Philadelphia was deeply woven into the McFaddens’ artistic and intellectual inheritance, connecting the family not only to the city’s extraordinary traditions of collecting and patronage but also to the study of the ancient world. John H. McFadden, 1850–1921, whose portrait is on view at Smith Hall, bequeathed his collection to the city of Philadelphia with the caveat that a suitable building be constructed to house it within seven years of his death, thereby providing further impetus to ensure that the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s new neoclassical home would open to the public, albeit unfinished, by 1928. Through Mary’s paternal uncle, the archaeologist George H. McFadden III, who worked with the University of Pennsylvania Museum at the ancient site of Kourion in Cyprus, Mary and her siblings were introduced to a world in which art, history, myth, and discovery were inseparable. Philadelphia itself, its museums, collections, universities, and long tradition of looking to the ancient Mediterranean and other civilizations, gave that inheritance a particular richness. For Mary, the ancient world would become a lifelong source of inspiration. She came to see art not as something confined to its own time, but as a continuous conversation across centuries and cultures. The city’s scholarly curiosity and the McFadden family’s deep engagement with art helped nurture the expansive vision that would ultimately define her own work.