“Karen loves the Powel House,” said Ms. Schaffner, a close friend of Ms. Kilimnik (although, like other curators, she has never visited the home where she lives alone and works). Ms. Schaffner had been actively looking for a historic space in Philadelphia for one of Ms. Kilimnik’s site-specific transformations, to coincide with her Institute of Contemporary Art show. Given the post-modern architecture of the museum, Ms. Schaffner said, “I felt we weren’t giving Karen a space she could thrive in.”... NYT

By the early 20th century the Powel House had been reduced to a mere shell, serving as a mattress factory and an office for importing Siberian horsehair and bristles. Scheduled for demolition in 1931, the site was rescued at the 11th hour by the newly formed Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks. It raised sufficient funds to buy the property and, eventually, to restore the mansion to its former splendor.

“So much of the story of Philadelphia — the whole Old City — is about reproduction,” Ms. Schaffner said, conceding that much of what visitors now see inside the house is not original.

Having visited the Powel House since childhood, Ms. Kilimnik admitted that the artificiality of the reconstructed space appealed to her. Last winter, in the ballroom, she was struck by a Gilbert Stuart portrait of a girl, whose flushed red cheeks — so the story goes — revealed the consumption that killed her a year later.