General correspondence, 1929-1930

General correspondence files primarily document the museum's efforts to recruit well-known academics, artists and other art-related professionals to speak at PMA, including Erwin Panofsky, Meyer Shapiro, and Thornton Oakley, as well as some of the museum's advisers, such as Rudolf M. Reinstall and Arthur Upham Pope. There are letters of unsolicited offers to speak, as well as brochures, pamphlets and other ephemeral that accompanied much of the correspondence.

In addition to guest speakers, the museum also had a lecturer on staff. Stewart Dick came to PMA in 1929 to serve in that capacity and soon after began a program of weekly public gallery talks. He also gave radio talks about the museum's holdings. He left the museum sometime in 1931. Most of his correspondence is with Kimball or Howard. Additional materials generated by Dick regarding his program are filed separately. Beaumont Newhall succeeded Dick as Museum lecturer. He, too, stayed briefly, and only a few letters comprise his file.

Kimball brought another type of lecture program to the museum in the mid-1930s that was arranged in cooperation with local universities. The program with the University of Pennsylvania's School of Fine Arts focused on a series of lectures given by German scholar Walter Friedlaender. The lecture series held at PMA in cooperation with Temple University featured the speaker Ames Johnston, Ph.D. of Vienna. The latter program is scantily documented.

The PMA printed material file consists mainly of brochures that list and briefly describe the lectures and gallery talks offered at PMA and its School of Industrial Art. Some of these contain handwritten notations recording attendance and fees.