For our second field exercise, we explored the life, museum, and mission of Charles Willson Peale. Peale is quite an intriguing character; a true “Renaissance” man with many hobbies and interests, he is now remembered mostly for his portraits of elite Americans of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and for the museum he ran in Philadelphia from 1802 to 1826. I knew virtually nothing about him or his museum before this class, so it was a very informative and thought-provoking experience for me.
Our first stop was the second floor of Independence Hall, where Peale’s museum was once located. Now it has been restored to look like it did at the time of the American Revolution, but visiting the space still helped inform my understanding of it. Curator Katie Diethorn provided us with a comprehensive base knowledge of Peale and his museum. She explained Peale’s vision of containing “the world in miniature” within his museum, a true product of the Enlightenment period he came of age in. All of his artifacts were organized according to Linnaeun taxonomy; the most “simple” specimens were located on the bottom shelves, increasing in complexity as visitors gazed upwards. At the very top of the walls were Peale’s own portraits of the nation’s most revered citizens of the time, who were all, of course, elite middle-aged white men. Diethorn explained how Peale worked tirelessly to get federal funding for the museum, but to no avail. His ultimate goal was for it to become the official national museum, which is one of the reasons why he strategically chose to place it in America’s most famous building. The museum closed down in 1826 due to financial troubles. Most of the natural specimens were sold to P.T. Barnum and then lost in fires, but a large collection of his portraits are now housed in the Second National Bank.
Next, we visited the Second National Bank to see the exhibit featuring Peale’s paintings. Diethorn raised up many great points about the objectives of modern day history museums. She explained that as time goes on and U.S. society changes, what we choose to extract from our history changes as well. This, she noted, is why the exhibit in the bank is completely revamped every fifteen years or so. In the past, it mainly focused on the stories of the few but powerful. Now, even though it still features Peale’s portraits of elite white men of the Revolutionary Era, it also incorporates visuals and information to give visitors a feel for how “everyday” people of the period lived as well, including women and minorities. This illustrates our collective memory’s pattern of evolving over time, and how that process is both influenced by and reflected in our history museums. She also reminded us that every museum, without exception, is presenting visitors with a point of view, and that we should always keep this in mind. Coming from a curator, I found this very powerful. I admired Diethorn’s honesty about Peale, his museum, and the current exhibit in the bank. She encouraged us to think critically about Peale’s notions of gender and race, and did not blatantly romanticize the information she gave us, as is so often done in discussions of Revolutionary War Era history. All in all, I found this to be a very interesting visit that really got me pondering about how public history museums evolve through the years, and what their goals and function should be.
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