Independent Arts News Reporting Michener Art Museum Commemorates the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with a New Commission by Roberto Lugo
Reported on Monday, June 8, 2026.
Pictured Above: Michener Roberto Lugo February 2020. Photo Credit: Contributed.
NEWSROOM POST: DOYLESTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA
A monumental artwork by the Philadelphia ceramicist honors the Michener’s site history as the Bucks County Jail, thanks to support from Pennsylvania state senator Steve Santarsiero
Doylestown, PA — Michener Art Museum is proud to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with a newly commissioned work by Philadelphia artist Roberto Lugo. Permanence: We Were Here, a monumental ceramic vessel that encapsulates the Michener’s site history as a county jail, was unveiled to the public on Friday, June 5.
The opportunity to introduce a site-specific work for the Museum by one of the region’s most prominent artists is thanks to support by Pennsylvania state senator Steve Santarsiero. The grant was awarded through the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Department of Community and Economic Development.
Lugo’s four-foot-tall vessel reflects the transformation of the 1884 Bucks County Jail into a celebrated, regional art museum, which opened at the same location in 1988.
“We are thrilled to unveil the artwork commissioned by Roberto Lugo for Michener Art Museum,” Executive Director Anne Corso said. “The piece Permanence: We Were Here is timely as we honor our nation’s semiquincentennial, reflect on the history of our site as the former Bucks County Jail, and celebrate the role of contemporary craft in our collection—with a nationally recognized artist who makes his home here in the Delaware Valley.”
The lidded storage jar is created in a combined color and black- and red-figure style of ancient Greece and Rome. Permanence: We Were Here features Michener’s distinctive architecture, with references to the original stone walls of the jail. A vibrantly colored narrative at the top of the work incorporates drawings from the Pine Street Express, a magazine published by people who were incarcerated at the jail in the 1970’s as part of a writing program facilitated by Vita Education Services.
“Art can be a pathway to new beginnings,” said Laura Igoe, Gerry and Marguerite Lenfest Chief Curator. “This piece speaks about overcoming systems of oppression while acknowledging and honoring the people who were incarcerated here.”
The ceramic work will be displayed as part of the Michener’s permanent collection, allowing the Museum to bring an artistic perspective on the building’s history into its galleries. It builds on Behind
These Walls: Reckoning with Incarceration, a multi-year initiative supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage that explores the Museum’s former life as a jail. The commission was inspired based on insights from a community advisory committee, convened by the Michener as part of Behind These Walls, that expressed an interest in presenting more about the site’s history through art.
The unveiling coincides with the final growing season for the The Short Line, a garden installation by the New Orleans-based multidisciplinary artist jackie sumell. The garden bed traces the footprint of three original cells from the Bucks County Jail and is on view as part of the Michener’s outdoor sculpture garden until the fall. The site-specific work was planted in the spring of 2025 as the culminating installation for Behind These Walls.
Permanence: We Were Here invites visitors to reflect on the Museum’s history and future on an important national anniversary. “One of the things that is really important in my work is telling the full history, the scope of the American experience, especially with the 250th anniversary of America,” artist Roberto Lugo said. “So much of history is told from certain lenses and perspectives that don’t really tell everybody’s full truth. For me, this commission is profound because it’s telling a truth, uncovering history.”
The artwork joins pieces by contemporary ceramicists like William Daley, Toshiko Takaezu, Lisa Naples, and Syd Carpenter in the Michener’s permanent collection. Its commission demonstrates the Museum’s dedication to collecting and exhibiting significant contemporary art and craft from the region.
Related Programming for the Roberto Lugo commission, on view starting Friday, June 5, 2026:
Unveiling Day for Permanence: We Were Here
Friday, June 5, 2026 / 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
Free for Members / Included with general admission
Exhibition Sponsorship
Permanence: We Were Here by Roberto Lugo is commissioned with a grant from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Community and Economic Development, awarded by Senator Steven Santarsiero.
About the Artist
Roberto Lugo is a Philadelphia-based artist, ceramicist, social activist, poet, and educator. He utilizes classical pottery forms and traditional European and Asian ceramic techniques in conjunction with portraiture and urban graffiti reminiscent of his North Philadelphia upbringing and Hip-Hop culture to highlight themes of poverty, inequality, and racial injustice. Lugo holds a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Penn State. His work has been featured in exhibitions at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, among others. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2023 Heinz Award, a Philadelphia’s Cultural Treasures award, a 2019 Pew Fellowship, a Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize, and a US Artist Award. His work is found in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The High Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Brooklyn Museum, the Walters Art Museum, and more.
About The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage
The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage is a multidisciplinary grantmaker and hub for knowledge-sharing, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, dedicated to fostering a vibrant cultural community in Greater Philadelphia. The Center invests in ambitious, imaginative, and catalytic work that showcases the region’s cultural vitality and enhances public life, and engages in an exchange of ideas concerning artistic and interpretive practice with a broad network of cultural practitioners and leaders.
About Michener Art Museum
Address: 138 South Pine Street, Doylestown PA 18901
Website: michenerartmuseum.org
Hours: Wednesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. and Sunday, 12–5 p.m.
Michener Art Museum is dedicated to preserving, interpreting, and exhibiting the art and cultural heritage of the Delaware Valley region. The Museum is named for Doylestown’s most famous son James A. Michener, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and supporter of the arts. Home to a world-class collection of Pennsylvania Impressionist paintings and a permanent collection that explores a variety of artistic expressions, the Michener has a reputation for its craft holdings, which includes the Nakashima Reading Room. The Museum is housed on the site of the 1884 Bucks County Jail and is surrounded by the original prison walls, now part of the Patricia D. Pfundt Sculpture Garden. Michener Art Museum offers wide-ranging programming that nurtures a lifelong involvement in the arts, with rotating special exhibitions, artist conversations and studio tours, gallery talks, the Putman Arts Leader Lecture series, as well as dance and music performances.
