The museum of today is a very different animal than it was 200 years ago. It’s actually changed quite a bit in the past couple of decades, but the new vision of what a museum can be comes out of ways it has been reimagined since they first opened. Although it’s probably near impossible to pinpoint what might constitute the first museum, Philadelphia can claim an original.
In 1783, Charles Wilson Peale was in possession of the bone of a mastodon, and this was the start of the first official museum in the United States. He was a painter, who specialized in portraits of famous generals, and even took part in the Revolutionary War. How to display the bone was the question that got him thinking, and when he started showing it in the room with his own paintings, he had an idea that would lead people, centuries later, to come to enjoy the luxury hotels Philadelphia offers, and to see the city museums.
Peale’s Museum is long gone, purchased by PT Barnum in the middle of the 19th century, but the accounts show that it was an idea that is still ahead of its time. He did have a certain attitude, that came from the Enlightenment tradition, where the idea of displaying the icons of culture can make for a better and fuller life. He also had a certain flair for understanding what makes people curious. He collected lots of artifacts from expeditions to explore the Old West, and also had a great ethnographic interest.
To this he kept adding objects and paintings that celebrated the Revolutionary war, and more objects of curiosity came into his hands. The display, then, at its height, was intended to illustrate how his time was the absolute pinnacle of all human cultures. It’s a lofty idea, and one that’s still found occasionally in today’s museum, but expanded knowledge of people and places has made such Enlightenment claims a bit troubling, but the splendid array of human culture in all its curiosities is a legacy that he’s left for the generations who come after.
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