This question reverberated through U.S. art worlds one-hundred years ago, when Wharton Esherick broke ground on his Studio. From within the long shadow of European cultural achievements, artists, collectors, critics, and curators considered the fertility of American soil. Regionalists challenged the primacy of New York as the U.S. art center, insisting that authentic American art was locally grown, often in rural areas. Interest peaked in Early American artifacts, brought about by calls for the creation of a national heritage assembled from the best creative works the country had produced—a “usable past” in the words of influential literary critic Van Wyck Brooks. Esherick participated in these currents of regionalism and historicism with the development of his 1926 Studio, a modern building rooted in rural Pennsylvania.
The site Esherick chose for his Studio was below the ridge of Valley Forge Mountain, where new forests were overgrowing old farms. He modeled the building on a Pennsylvania bank barn, a multi-level stone structure built into a slope that was (and still is) a common form of local architecture. Folk knowledge drove the project. The tradesmen Esherick hired as builders worked without drawings, relying on their skill and the know-how of project head, mason Albert Kulp. Esherick used historic sources selectively, choosing and adapting them to his purposes. In the Studio north wall, he embedded a multi-pane factory window to light his workspace. He also intervened in the stonework, composing the locally sourced sandstone in nontraditional rhythmic patterns to harmonize with the surrounding woods.
Today, the Esherick Studio exists as a forty-year project done in stages. Esherick first erected a barnlike workspace. He then built it out into a modern home, with major additions in 1940 and 1966. Still, the lines of the 1926 Studio persist, bearing witness to a moment when regional, historic sources connected the sandstone building—and the artist and artworks within—to notions of a new American art nourished through rootedness.
Sketch, 20th century
Wharton Esherick was a keen observer of vernacular architecture—building that is indigenous to a given region, rooted in local geography, culture, climate, materials, and technologies. Vernacular architecture often relies on specialized knowledge passed down through generations by people unaffiliated with architecture as a formalized profession. Barns, farmsteads, mills, and covered bridges—all vernacular forms—were frequent subjects of Esherick’s sketches.
Barnyard – Pennsylvania, 1924
This print portrays a Pennsylvania bank barn with its characteristic second-story overhang, or “overshoot”—a functional feature providing a sheltered outdoor work area. In this instance, the overshoot is supported by a row of concrete pillars, whose tapered profile is a hallmark of Chester County barns.
The original, 1926 portion of the Esherick Studio has an overshoot. Because its overhang is shallow, it requires no buttressing from below. Still, Esherick incorporated the distinctive Chester County pillars in his building. He reinterpreted their conical forms as supports for a deck he added in 1965.
Letter to William Grissom, 1926
As this letter to a local landowner suggests, Esherick got wood for the Studio from an abandoned mill in the Great Valley. These timbers are visible today as the exposed beams of the
Studio’s Main Gallery. Each of their hewn surfaces bears witness to the rhythmic strokes of an axe swung by a tradesperson working at a preindustrial craft. Thus, by using reclaimed lumber, Esherick embedded his building in a continuum of local artisanry.
Up on the Hill, 1927
This print shows the Studio as it nestles into a south-facing hillside in emulation of a typical Pennsylvania bank barn. Developed by generations of farmers, this orientation shields the building from harsh norther weather, while exposing its full height to warmth and light from the south. Such attentiveness to climate and sun paths adapted well to Wharton Esherick’s imperatives: a well-lit workspace and a life lived close to nature.
Wharton Esherick Studio, circa 1930
Around a shaded patio beside the Studio, Wharton Esherick’s modernist sculptures share space with rustic chairs and benches, likely also made by him. These seats (which no longer survive) are primitive variants of stick chair, a form of furniture built by self-taught craftspeople throughout rural United States and Europe.
Esherick’s regard for untrained, or “folk” craft aligned with the interests of his contemporaries. In the 1930s, many U.S. modernists valued this work as exemplary American heritage—reading its unaffected practicality as a proto-modern instance of the form-follows-function ethos that was a cornerstone of modern design.
Wharton Esherick Studio, 1937
Wharton Esherick Museum Archives
Joseph Esherick, Wharton’s nephew, took this photograph of the Studio while working for his uncle in the summer of 1937. This was just after Joseph had completed his degree in architecture
at the University of Pennsylvania and before he moved to the West Coast, where he became a well-known California architect.
In the photograph, at the left of the composition, is a homemade derrick used for hoisting and transporting heavy pieces of wood. The derrick was certainly built a neighbor, possibly mason Albert Kulp, who devised a similar apparatus for building the Studio.
Wharton Esherick Studio, circa 1940s
In 1940, Wharton Esherick made the first of several additions to the Studio that increased its footprint. These expanded his living space, tipping the Studio away from the rudimentary, barnlike workroom he originally built, and toward being a comfortable modern home.
This photograph registers a series of alterations to the 1926 building: the insertion of a north-facing dormer in the bedroom (late 1930s) and the construction of a two-story wood “tower” addition (1940) whose basement would house the Studio’s first indoor bathroom (1947).
Wharton Esherick by the Studio, circa 1927
Wharton Esherick designed the Studio as a building rooted in local culture and terrain. He modeled it on a traditional barn but was unhesitant in subverting the tried and true to create an enhanced sense of belonging. He asked the mason, Albert Kulp, to execute certain unusual details that harmonized visually with the surrounding woods. As in nature, the Studio would have few straight lines and few right angles. The walls lean inward like tree trunks, corners twist, and the stonework patterns are more rhythmic than regular.
Wharton Esherick Studio, detail of the stonework, circa 1920s
Esherick’s eye for surface texture animates the Studio stonework. He acquired the sandstone blocks from a nearby quarry, where they had lain out in the woods in a pile of castoff material, deemed unusable. Esherick prized the patina the stone had developed. He told the workers not to cut any of the stone faces that would be visible in the finished walls. He gave precedence to the weathered surfaces, specifying that the mortar between the stones should be raked back to create shadows where hard white outlines would ordinarily have been.
Lenore and Morton Weiss in their home (Weiss House designed by Louis Kahn, 1947-50), 1991
Internationally renowned architect Louis Kahn was a friend of Wharton Esherick and a regular visitor to the Studio. Intrigued by Esherick’s forays into local building materials and techniques, he used the Studio stonework as a model for the masonry of a house he designed for Lenore and Morton Weiss in East Norriton Township, PA. Kahn’s emulation of the Esherick Studio was thorough to the extent that he sourced the stone for the Weiss House from the same quarry Esherick had used.
In the photograph at left, the Weiss House fireplace surround shows Kahn’s rendition of the stonework that Esherick developed through his regionalism.
“America at Home,” 1940
This clipping shows a view of Wharton Esherick’s sculptural wood furnishings exhibited at the 1940 New York World’s Fair. Esherick collaborated with
Philadelphia architect George Howe to create “A Pennsylvania Hill House,” one of sixteen model rooms in the “America at Home” pavilion.
The press release for “America at Home” described it as a regionalist project—an exhibition of American design, manufacturing, and lifestyle from “Florida to Oregon,” presenting a “unique opportunity to tap the rich fields and source material in regional America and represent fresh points of view from outside the great marketplace—New York City.”
Wharton Esherick and George Howe “A Pennsylvania Hill House” model room at the New York World’s Fair, 1940
Digital slideshow
“A Pennsylvania Hill House,” showcased furniture and architectural woodwork by Wharton Esherick alongside ceramics, textiles, and other artworks by makers whom he knew. Esherick created works especially for the exhibit, such as a dining set, World’s Fair Table and Chairs (1940). Other items, such as the Red Oak Spiral Staircase (1930) and dramatic, arced Bok Sofa (1936), were taken from his Studio, where they were part of his everyday life.
Publicity for “A Pennsylvania Hill House” called the room a “sculptor’s retreat”— an autobiographical phrase suggestive of the Esherick Studio. Thus, the World’s Fair, Esherick’s first exhibition on a national stage, introduced him as a Pennsylvania artist. Esherick used the money he received for the World’s Fair exhibit to enlarge the Studio in 1940. It was his first expansion of the 1926 footprint.
