Charles Willson Peale was an American painter, soldier, scientist, inventor, politician and naturalist. He is best remembered for his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution, and for establishing one of the first museums in the United States.
In 1786, Charles Willson Peale created what is considered the most important — and most famous — museum in Revolutionary era America. A fusion of natural history and art, Peale’s Philadelphia Museum was meant to be an embodiment of the Enlightenment.
The museum contained a large variety of birds which Peale himself acquired, and in many instances mounted, having taught himself taxidermy. His display of the “mammoth” bones fueled a long-standing debate between Thomas Jefferson and Comte de Buffon over whether the Americas or Europe was biologically superior and Peale was among the first to adopt Linnaean taxonomy. After his death, Peale’s museum was purchased and divided by showmen P. T. Barnum and Moses Kimball.
The Fraunces Tavern Museum in Manhattan will host “Behind the Crimson Curtain: The Rise and Fall of Peale’s Museum,” a virtual lecture with Lee Dugatkin, set for Thursday, December 8th. In this lecture, Lee Dugatkin will explore science, art, and the Enlightenment in early America and how these fed the appetite of a public hungry for “rational entertainment.”
This lecture will begin at 6:30 pm and will be held via Zoom. For more information or to register, visit the Fraunces Tavern Museum website.
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