Family Reunion: A Celebration of the Sampler Legacy of Hope Randolph Hacker with guest curator Kathleen Staples

In its final few weeks on display (closes May 29), the exhibition The Plain and Ornamental Branches: A Sampling of Pennsylvania’s Girlhood Embroideries presents fifteen embroidered samplers and silkwork pictures, some stitched at Westtown School and the Moravian Seminary at Bethlehem; a composition drawn and painted by Philadelphia artist Samuel Folwell; and eight embroideries dating between 1802 and 1887, all of whose makers were related to their donor, Hope Randolph Hacker. Today, guest curator Kathleen Staples pays tribute to Hacker and the important embroidery collections at the Museum.