Place as a Museum

The Powel House museum is one of the 300 house museums in the city of Philadelphia. Do we need another house museum? My answer would be both yes and no. Places like the Powel House are so valuable, they show an insight into a way of life that is long gone and provided Americans with the basis of our history. The Powel House stood through the most formative moments in American history and witnessed the greatest events of all time. The Powel House is not only good for showing the basis of our country, but for analyzing the people who lived there which includes what they valued and why. The things they collected were important especially since it was around the time when collecting really started to catch on in society. For example the shadow rendering of Benjamin Franklin was ruined in order to make an inscription, a harried way to preserve the likeness so that future generations would know the importance of the previous generations. Beyond this the Powel House is an exceptional backdrop for the education of children who are not getting the same education that many people grew up with. With educational programs, the Powel House is taking the place of the school in some cases and giving kids a greater interest in their histories.  simultaneously.
Beyond the historical and educational, the Powel House and similar house museums are opening up the historical preservation to important hurdles and questions that need to be addressed before the field is expanded/imporved? How can museums be made relevant again? How do we address the way people think versus the way life actually was? Also, museums are caught at the crossroads of new generation and new idea versus old generations and old ideas of how things were and how things are supposed to work.

This leads to the other side of my argument against house museums. The Powel House has proven its functionality through giving help through providing educational programs to those who need it and still attracting a steady amount of visitors. The Powel House is a rare case because many house museums do not have the resources to fund programs such as education programs for those who are unable to have access to those types of programs on their own. Also, many independent house do not receive enough money from the government, etc. This means that house museums are privately funded which messes with the integrity and accuracy of the museums because they are expected to conform to the will of their benefactors. I instead would like the house museums to still function as homes but stay in their original conditions so the houses maintain their historical story.
So yes if house museums serve multiple purposes and are able to self sustain there should be more, if not the house should continue to serve as a home while being monitored to make sure they are keeping their historical backgrounds.

The "Other" Museum

Nestled on University of Penn's exspansive campus is the The Penn Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. The museum serves as the first exploring the field of anthropology and the first where people studied other human beings' cultures. The field of anthropology grew out of 1893 world's fair in Chicago where "others" (third world) were put on display for the first world country to see. The University of Penn Museum today is a wonder to behold today, it is full of technological advancements and lots of interactive exhibits so people can fully immerse themselves in what anthropology has to teach them. At first glance, the museum seems completely fair and unbiased but after investigating for a while the organizational hierarchy started to peek through. In the African and Native American exhibits there was so much technology but that felt as if it was not teaching you much at all. Those parts of the museum seemed to be for a younger audience and were more about opinions rather than facts. (i.e. the white boards where serious questions about Africa were answered with statements like "BLAK PPL RULE! and cartoons). This is presumably because on the first floor the museum owners are more concerned with "WOWing" instead of educating the masses. On the flip side of that were the European and Asian and Egypt (which the museum posted in small font on some obscure door somewhere. "Egypt is a part of Africa")  exhibits which were impressive and were cohesive in their organization. Conn does touch on this in his essay, "The symbolism in the design of the museum was not subtle: from the entrance landing, one rose to find the civilizations of the Near East and the Mediterranean;\ conversely, the visitor went downstairs to find Native Americans from all parts of the New World" (pg.89) This is presumably because in the early 19th century, the average American's perception of the Native American race was far from favorable.

The Penn Museum is crucial because this is one of the first museum where you can see how skewed the organization of the museum is. Based on social Darwinism that was prevalent, the founders of the anthropology museum tried to place themselves above the "other" cultures around them. Anthropology was created essentially to find the linkages between the "savages" and civilized and explain all their differences.
"By using an evolutionary model to explain human cultural development, the Philadelphians who founded the University Museum tried to conceive of an anthropology that linked the savage and the civilized in
the s ame intellectual construct." (pg.91) Analyzing the museum is tough because it is hard to put oneself into a 19th century mindset and really experience what the visitors were experiencing because all of the artifacts and knowledge are very basic ideas with which most people were taught from a young age. This may be why in the museum more of the exhibits are beginning to be geared towards younger middle schoolers. The museum overall is a nice one to visit because it has a wealth of information inside of it, despite the way its presented. Also, the museum is a nice insight into the mind of the average 19th century person trying to figure out the world around them, which is commendable, even if it was backwards right?

Peale's Museum

Charles Willson Peale was one of the most influential Philadelphians when it came to the arts. He is probably most famous for his painting endeavors and his many famous portraits depicting influential people. His perhaps most famous painting, The Artist in His Museum is a self portrait that also shows his museum. Behind him there is  a museum full of Peale collected taxidermy specimens and portraits of the intellectual greats of Peale's era. Peale's museum represents a time when there was a shift in collecting and the introduction of the idea that what you collect represents who you are. In Sharon MacDonald's "Collecting Practices", MacDonald analyzes that collecting became a way to make statements about one's identity. "Collecting was a means of fashioning and performing the self via material things; and the new social figure of the collector became the epitome of the then relatively novel idea that personal identities can be made rather than being definitively ascribed at birth." (pg.85) Essentially people were realizing that they could mold who they wanted to be in society by what they owned. Peale's Museum was very representative of the idea of "molded identity".

The building itself was one of the most famous in Philadelphia, a place where tourists went to experience the place where democracy was signed into law and where great minds thought of ways to govern a new nation. Peale's Museum on the second floor of that building placed him, the owner and idealist behind the whole museum placed him among the great men of the era. His collections not only showed off his extensive travels and research endeavors but the museum also showed off his artistic prowess. His taxidermy specimens were set against intricately painted backdrops of their natural habitats. Also, Peale's museum housed some of the most famous men of that time who sat for Peale's museum paintings. Which also shows to the visitor that Peale himself must be influential because all of these influential people agreed to be apart of his museum.

The site of Peale's museum are important to the study of museums work because his museum helped set guidelines for the meaning of museums and shed light on the meanings people attach to objects and museum spaces.