The Wagner Free Institute of Science stands at the intersection of 17th and Montgomery, a hidden gem among the "rough" North Philadelphia neighborhood that Temple University inhabits. From the outside, the Wagner looks like just another semi-rundown mansion of former North Philadelphian wealth. The architecture is a typical Georgian style, which is pointed out in "Museum Architecture" as paying homage to Roman and Grecian styles. From the outside, the Wagner's architecture upon close inspection is somewhat intimidating which could be a main reason why the people of North Philadelphia have never completely embraced it. The architecture of the building really portrays an image of superiority where one can really feel the divide between the elite and educated versus the ones who "cannot see" or are of a lower class and quality of education. Inside the Wagner, its a completely different story. Upon entering you stumble into a bona-fide museum world. The inside downstairs is completely a place to learn, for the elites to teach the "non-elites. Although, the Wagner's mission statement is not to exclude, it still comes across (from my opinion) as the elites taking "pity" on the lower classes. Upstairs the museum space betrays the size of the Wagner where museum visitors can find over 100,000 specimen carefully collected, and displayed for centuries.
After visiting the Wagner, I noticed two things: First, I was not impressed by the Wagner. And immediately I tried to figure out why. Then I came to the unhappy realization that I have been so spoiled by new museum technology that I was too lazy to even look at labels and try to visual them in the context of their own environments. I am now so used to receiving any information about objects or specimen at the same time that I am seeing them that I was off-put by actually having to remember the specimen and research it my own. After this my second realization was that the Wagner as a whole is an amazing representation of the past for history and museum aficionados alike to study the foundations of historical preservation and understand where the pratice of history collection has come from and how it has evolved into the modern museums that we are so coddled by today.
