The Travels of “Finding Moses”

While this piece was treasured by American audiences and purchased for permanent placement in the Pennsylvania Academy of Arts (PAFA) by wealthy donor, Gustavus S. Benson, it did not live there forever. In 1950, the PAFA changed their charter to focus on American arts, deasccessioning pieces that did not meet that criteria, including this one. It was given to Philip Aliano, a stonecutter, and artist at the PAFA school. There is a documented sighting sometime later of this (or possibly another version) at Crisconi Oldsmobile in their showroom at the corner of Broad and Federal in Philadelphia.

Ultimately, it was purchased in the 1960s by the owners of Nick’s Seafood Pavilion in Norfolk, VA. Nick and Mary Matthews considered it a prime addition to their Nile Room in their beloved restaurant. In a June 8, 1980 article by The Washington Post, Blaine Harden interviewed Nick and Mary Matthews inside Nick’s Seafood Pavilion. The reporter specifically identified their Egyptian princess-and-Moses sculpture as “the prize of the art collection” and reported that before arriving at Nick’s it had stood in a John Wanamaker department store in Philadelphia. The famed eatery was shuttered after Mary Matthew’s death, and the piece was auctioned off in 2004 alongside the deep fat fryers and vinyl booths. By the time this piece was over 1-and-a-quarter Century, it’s importance had been lost to time. Even the name and date the artist had engrave was misspelled and mistaken in the advertising literature. It was sold as no more than a run-of-the-mill piece of nineteenth-century Italian statuary.