The first major museum in the United States—an Enlightenment temple of sorts in Philadelphia—was a gem of the new republic. Some six decades after it opened, it was gobbled up by a showman. It need not have ended that way.
The Artist in His Museum, 1822, by Charles Wilson Peale. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Gift of Mrs. Sarah Harrison (The Joseph Harrison, Jr. Collection).
WHEN CHARLES WILLSON PEALE’S PHILADELPHIA Museum opened its doors in July of 1786, it was the first true museum in the United States. It began as an extension to the Peale home in Philadelphia and a few years later it moved to its new home in Philosophical Hall, catty-corner to was was then the State Capitol. But Philosophical Hall could not hold the thousands of items pouring into the museum every year, so the museum moved to the second floor of the State House—Independence Hall—just above the spot where the Declaration of Independence was signed and one floor below where (what we now call) the Liberty Bell rang each day.