We sat in a lovely room on the second floor surrounded by glass cases filled with Benjamin Franklin’s personal library. Among the documents we examined was this first printing of the Declaration of Independence. We also looked at original copies of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and John Dickinson’s Letters from an American Farmer. The painting in the center is of the first woman elected to the American Philosophical Society, the Russian Princess Dashkova, president of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, who was elected in 1789.
The focus of our day on Friday was a field trip to Philadelphia to visit the American Philosophical Society and the American Philosophical Society Museum. At the American Philosophical Society Museum we attended a presentation about Peale’s Museum. The building itself was built in 1743 as Philosophical Hall, but was later the center of Peale’s Museum, the first successful natural history museum in America. We looked at how museums changed from cabinets of curiosities that were primarily for the rich, to places meant to educate and amuse common people. As they did, they also began to stress putting things in order, to teach people how the world works. Mike, our guide, stressed how important it is that they have millions of dollars in insurance. He also said when borrowing a piece from another museum, you need to make a claim telling them why this would improve your exhibition. We also learned about all the different professions that are drawn on as an exhibit is put together, from historians, to chemists who restore works, to psychologists who understand how people interact with spaces.
The next stop was a conference room in the APS library. In the library, we viewed a wide variety of historically significant texts and documents including the first printed copy of the Declaration of Independence, an original copy of Common Sense, as well as a letter to Ben Franklin from Peter Collinson that is the first written record we have that Franklin’s work with electricity was receiving international attention.
After our time in the library, we returned to the museum and played at being curators. We had to choose artifacts, negotiate to borrow rare items, plan a theme, and set out the exhibit.
After all that intense thinking, we walked over to the Reading Terminal Market for lunch!