While meeting the requests of an increasingly sophisticated, demanding and prosperous clientele, the cabinetmakers, printers, metalworkers, painters and other artisans of the Delaware Valley reinterpreted traditional forms and patterns imported from Europe. In doing so, they transformed the contemporary European Baroque aesthetic into a delicate style that emphasized balance, proportion, form and restrained ornamentation, and which ultimately coalesced as a distinctive American regional vision. .Worldly Goods will highlight more than 500 fine examples of furniture, textiles, silver, metalwork, ceramics, prints, maps, books and paintings from this seminal place and time, lent by private collections and museums.

A material chronology of early Pennsylvania's artistic development, World Iv Goods will feature sections delineating particular forms, patrons, craftsmen, and stylistic trends that gained prominence during the 80 years it surveys. While exploring the ongoing influence of the British Isles on the arts of the New World, the exhibition will also examine the early stylistic influences of highly trained and influential artisans and craftsmen with roots in Holland, France, Portugal, Germany and Sweden. WorldIy Goods
will illuminate the experiences of diverse cultural, ethnic, socioeconomic and religious groups-Native Americans, Jews, Catholics, the French, Huguenots, African Americans, and slave and indentured peoples-and highlight their contributions to the region's cultural landscape.

Edward Hicks (1780-1849), one of the best known American folk painters, was a lifelong resident of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and a devoted Quaker missionary and preacher. His images of The Peaceable Kingdom, inspired by the Book of Isaiah's prophetic vision of a peaceful world in which "the wolf shall dwell with the Iamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid," are among the most beloved in American art. For Hicks, painting portraits or other "vain" and "self-indulgent" forms-though relatively Iucrative-was incompatible with his religious beliefs. To satisfy his creative impulses and his Quaker convictions, Hicks devoted most of his energies to painting inspirational and instructive subjects. His life and art will be explored in The Kingdoms of Edward Hicks, a comprehensive exhibition featuring more than 80 works of art. The exhibition will include paintings, decorated objects, as well as important manuscript materials that
illuminate Hick's deep spirituality, artistic talent, and intense interest in the doctrinal controversies that divided his fellow Quakers in the early years of the 19th century.

A man of strong faith, Hicks lived in two worlds (or "kingdoms"): the religious and the secular. The Kingdoms of Edward Hicks will examine the distinctions between his religiously inspired paintings and the secular works that he produced to earn a living. Featured will be some 25 representations of The Peaceable Kingdom, a religious and historic subject treated by Hicks in more than 100 paintings dating from the early 1820s to 1849, and which became the artist's most compelling personal and artistic testament. In addition to important examples of The Peaceable Kingdom, the exhibition will feature rural landscapes and pastoral scenes, an advertising signboard painted by Hicks in 1800 to 1805; and A Portrait of Edward Hicks by his nephew Thomas Hicks (1823-90) in 183841. The Kingdoms of Edward Hicks will also include revealing artifacts: a stone used by Hicks for the grinding of pigments, his spectacles, a letter in the artist's hand, and two copies of his published memoirs, among other evocative and instructive items.