The Lost Meeting

A J. Morgan Puett Project, in collaboration with Julie Courtney, spurse, and David Lang
2005

Abington Art Center
515 Meetinghouse Road 
Jenkintown, PA 19046 

The Lost Meeting, curated by Julie Courtney, takes place in Little Abington Meeting, an abandoned Quaker meeting house built in 1836 that lies within the Sculpture Park of Abington Art Center in Alverthorpe Park, Jenkintown, PA. 

Little Abington Meeting was created by Quakers as an outcome of the Orthodox/Hicksite schism of 1927-28. The schism lasted from 1827 to 1955 and was a separation based partly on Quaker theological understanding.

Moving through this schism and Quaker culture of that period, the collaborators in The Lost Meeting have set up a provisional drafting studio in the building of the Little Abington Meeting to experiment with historical domestic objects using 21st-century technology. The objects will be considered as mediators that are part of our everyday lives. These object-mediators occur everywhere, and between us, they are what allows us to be part of the world (i.e. clothing, furniture, children’s toys, and writings). They intervene in the dialogue of rethinking our relation to the everyday. The installation becomes the ambassador of difference that travels between and across a terrain involving the Quakers, site histories, and other events. This studio will investigate the mediators and the everyday primarily through architectural and clothing pattern drafting systems.

The handmade catalog tells the story of the site-specific project.