Visitors will see important documents, scientific specimens, patent models, portraits, maps, rare books and manuscripts-not to mention painter’s palettes, lantern slides, Sumatran writing sticks, and silhouettes of famous patriots from Peale’s Museum.
The Museum of the American Philosophical Society In Philosophical Hall
Three years ago, APS, still one of the nation’s eminent scholarly organizations, instituted an exhibitions program. The museum is designed to show off its wide-ranging and idiosyncratic collection of more than 300,000 books, eight million manuscripts, art works and objects.This new museum opens its latest exhibition, Treasures Revealed, in the jewel-box gallery on the first floor of historic Philosophical Hall.
Sixty carefully selected items, many on view for the first time, were chosen to illustrate not only the breadth of the Society’s holdings, from early American patriots to astronauts on the moon, but the institution’s particular interest in the history of science, medicine and technology.
Among the most notable Treasures are:
- John Dunlap’s printing of the Declaration of Independence on vellum. Dunlap’s print shop had prepared the first printing-on paper-of the Declaration on July 4, 1776. Several days later he made copies on vellum, a more durable material than paper. This is the only known vellum copy.
- A nineteenth century book bound in human skin. Recent scholarship has revealed that this book, written in Chinese, contains the first books of the New Testament.
- Patent models including John Fitch’s paddle-driven boat. John Fitch made the first successful trial of a steamboat on the Delaware River on August 22, 1787.
- Gilbert Stuart’s 1797 portrait of President George Washington.
- "Spirit" photographs including a picture by 19th-century French artist Felix Nadar purporting to show a man and his aura.
- John von Neumann’s 1945 draft of the first stored computer program.
Artist-Naturalist Sue Johnson
Artist Sue Johnson has made the observation and study of the natural world the focus of her work.Johnson, who teaches at St. Mary’s College of Maryland has been invited to create visual stories that re-interpret the historical record presented in Treasures with a 21st-century sensibility.
Her take on silhouettes, natural history drawings, the Moon, and atomic bomb testing are mounted along-side artifacts on display. They are intended, she says, "to create a parallel universe" of art objects that both comment on and challenge conventional wisdom.
Information
Treasures Revealed: 260 Years of Collecting at the American Philosophical Society will be on view in Philosophical Hall, 104 S. Fifth Street from February 18 - December 11, 2005.Hours:
Thursday - Sunday 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. (to Labor Day)
Wednesday 5 p.m. - 8 p.m. (April - Labor Day)
Friday - Sunday 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. (Labor Day - Dec. 31)
Admission is free.
About the American Philosophical Society
Founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743, "to promote useful knowledge," The American Philosophical Society served in the first half century of the republic as a national library, museum and academy of science. Today, the Society continues as an eminent scholarly organization of world-wide reputation, renowned for its excellence in scholarly research and publications, its extraordinary manuscript library and its international roster of elected members who make up a veritable "Who’s Who" of outstanding individuals in the arts, humanities and the sciences