A Crowd of Railroad Fans for Froio Talk

Almost 100 people attended Understanding the Pennsylvania Railroad: Contemporary Photographs in Response to the Historic Works of William H. Rau on March 7. Speaker Michael Froio is an artist and professor in Drexel University’s photography department. Taking inspiration from a 2002 exhibition of William Rau’s photographs of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the accompanying catalog edited by Library Company Director John Van Horne, Mr. Froio has devoted the last decade to creating an updated photographic record of the Pennsy’s engineering marvels.

Clarifying that he is not attempting to replicate the iconic Rau photographs, but to create new work that seeks to mine the same vein, Mr. Froio documents the rights of way, interchanges, towers, stations, and miscellany of what was once the world’s largest corporation. Clearly as moved by the visionary engineering feats performed by the Pennsy as by the artistic mastery of Rau, Froio mourns the loss of much of our railroad infrastructure and culture even as he acknowledges that it is still a dynamic, evolving system.

The lecture was held in conjunction with Frank Furness: Working on the Railroads. On view through April 19, the exhibition documents the range of projects that the famous Philadelphia architect undertook while working on commissions for America’s greatest railroad systems: the Philadelphia & Reading, the Baltimore & Ohio, and the Pennsylvania.

Michael Froio has exhibited his work at the Biggs Museum of American Art, Woodmere Art Museum, Mainline Art Center, the University of the Arts, and Moore College of Art and Design. He was awarded a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship in 2009, and a Travel Grant from the Center for Emerging Visual Artists in 2007.