Cultural Excursions Organized by the MLA

The MLA has organized five cultural excursions that will take place during the 2017 MLA Annual Convention in Philadelphia. The excursions give registrants an opportunity to experience some of the city’s renowned museums, rich history, and cultural highlights.

Space is limited, and there is an additional fee for each excursion. To participate, select an excursion and payment option when you complete your convention registration form. Convention registrants may also sign up a limited number of guests per excursion for an additional fee (the fee is the same for convention registrants and guests); guests must be signed up and accompanied by a convention registrant to attend an excursion. Please see the descriptions below for more information.

We regret that we cannot provide refunds for cancellations received after 12 December 2016.

If you have already registered for the convention and wish to attend an excursion, write to registration@mla.org. Please include your registration confirmation number in your request.

City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Tour

Thursday, 5 January 2017
10:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Excursion trolley departs from the Pennsylvania Convention Center at 10:30 a.m.
$45 per person per tour; two paid guests allowed per convention registrant.

For thirty years, the City of Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program, the largest in the country, has been connecting artists and communities through a collaborative mural-making process that transforms public spaces into celebrations of the lives and cultures of the surrounding neighborhoods.

Tour Details

Enjoy a ninety-minute guided tour of the city’s iconic murals in a Victorian-style trolley ride through downtown Philadelphia. Discover the history behind the murals and how they reflect the diverse communities in which they are located. Wrap up the tour with a visit to the mural workshop at the Asian Arts Initiative (1219 Vine Street), where you will meet with one of the artists and learn firsthand about the mural-making process.

The tour concludes at 12:30 p.m. The Asian Arts Initiative is about five blocks from the convention center. There is no shuttle bus.

Philadelphia Museum of Art Curator Tour

Friday, 6 January 2017
10:00 a.m.–12:00 noon
2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Travel on own (about one mile from the convention center). For public transportation, take SEPTA (bus route 38) or Philly PHLASH after 10:00 a.m.
$30 per person; two paid guests allowed per convention registrant.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia’s world-renowned art museum, was built in 1876 as part of the Great Centennial Exhibition. In the 1920s it moved into its new (and current) building. The museum’s wide-ranging collections have been enhanced by major gifts from influential donors, such as the Keith L. and Katherine Sachs collection of post-1950s modern art, Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz’s outsider art collection, Carl Otto Kretzschmar von Kienbusch’s private collection of arms and armor, and a large body of work by Thomas Eakins donated by his widow, Susan MacDowell Eakins.

Tour Details

Join one of the museum’s curators for a tour of the Mexican modernism exhibit, Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism, 1910–1950, which looks at the forces that influenced Mexican culture from the Mexican Revolution through World War II. This landmark exhibition, created in partnership with the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, is the most comprehensive exhibition of Mexican modernism to be shown in the United States in more than seventy years. Explore masterpieces by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Frida Kahlo, Carlos Mérida, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, and many others. This exhibit closes on 8 January.

Excursion registration includes two-day access to the main building, the Perelman Building, and the Rodin Museum.

The tour concludes at 12:00 noon. The museum is about a mile from the Pennsylvania Convention Center. To return to the convention center, take SEPTA (bus route 38) or Philly PHLASH between the 12th and Market stop and the Museum stop. There is no shuttle bus.

Rosenbach Museum and Library Founding Fathers Tour

Friday, 6 January 2017
10:00 a.m.–12:00 noon
2008–2010 Delancey Place
Travel on own (about one mile from the convention center). For public transportation, take SEPTA (bus route 17)
$25 per person; one paid guest allowed per convention registrant.

Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach and his brother and business partner, Philip Rosenbach, were renowned book dealers and art collectors in the early twentieth century who helped shape many of the country’s foremost book collections, including the Folger and Huntington Libraries. They created the Rosenbach Museum and Library, housed in their Philadelphia townhouse and featuring their personal collections, as a posthumous gift to the public.

Tour Details

Join the museum librarian for a tour of the Rosenbach brothers’ townhouse (now on the National Register of Historic Places) and a hands-on tour of books, journals, and letters from the collection. The Founding Fathers tour includes George Washington’s earliest known letters and other writings by Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin. Enjoy this rare opportunity to view our nation’s icons as real people through their own words as detailed in their personal notes to themselves and letters to family and friends.

The tour concludes at 12:00 noon. The museum is about a mile from the Pennsylvania Convention Center. To return to the convention center, take SEPTA (bus route 17) to the 12th and Market stop. There is no shuttle bus.

Rosenbach Museum and Library Banned Books Tour

Saturday, 7 January 2017
10:00 a.m.–12:00 noon
2008–2010 Delancey Place
Travel on own (about one mile from the convention center). For public transportation, take SEPTA (bus route 17).
$25 per person; one paid guest allowed per convention registrant.

Tour Details

Join the museum curator for a tour of the Rosenbach brothers’ townhouse (now on the National Register of Historic Places) and a hands-on tour of books, journals, and letters from the collection. The Banned Books tour includes a wide range of books that have been banned, censored, and challenged, including James Joyce’s manuscript of Ulysses, Lewis Carroll’s own ﬁrst-edition copy of Alice in Wonderland, and a first edition of Miguel Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Dr. Rosenbach’s favorite book.

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Private Tour

Friday, 6 January 2017
3:00–5:00 p.m.
118–128 North Broad Street
Travel on own (about five blocks from the convention center)
$30 per person; two paid guests allowed per convention registrant.

Established in 1805, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is America’s first fine arts school and first art museum. Located in a historic landmark building and a neighboring modern building, it is home to an acclaimed collection of paintings and sculptures focusing on American art from the late 1700s to the present. The collection includes works by Thomas Eakins, Charles Willson Peale, and Benjamin West and two of the first portraits of George Washington.

Tour Details

Monica Zimmerman, Director of Museum Education, will lead a private tour of the museum and art school along with a behind-the-scenes tour of the Historic Cast Hall, which is not normally open to the public. The museum’s acclaimed collection captures the story of Philadelphia as a city on the cutting edge of the nineteenth century, highlighting accomplishments in technology, creativity, and civic engagement, including the founding of the first museum, the creation of the first public waterworks and public fountain, the launch of the first steamboat (on the Schuylkill River), and the establishment of the first medical school and university.

Excursion registration includes a pass to return to the museum over the weekend.

The tour concludes at 5:00 p.m. The museum is five blocks from the Pennsylvania Convention Center. There is no shuttle bus.