Sam Feinstein | The Early Years

SEPTEMBER 2020 | CRAWFORD GALLERY | PHILADELPHIA, PA

Sam Feinstein: The Early Years was an exhibition at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy that was on display from September 26, 2020 to Spring 2021 in conjunction with Group ’55, Midcentury Abstraction in Philadelphia, and Sam Feinstein: Immersive Abstraction at the Woodmere Art Museum. 

This special exhibition featuring art teachers Sam Feinstein and Barbara Crawford follows their careers from the 1920s through the 1950s and is a companion to Woodmere Art Museum’s current shows, Group ’55 and Midcentury Modernism in Philadelphia and Sam Feinstein: Immersive Abstraction.  

Painter, illustrator, filmmaker, and writer, Sam Feinstein was the Director of the Arts and taught at Chestnut Hill Academy from 1938-1942. The exhibition features his watercolors, oil paintings, and illustrations from the 1930s until the mid-1950s, showing his journey towards abstract expressionism. This exhibition WAS made possible through the Samuel L. Feinstein Trust.

The journey that led to this exhibition began in the Fall of 2018, when Patricia Stark Feinstein approached the school and generously offered to loan SCH a canvas by her late husband Sam Feinstein. Tasked with selecting an original Sam Feinstein piece, Ellen Fishman, Melissa Maddonni Haims and Pia Druggan set off to meet Pat at an arts storing facility in New York City. Surrounded by a vast collection of spectacular art from this first-generation abstract expressionist artist in America, Pat shared stories of Sam, his life, his years at Chestnut Hill Academy (CHA), the boys school at the time, and his marriage to Barbara Anne Crawford, who took over Sam’s role at CHA in 1942 and taught there for almost 50 years. On that fortuitous day, the Woodmere Art Museum team led by William Valerio was also present, and the idea of collaborating in a joint exhibition was born.