Independence Hall & Gallery in the Second National Bank

All I know about the Independence Hall was that it is the place where the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were debated and adopted. Never heard of Peale Museum and it was unfamiliar for me, but it became somewhat special historic place after touring with Karie Diethorn, a public historian and curator.

  On the first floor of Second National Bank building, there are some of pictures by Charles Peale, who was a artist, naturalist, and “museumist.” For me, the relationship between the building that 94 portraits are exhibited now and its contents looks quite ironic and interesting. Those portraits are drawn by a person who was very affected with the Enlightement idea, whose philosophy is that ‘science provided a way to understand human society.’ However, the gallery (Second National Bank) is built after the model of the Temple of Parthenon, honoring the goddess. Pictures painted with the techniques and styles of all about the realistic elements are exhibited in the place looking like the temple where the least place talked about science and realistic stuffs.

The original place for Peale’s museum is on second floor of Independence Hall, a part of Independence National Historical Park. Back in the days, there were a lot of art works, taxidermied stuffs, scientific specimen that he drew or collected by himself (or his family members and hired artists), but almost all of them are sold to other people. He gave the management and responsibility of the museum to his son when Peale got through with his museum work, but the exhibits are all sold because of his debt.

 Sad to say, those portraits and other collections had been moved from space to space for financial reason. I thought that most of them could have been well preserved if the government had enough power or money, and tried to them as meaningful historic evidence. By opening his own collection to the public, he intended to show how he perceived the world and what he was trying to talk to the public. But it is beyond his personal intention.; thanks to his enthusiasm for the museum, now we can know of what was going on in 18^th century when the idea of the Enlightement was overflowing, and subsequent events related to why his museum lost the public interest. While listening to the explanation about this unfortunate truth, I wondered why the man who was such a detailed and literally devoted himself to draw and accumulate his collection did not make any plans for the future administration of the museum.