A Season of Beauty Bus Trip
December 17, 2026 · The Reading Public Museum, 500 Museum Road · Reservations required by December 1, 2026
About the event
The Reading Public Museum heads south for a day shaped around holiday decor and American landscape painting. The bus leaves the Museum at 8:00am on December 17, with the first stop at Noël at Nemours Estate in Wilmington, where the Gilded Age home of Alfred I. du Pont is dressed for the season with lavish decorations, glowing lights, and fresh greenery, and a soaring tree anchors the Great Hall. Festive displays extend through the mansion, the chauffeur's garage, and select areas of the gardens.
After lunch, the group visits the Delaware Art Museum for Transcendent: Landscapes of the Hudson River School. Drawn primarily from the collections of The New York Historical, the exhibition looks at widely loved American paintings through Transcendentalism, a nineteenth century movement that emphasized the spiritual connection between people and the natural world. Loans from public and private collections round out an introduction to the landscape tradition that flourished in the middle decades of the nineteenth century.
Transportation, admissions, and the meal are arranged as part of the trip, so the day asks little beyond showing up ready to look around. Questions can go to rebeka.birch@readingpublicmuseum.org.
Hosted by Reading Public Museum on BerksConnect.
