The resources compiled here provide in-depth content and opportunities to bring Esherick’s story to college and university audiences, and to adult learners of all kinds. Click on the links below for great Esherick info on the web.
For K-12 teachers and families, please visit our At Home Activities page for fun ways to incorporate these resources into your learning environment.
Virtual Presentations or Q&As
Contact our staff to talk about hosting a virtual presentation for your course.
- Julie Siglin, Executive Director: [email protected]
- Emily Zilber, Director of Curatorial Affairs and Strategic Partnerships: [email protected]
The Wharton Esherick Museum Blog Posts
Fully illustrated articles featuring highlights from the studio and collection and information from our archives. Some of our favorites focus on Esherick’s three-legged stools and their iconic use in advertisements for Armstrong Linoleum, Esherick’s relationships with artist friends like the ceramist Henry Varnum Poor and writers Sherwood Anderson and Theodore Dreiser, and this reprint of “The New American Craftsman: First Generation” by Wharton Esherick, Donald McKinley and Sam Maloof, 1966 from Craft Horizons.
The Wharton Esherick Bibliography
Annotated bibliography which aims to provide a guide for scholars or others researching the work and life of Wharton Esherick.
Primary Source Documents and Archives
American Craft Council Archives
- Documents including the catalog, press release, and other information related to the retrospective exhibition The Furniture and Sculpture of Wharton Esherick (1958-1959); the catalog from Young Americans (1958) which Esherick juried along with designers including Dorothy Liebes and Margaret Craver; images from the exhibition Woodenworks (1972); and other Esherick related materials including coverage of Esherick in Craft Horizons/American Craft
Finding Aid for Wharton Esherick Family Papers
- This finding aid is a description of archival material held at the Wharton Esherick Museum.
Wharton Esherick and Mansfield Bascom Collection
- Finding Aid for the Wharton Esherick and Mansfield Bascom Collection
- This finding aid and index is a description of archival material held at the Wharton Esherick Museum. This collection showcases Esherick’s business during the later part of his life, mainly the 1940s to his death in 1970 as well as materials regarding Mansfield Bascom’s research and writing of his biography on Wharton Esherick.
- Index for Wharton Esherick and Mansfield Bascom Collection
The Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America from the Archives of American Art
- Oral histories with Mansfield Bascom and Ruth Esherick about Wharton Esherick, as well as oral histories from makers including Wendell Castle, Jere Osgood, and Joyce Anderson discussing his impact.
Selected Writing About Esherick
American Craft magazine and the American Craft Council website
The Arts of Wharton Esherick from The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia
Esherick as inspiration for contemporary painter Becky Suss from Artblog and Hyperallergic
Museums with Esherick in their Online Collections
Addison Gallery of American Art
Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum
Jack Lenor Larsen’s Longhouse Reserve
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
The Philadelphia Museum of Art
Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery