In memoriam: Philanthropist, art lover Edna Tuttleman
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
Travel around Philadelphia and it won’t be long before you spot the name Tuttleman on a building — the Tuttleman IMAX Theatre at the Franklin Institute and the Tuttleman Center at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, to name a few. Edna Tuttleman, who died Dec. 18 at age 92, and her late husband, Stanley, made a fortune in the fashion industry and became major philanthropists, giving to area educational, cultural and religious institutions. During World War II, Edna Tuttleman served in the WAVES and helped the Navy encode and decode sensitive information — work she later called her proudest accomplishment. An art lover with a fondness for 20th-century American work, she served as the chairman of the board of the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where she once studied painting.
