Lederer, Lucy, 1892-1991

Lucy Christine Kemmerer was born in 1892 in Milton, Pennsylvania, and was raised in State College. She attended Pennsylvania State College from 1907 to 1909, transferred to Simmons College in Boston for one year, returned to Penn State, then decided to study art and architecture at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, before she was needed at home and returned once again to Penn State. She graduated in 1914 with a degree in home economics. After graduating, she taught in Bellefonte schools for a year, then moved to Philadelphia, where she met and married Colonel Eugene H. Lederer. She and her husband moved back to State College, where the colonel started a real estate business and served a term as mayor. During World War II Colonel Lederer was called into service, first at the Pentagon and then in New York City. Lucy went to New York with her husband and studied with the Art Student League there. In 1946 the Lederers returned to State College, where Lucy pursued graduate studies in art at Penn State. Mrs. Lederer became a respected artist specializing in oil and water color portrait paintings. She exhibited locally and nationally at numerous galleries and museums, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She was a member of the National Association of Women Artists, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, and the Plastic Club, a women's art club in Philadelphia.