Museum Without Walls

• Kelly Drive at Fountain Green Drive (installed 1972)
• Bronze, on concrete bases
• Height 7' (bases 20'–23')
• Initiated by the Fairmount Park Art Association
• Owned by the Fairmount Park Art Association

Three slim angels concentrate raptly on their music as they hover above the grass along Kelly Drive. The work of Swedish-born artist Carl Milles, they are casts from a group of five originals from the Millesgarden in Stockholm, where they overlook that city's harbor. Milles' style combined conservative, pictorial elements with a poetic and popular spirit. His characteristically slender figures often have a childlike innocence and vulnerability that make them immediately appealing to the public.

Originally all five casts of the Playing Angels were intended for a private site in Philadelphia. When the plans dissolved, one angel went to Kansas City and a second to Falls Church, Virginia; the remaining three were purchased by the Fairmount Park Art Association in 1968 and installed at their present site in 1972. Their placement on tall pedestals, similar to those at the Millesgarden, was planned by the architectural firm of Bower and Fradley—a design awarded a silver medal by the Philadelphia chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Adapted from Public Art in Philadelphia by Penny Balkin Bach (Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1992).