JUNE PROGRAMS
Monday Quarterback Luncheon
June 1 from 12:30pm to 2pm
Palmer Hartl is our Quarterback.
Thursday Roundtable Luncheon
June 4 from 12:30pm to 2pm
Speaker is Susan Glassman, Executive Director of the Wagner Free Institute of Science. Topic ‒ Here All Are Invited.
Susan Glassman traces the origins and evolution of the Wagner Free Institute of Science. Founded in 1855 by William Wagner, a noted Philadelphia merchant, philanthropist, gentleman scientist, and lifelong collector of natural history specimens, the Wagner helped establish Philadelphia as a leading center of science education. One of its key aims is to build connections between its vast natural history resources to contemporary issues of climate change, human evolution, and species extinction. Today it sustains its original mission of providing free science education ‒ open to all.
Its classical revival building is a story in of itself. John McArthur, Jr., architect of Philadelphia’s City Hall, devised an innovative roof system, designed a lecture hall modeled on the newly opened Smithsonian Institution, and created a soaring three-story exhibition space. Opened in 1865, it is designated now as a National Historical Landmark.
Susan Glassman is the Executive Director of the Wagner since 1993. She holds an undergraduate degree in biology and completed graduate studies in architecture and historic preservation at Penn. She serves on the advisory board of Saint Joseph’s University College of Arts & Sciences and on the board of the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, an international collaboration of universities, independent libraries and museums, and professional societies.
Friday New Initiatives Salon
June 5 from 6pm to 8pm
It Takes Two: How An Author-Editor Team Took on a Daunting Topic and Turned It Into a Novel. With Nathaniel Popkin and Ann de Forest. Moderated by writer Joy Manning.
Nathaniel Popkin, author of new book Partly Strong, Partly Broken (New Door Books, 2026) discusses his novel with editor Ann De Forest. Set in a suburban New Jersey interfaith community during the fall of 2023 and told through the eyes of the passionate, inclusivity-minded Rabbi Adinah, the novel unfolds as the shadow of Hamas’ gruesome October 7th attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent devastation of Gaza looms over an already fractured community.
Nathaniel Popkin is the author of eight fiction and nonfiction books including To Reach the Spring (2020), The Year of the Return (2019), and Everything Is Borrowed (2018), which explore the intersections of Jewish ideals and lived experience. He is co-editor of Who Will Speak for America? (2018).
He has written and produced multiple Emmy Award–winning history documentaries, including Philadelphia: The Great Experiment (2011–2019), Sisters in Freedom (2018), In Pursuit: Philadelphia and the Making of America (2026), and For the Common Good: The Woman Who Shaped the Nation (2026), produced through his studio, You’ll Never Forget Productions, co-founded with director Andrew Ferrett.
Ann de Forest is a writer, editor, and essayist whose work explores place, memory, and the ways people connect with their environments. She is the editor of Ways of Walking, a 26-essay anthology from New Door Press featuring writers, artists, and scholars reflecting on walking as observation, witness, and discovery.
Raised in California and based in Philadelphia for more than three decades, de Forest writes on urban life, architecture, art, and preservation. Her fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in literary journals and anthologies, and she is known for blending personal narrative with cultural and environmental reflection.
Joy Manning is the founding editor at Edible Philly and an editor at Cleaver literary magazine. Her journalism has been published in The Washington Post, EatingWell, Women’s Health, and many other publications. She’s been nominated for the James Beard and IACP Awards and anthologized in Best Food Writing. She is currently working on a novel.
$20 with bespoke cocktail, wine, beer, non-alcoholic beverages, and light fare.
Monday Quarterback Luncheon
June 8 from 12:30pm to 2pm
Leslie Whipkey is our Quarterback.
Thursday Roundtable Luncheon
June 11 from 12:30pm to 2pm
Speaker is Gus Faucher, Chief Economist at PNC Financial. Topic ‒ The Economy: Overview and Outlook.
We expect Gus to share his usual clear perspective on the economy at a time when clarity is in short supply for many of us. Known to the wider world as chief economist and senior vice president at PNC Financial Services Group, he comes to the Club as a familiar venue with Innmate and father Denny Faucher.
Before joining PNC in 2011, Gus Faucher spent ten years at Moody’s Analytics where he managed the computer model of the U.S. economy, edited a monthly publication on the U.S. economic outlook, covered fiscal and monetary policy, and analyzed various regional economies. Before that, he worked at the Treasury Department and taught at the University of Illinois. Gus is PNC Financial’s chief spokesperson on financial matters, frequently cited in international, national, and regional media outlets including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and appearing on major broadcast and cable TV networks. You’ll from Penn and BA in economics from Cornell.
Monday Quarterback Luncheon
June 15 from 12:30pm to 2pm
Patrick Keough is our Quarterback.
Friday Club Dinner
June 19 with Member Mixer at 5:30pm, presentation at 6:15pm, followed by dinner Speaker is Anuj Gupta, President and CEO of The Welcoming Center. Topic ‒ Welcoming Immigration: When an Idea Becomes an Imperative.
Immigration became the primary driver of population growth in Philadelphia in this century, reversing a 50-year history of decline. In the past 15 years, the city has added about 200,000 new foreign-born residents ‒ a group that contributes significantly to rebuilding the tax base through workforce participation and business formation. Anuj Gupta describes the work of The Welcoming Center founded in 2003 as an economic imperative and key to the city’s economic health. The organization provides services to integrate immigrants into the city’s economy, and it aims to position Philadelphia as a global gateway city.
Anuj Gupta, President and CEO of The Welcoming Center, served in a range of roles supporting community and economic development in Philadelphia, notably as chief of staff to Congressman Dwight Evans, as general manager of Reading Terminal Market, as executive director of Mt. Airy USA, and as deputy managing director of the city in Michael Nutter’s administration. He practiced as an attorney in Ballard Spahr’s real estate and affordable housing group from 2004 to 2007 and is a graduate of Penn’s Carey Law School and Fels Institute of Government.
Monday Quarterback Luncheon
June 22 from 12:30pm to 2pm
Dean Edwards is our Quarterback.
Tuesday Movie Night
June 23 at 6pm; feature at 6:15pm
With snacks and drinks including light fare, popcorn, chips, nuts, soda, beer, and wine.
1776
Director Peter Hunt, 1972, US, 2 hours 21 minutes
In the days leading up to July 4, 1776, Continental Congressmen John Adams (William Daniels) and Benjamin Franklin (Howard Da Silva) coerce Thomas Jefferson (Ken Howard) into writing the Declaration of Independence as a delaying tactic as they try to persuade the American colonies to support a resolution on independence. Based on the Tony Award-winning Best Musical with Daniels, Da Silva and Howard reprising their roles. CLICK HERE for the trailer.
Thursday Roundtable Luncheon
June 25 from 12:30pm to 2pm
Speaker is Michael Leja, Professor Emeritus of History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. Topic ‒ A Flood of Pictures.
When and how did pictures begin to permeate everyday lives in the United States? What happened when they did? And what happened to pictures in the process? Michael Leja traces the reshaping of a culture accustomed to printed and spoken words that began in the three decades before the Civil War. For many people, ordinary experience came to include illustrations in books, pamphlets, and newspapers, photographs on cards, full-sheet printed pictures collected in scrapbooks or albums or hung on walls, posters and broadsheets, spectacular paintings displayed in theatrical venues; and more. Pictures supplemented text ‒ even overshadowed it at times ‒ to convey news, portray people, places and events, focus public discourse, sell goods, educate and instruct, generate excitement and aesthetic gratification, promote and disguise political agendas, shape social identities, and build and undermine social bonds. Michael draws from his book A Flood of Pictures: The Formation of a Picture Culture in the United States (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025), to dig into the foundations of our picture-saturated age.
Michael Leja is the James and Nan Wagner Farquhar Professor Emeritus of History of Art at Penn, and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Lauder Research Center. His earlier books include Looking Askance: Skepticism and American Art from Eakins to Duchamp (University of California Press, 2004), which won the Modernist Studies Association Book Prize in 2005, and Reframing Abstract Expressionism: Subjectivity and Painting in the 1940s (Yale University Press, 1993), awarded the Charles Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. His research is supported by fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (Paris), the Getty Grant Program, and the Clark Art Institute. In 2025 he won the College Art Association Award for Distinguished Teaching in Art History.
Monday Quarterback Luncheon
June 29 from 12:30pm to 2pm
Alan Penziner is our Quarterback.