The Franklin Institute

Founded in 1824, The Franklin Institute’s initial purpose “was to honor Ben Franklin and advance the usefulness of his inventions.”  The Franklin opened in its present location on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in 1934, becoming “one of the first hands-on science museums in the United States.”  Its current mission is to “illuminate issues in contemporary science” through its exhibitions and programs, with a strong focus on community outreach and public education initiative geared to girls and urban youth.  Spend an hour or so wandering the halls of The Franklin leaves little doubt as to their target audience.  Most everything here is interactive, and the exhibits and displays engage young people (between the ages of 8 and 14) in hands-on activities which allow them to experience scientific phenomena.  There are few places better suited to thinking about the interactive or experiential museum.

 

In Museums, Media and Cultural Theory, Michelle Henning looks at museums as media.  She discusses the “tendency [of modern museums] to both dematerialize and bring objects closer” through exhibition design, a trend away from the static presentation of (sacred) objects toward the creation of experience through visitor interaction with displayed objects (71).  Discussing hands-on science museums like San Francisco’s Exploratorium, Henning notes that museums have moved away from the presentation of artifacts, developing new display techniques which exhibit abstract concepts (71).   She discusses the emergence of the mediatic museum as a manifestation of the belief that “the museum was the best means to inform and educate a mass audience.”  This principle evolved over time in response to the practical concerns facing museums in the 1980s and 90s.  During this period, museums increased interactivity in order to “compete in a [crowded] marketplace of leisure attractions” often trading education for entertainment (81).  The Franklin recently unveiled Electricity exhibit illustrates the conflict between education (and experience) and entertainment in the interactive museum.

The production literature for Electricity exhibit describes its mission, goal, and objective:

• “To invite the visitor to notice, think about, and question where we find electricity, how we use it, and the impacts of integrating electric technology into our way of life.

• “Visitors discover electricity is derived from how charges interact, properties of which allow us to generate electricity, making us responsible for our choices in usage and gene ration.”

• “Visitors encounter electricity through experiences that allow manipulation of electrical phenomena, contain authentic artifacts, and encourage new connections and collaborations.”

It seeks to achieve these objectives by creating a visitor experiences through interactive exhibits, static objects and artifacts, and striking visuals, in addition to linking thematically to surrounding exhibits on the human body and the Earth.

The exhibit is orderly arranged in sections devoted to Franklin’s electrical experiments, how electricity works, demand and sustainability, and electricity in the human body.  There are several strong visual focal points in the exhibit; the giant Tesla coil (that goes off to great effect on the hour) suspended at the center of the exhibit, a giant wall of LED lights that reacts to the electrical signals of visitor’s cell phones, and a dance floor convert movement to energy.  Another interesting feature of the exhibit is the way designers connect the Electricity exhibit thematically with those around it, using objects and/or displays to transition from one to the other.  The exhibit borders areas devoted to flight, the human body, and the Changing Earth, and the ideas of each – the environment, conservation, and the human nervous system easily overlap.  At these transition points, designers have placed a single object or interactive display marking the visitor’s movement from one area to the next.  Each of these displays (supplemented by striking photographs and quotes) creates a threshold experience for the visitor, clearing their mind and readying them new exhibit and new experience.  The most dynamic example of a threshold displays is the Franklin-style key that, when touched, shocks the visitor.  Indeed, it clears the mind as it zaps your hand and after interacting with the display it is difficult not to be drawn deeper into the exhibit.

The Electricity exhibit balances the static objects with exhibits that foster a dynamic experiences.  The exhibit includes a section devoted to Benjamin Franklin which contains a collection of his scientific instruments.  The section devoted to electricity and the human body includes a defibrillator and a piece from Andy Warhol’s Electric Chair series.  One sees the impulse toward interactivity in the displaying of static objects or artifacts.  The Franklin artifacts on display are supplemented by a touch-screen interface which makes these static objects come alive.  Through this interface you can learn more about the history of the objects and see how they were used.  It is an interesting combination, in a single exhibit of the old and new exhibition modes.

The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia

Located at the heart of the Museums District The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia “is the oldest natural science research institution and museum in the Americas.” Established in 1812 and opened to the public in 1828, The Academy moved to its present location on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in time for the Centennial International Exhibition of 1876.  Established “for the encouragement and cultivation of the sciences, and the advancement of useful learning,” its holdings include one of the ten largest collections of natural history specimens in the United States.  The Academy contains much to recommend it – including the Dinosaur Hall, the active fossil lab, and its contemporary educational programs and research projects. For many, the chief draw is The Academy’s collection of dioramas.  

Housed in the North American Hall, the African Hall, and the Asian Hall, The Academy’s 37 dioramas depict regional animals posed in realistic recreations of their natural environment.  I spent most of my recent visit among the dioramas in the North American Hall.  Most of the dioramas here were created in the 1920s and 30s, using specimens collected through institution funded expeditions and research. 

The North American Hall is a dark and quiet space.  Lit by the glow from the diorama cases, the hall seems a bit mysterious (and for children perhaps a little frightening).  It is a shrine of sorts – a place for quiet reflection upon the natural world not unlike an art museum.  I visited on a Thursday afternoon, an hour before closing, and the hall was virtually empty – certainly not the best time for observing the behavior of others.  It is not difficult, however, to image the hall filled with children and adults captivated by these displays.  The first dioramas contain animals familiar to Pennsylvania, including Black Bears, White Tail Deer, Beavers, Squirrels, Opossums and Striped Skunks.  If you’ve lived in the country, or even on the edges of the city, you likely have more than a passing familiarity with these creatures (and to see them somewhere other than my trash can is nice).  Despite the familiarity of the specimens. these exhibits trigger awe and reverence, through proximity and through an awareness of the craftsmanship involved in the creation of the scene.  The power of the diorama is reinforced in the more exotic displays that fill the rest of the hall.  In these displays the Kodiak Brown Bear, the cliff-dwelling Dall Sheep, the majestically horned Caribou, and the elegant and dangerous Polar Bear are presented close enough for inspection and in expertly constructed environments.  

In Museums, Media and Cultural Theory, Michelle Henning charts the origins and influence of the diorama. A reaction to the overcrowded and impenetrable quality of the Victorian-era natural history museum, the diorama served to organize the content of the natural history museum and make it accessible to the modern viewer. She places the diorama’s emergence “at the point of the decline in popularity of natural history as a practice,” when institutions began to move away from creating science through research toward presenting established scientific ideas.  As institutions began to view “education as the dissemination of already-formed facts and ideas to as large a public as possible” the diorama became a valuable tool in presenting the natural world to a mass audience (46).  The diorama directs the gaze of the increasingly distracted modern visitor, directing “visitors toward a particular understanding of nature whilst, at the same time, positioning them as consumers” of the natural world, rather than active participants (50).  Dioramas replace “the bodily experience of being in nature” and “position the visitor as a solitary spectator…privileged to examine in detail a scene that may have otherwise existed momentarily, or possibly not at all for the human viewer” (51-52).

 As The Smart Set’s Jesse Smith observed in a recent article: “[F]or all their power as symbols of science museums, [dioramas] have strong nods to their art counterparts...their rectangular proportions suggest works of art, [and the] benches in the center of their halls suggest the kind of reflection one is more likely to have” in an art museum than a natural science museum…issues of art and science, and art versus science, often come up in discussions of dioramas.”  The Academy’s website describes their dioramas as “a distinctive fusion of art and science” and “early versions of virtual reality,” marking the diorama’s dual origins and primary function.  Both educational and entertaining, dioramas draw from a number of influences outside the realm of natural science, including panoramic paintings, photography (“a snapshot of a time and place”), and window display advertisements.  Further, “For many, dioramas provided their only opportunity to experience distant places and exotic wildlife.”

Each diorama in composed of three elements – the specimen, the landscape, and the background.   The specimens are the most important part of the display.  They are extremely life-like and are arranged in action (or mid-action) poses.  In many of the dioramas, the main animal is placed with creatures that share its environment.   Sometimes the relationship between animals is friendly, other times it reflects the brutal relationship between predator and prey.  The second feature of the diorama is the landscape.  A specimen is placed in a physical recreation of its natural habitat.  The diorama containing the Bighorn Sheep and the Collard Peccary is particularly complex, containing all the sand and rock, and low scrub flowers and towering cactus one would expect from their arid desert environment.  The final element is the painted background.  This concave painting adds depth to the scene, and is the most perceptibly artificial component of the diorama.  For all of the three-dimensional authenticity of the diorama’s foreground, the painted background is a two-dimensional reminder that what you are seeing is an illusion.  

In short, “The diorama marshals these technologically produced effects of the real into a coherent composition.  In doing so, it manages to be simultaneously modern and popular, addressing a visitor reconfigured as a consumer, and carrying an (apparently) morally uplifting conservationist message, mixing scientific veracity with popular illusionism” (52). 

Combining the techniques of natural history with popular amusement, the enormously popular diorama helped, for better and worse, shape perceptions of the natural world.  They are certainly problematic.  The Academy’s website touches on some of the diorama's issues.  “Today, most museum visitors won't approve of the killing of animals required for the creation of these displays.”  Indeed, the popularity of taxidermy seems to have been waning for quite some time (perhaps since the release of Psycho…).  Henning observes the ways in which “illusionist scenarios” obscure the cruelty of the exhibit, the idyllic scenes eclipsing the fact that animals have been captured and killed.  This is certainly at work in the North American Hall, though several dioramas here depict the cruelty inherent in the relationship between predator and prey.  

The website also observes that “dioramas played a major role in the celebration of Americans in their natural heritage and increased their awareness and appreciation of the loss of wilderness.  The rise of the Conservation Movement and the popularity of dioramas went hand-in-hand.”  This is certainly true, but as Henning points out this was not always a good thing, and if dioramas brought a greater understanding of the need for conservation they also helped legitimize U.S. nationalism, imperialism, and racism.  The questionable ethnography of New York’s American Museum of Natural History dioramas is not present in the North American Hall, however The Academy’s dioramas remain symbols of conquest and colonialism as well as conservation.

Betsy Ross House

What can you say about the Betsy Ross House?  Located in the heart of historic Old City Philadelphia, the Betsy Ross House is one of several attractions dealing with birth of America.  The museum offers a look at the life of Betsy Ross – supposed resident of the Arch Street property from 1773 to 1785, alleged creator of the first American flag, and the best known female figure of the Revolutionary period.  Indeed, Ross often seems the lone female figure of the Revolutionary War, standing alongside Washington in the popular memory as America’s founding mother.  It is hard not to be cynical about such a place.On one hand the Betsy Ross House is an old-fashioned tourist trap, filled with patriotic pabulum/hokum, on the other it is an attempt to inject a woman’s story into the male dominated Revolutionary narrative.  It is in telling the story of a woman artisan, providing a glimpse into domestic and working life at the end of 18th century, that the museum is most successful. 

Betsy Ross as is a 19th century creation.  The emergence of Ross as an iconic American figure parallels the creation of the Betsy Ross House museum.  The origins of both are problematic at best.  The story of Ross as creator of the first American flag and the importance of the house as site of creation and transaction was promoted by her family well after her death.  Ross’ grandson William Canby first brought her story to public attention in an 1870 speech to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and later, with “other members of Betsy's family signed sworn affidavits stating that they heard the story of the making of the first flag from Betsy's own mouth.”  On the word of her surviving family members, the house was by the late nineteenth century “recognized as the place where [she] lived when she made the first American Flag.”  The image of Ross in her parlor (a more genteel setting than her workshop) presenting the new flag to George Washington comes from this period as well, made famous in Charles Weisgerber’s painting, Birth of Our Nation’s Flag.  By 1898 Weisgerber was living in the house, having helped mount a successful campaign to purchase it in the name of preserving Betsy Ross’ legacy.  Two rooms of the Betsy Ross house were opened to the public – the famous parlor and a gift shop.

Built around 1740, the house itself is an unassuming structure – a two and half story building designed for living and working.  Today, the house is flanked by a “civic garden” (built in 1941) and an annex building (built in 1965) containing a gift shop and exhibit space.  

Entering the annex building places visitors in the gift shop, where all sorts of (anachronistic) Revolution-themed goods can be purchased.  After passing through a small exhibit space and along a short breezeway, visitors enter house proper through a side-door.  Once inside, visitors are lead through a series of period room recreations of the house in use circa 1777.  The first stop is the parlor, the most famous room in the house.  Small and cramped, the room is unremarkable in every way, whatever charm it might possess is squashed by thick piece of plexiglass protecting the objects from the visitors.  The tour moves quickly through the remaining rooms – upstairs to the bedroom, downstairs to the upholstery workshop and storefront (the only room not obscured by plexiglass), into the basement to the storeroom and kitchen, and then to the courtyard.  There is little information about the objects displayed in these rooms.  The objects here gain value from their association with Ross, but what, if anything, belonged to Ross is left to the visitor’s imagination.  The period rooms are supplemented by informational signs dealing with 18th century sewing techniques and dispelling “Myths of Colonial America.”  The Museum prefers to leave the “myth” of Betsy Ross mostly intact, dealing with the dubious second hand history by putting the onus on visitors:  “historical fact or well-loved legend, the story of Betsy Ross is as American as apple pie. After your visit, decide what YOU believe!”

On the surface, the Betsy Ross House is selling the standard issue heroic creation narrative.  It draws visitors in with the familiar image of Ross as the creator of the first American flag, while quietly making a place for women in that narrative in its representation of domestic space.  The bulk of the museum is devoted to representations of domestic and working life at the end of the 18th century, which suggest the ways in which urban women lived and worked in the colonial period.  It establishes within domestic space a social and economic role for women in the birth of a nation.  The significance of this is undermined by its reinforcement of the Betsy Ross legend.  

 Emerging scholarship on Betsy Ross, especially Marla Miller’s recent book Betsy Ross and the Making of America, “demolishes the legend of Ross as our national seamstress, offer[ing] in return someone much more interesting: a real-life artisan, wife and mother whose fortunes and travails were closely tied to the new nation” (for more on this see Marjoleine Kars' review of Miller's book in the Washington Post).  The Betsy Ross House could benefit from the interrogation of legend.  By adding a more complex analysis of Betsy Ross the woman and the legend, the house would become something more than just another stop on the Revolutionary tour of Philadelphia.

Selling the South

In her forthcoming book, Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture (UNC Press, 2011), Dr. Karen Cox examines the cultural origins of the concept of the romanticized South.  She discussed her work in a recent visit to the Center for the Humanities at Temple University. 

In her presentation, Cox traced the emergence of the image of the antebellum Southern ideal through the popular culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, finding its origins in northern cities.  The locus of American advertising and cultural production, the North is where the romanticized notion of the Old South was created and popularized.  Cox described the emergence of a distinct southern typology in popular culture from the 1880s to World War II which supported this image of the South.  Characters like the mammy and the uncle, and the chivalrous aristocrat farmer and the southern belle, coupled with images of white-columned mansions and King Cotton established an idyllic and imaginary portrait of the antebellum American South.  These images appeared and were repeated through the literature (Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind), print advertising (the Aunt Jemima and Maxwell House brands), film (D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation), radio (the radio minstrelsy of Amos N’ Andy, Maxwell House Showboat, and the Aunt Jemima radio show), and popular music (“coon songs” and “back to Dixie” songs of the era) of the period.  

This Southern imaginary was a product successfully sold, not only to Southerners but to Americans generally. They reinforced and shaped heroic notions of Southern history and self, but also Northern perceptions of the region as exotic and other.  Further, the creation of an alternative historical narrative through advertisements, et al. tided up one of the messiest (putting it mildly) periods in American history.  

How does Dr. Karen Cox’s scholarship enhance our understanding of museums?  The way in which popular culture shapes perception is at the core of Cox’s discussion of the (re)creation of the South, and perhaps most relevant to a discussion of museums.  In what ways do these institutions mediate our experience?  How do they shape our understanding of objects and/or the past?  

In her book Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge, Eilean Hooper-Greenhill suggests that, from inception, the museum-going experience has been a heavily mediated one.  A viewpoint is always present, whether it is that of the prince, merchant, institution, or state.  In each of these instances, the choices made by those in power inform how value is assigned, the presentation of objects, and their context in relation to other valued objects.  In the modern museum, it is often the curator (or curators) who decides what will be displayed for the viewer, and how it will be presented.  A narrative is constructed which reflects the ideology and tastes (aesthetic and intellectual) of the dominant culture, and given authority through the institution.  Knowledge is shaped by social, economic, and political forces in the larger culture, and in turn it shapes society through the transmission of these culturally sanctioned narratives.

Why is this important?  In The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life, authors Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen sift through the survey data collected during a landmark study examining the ways in which ordinary people interact with the past.  Looking at the national sample, 57 percent of total respondents had visited a museum or historic site in the past twelve months.  More importantly, museums where identified as the most trustworthy source of information about the past.  In interviews with respondents, Rosenzweig and Thelen discovered that ”respondents felt there was nothing between them and the reality of the past.”  Their perception of the trustworthiness of museums was rooted in the belief that they were objective places, their artifacts presented without manipulation or agenda. 

What Cox’s work illustrates is the power of culture to shape our perception of the past – the way in which ideas and concepts are rendered credible through repetition, ubiquity, and positive consumer response.  It shows us that we must always be aware of the mediation of our experiences.  An awareness of this power is essential to any critical examination of museums.    

The Wagner Free Institute of Science of Philadelphia

Part museum, part educational center, the Wagner Free Institute of Science is one of Philadelphia’s most interesting places.  Located on the corner of 17th Street and West Montgomery Avenue, it is also one of the most overlooked.  It would be difficult to stumble upon accidentally and its North Philadelphia address places it well off the beaten path for both tourists and locals.  But once you’ve discovered the Wagner it is difficult not to return and bring others with you to this fascinating place. 

A recent visit to the Wagner began in the auditorium with a brief overview of the Institute’s origins, evolution, and current mission from director Susan Glassman.  Born in 1796 to a wealthy Philadelphia family, William Wagner had both the means and opportunity to pursue his love of science.  In her discussion Ms. Glassman pointed to three periods in Wagner’s life which helped shape the Institute.  Beginning in 1817, Wagner, serving as an agent of Philadelphia banking giant Stephen Girard, traveled extensively.  Circling the globe, he acquired the specimens which would form the core of the Institute’s collection.  The 1820s and 30s saw Wagner engaged in a local, national, and international network of science collectors and researchers.  In the early 1840s, Wagner embarked on a two year trip to Europe to visit the institutions and individuals he had been in contact with during the preceding years.  Interested in examining educational institutions devoted to science, he found that most European collections and institutions were extremely private, accessible only to men of certain social classes.  When Wagner came across the rare exception, like a free public museum in Berlin, he noted it as a model to be emulated.    

Shortly after his return to Philadelphia, Wagner began organizing his collection and presenting a number of informal lectures centered on his holdings.  Wagner’s cabinet began to draw visitors, and by 1855 his series of informal presentations of his collection had become an incorporated educational institution.  The Wagner Free Institute moved to its Montgomery Avenue location in 1865. 

Wagner’s model shares with the prototypical museums of Europe – beginning with Florence’s Medici Palace of the 15th century and continuing with the cabinet collectors of the 16th century – the impulse toward acquisition and education.  What distinguished the Wagner from its historical and contemporary European antecedents was access. Where the collections of his forebears were symbols of wealth and power construed through the control of knowledge, Wagner’s lectures and collection, and later the Institute’s educational programs were open to the public, regardless of gender or class.   

The Wagner underwent a second wave of development following the death of its founder in 1885.  Under the leadership of biologist Joseph Leidy the Institute not only actively expanded its collection and continued its educational programs, but emerged as a research organization, undertaking and financing expeditions and generally contributing to the expansion of scientific knowledge.  The changes of the Leidy period, both to the physical structure and to the collection and its presentation, are preserved in the Institute’s current incarnation.  It is in the Wagner’s specimen collection that the influence of Leidy is perhaps most apparent.  

Housed on the second floor, the biological and geological specimen collection illustrates the move toward classification and hierarchical order characteristic of 19th century science.  It also illustrates the Wagner’s shift in use over time, suggesting the problems associated with the contemporary public perception of the Institute and its mission.  Certainly the collection is fascinating in its own right, both for what it contains an in the way it differs from the contemporary museum going experience.  Initially an extension of the Institute’s educational efforts, the collection seems a primary draw for the contemporary visitor.  Filled with natural wonders, methodically organized and arranged in heavy wooden cases, the exhibition hall is a taxonomist’s (and taxidermist’s) dream.  Filled with natural light and the sounds of the surrounding neighborhood, the collection room is warm and inviting.  The arrangement of the collection – hierarchically for biological specimens, chronologically for geological ones – certainly suggests for the visitor a specific path.  For the contemporary viewer, separated from these organizing principles by time, evolving scientific methods, or a lack prior knowledge, the collection can be experienced in a variety of ways.  One can move freely from one exhibit to the next leaping over millions of years in the process.  Here, invertebrate sea creatures give way to crustaceans and large, bony fish.  Winged beasts – moths, bats, and seagulls – sit near fierce looking birds of prey and snakes and squirrels set in action poses.  The skeleton of a draft horse sits near a scattering of Brontosaurs bones, while geological specimens mingle with the fossil record in nearby cases. 

In his 2009 article “Preserving the Future of Natural-History Museums,” Thomas H. Benton (the pen name of Hope College professor William Pennapacker) provides several observational recommendations for natural history museums moving into the 21st century.  Three of Benton’s recommendations suggest the strengths of the Wagner Institute.  The Wagner “foreground[s] the art of science and aesthetics of the museum” by keeping intact the work of Wagner and Leidy, and it is certainly not “ashamed of dead animals.”  Most importantly, Benton observes: “The world is full of simulations.  Natural-history museums should cultivate the aura of the real: the rare and unique, the beautiful, the exotic, and the grotesque.”  This is what makes the Wagner so remarkable.  It is through the exhibition of its collection that the Wagner restores a sense of (analog) awe and wonder to the museum going experience.  

But the collection also draws attention away from the educational mission of the Institute.  Ms. Glassman noted that the Wagner is often thought of solely as a museum, rather than an institution focused on public education in science.  This seems a natural hazard of preserving and presenting a museum’s past.  By presenting the museum as object, one risks elevating static physical qualities over continually evolving ideological mission.    

Ms. Glassman observed that when preservation efforts began in earnest twenty years ago, the Wagner had become something quite rare – a cultural artifact.  A piece of a scientific history well worth preserving.  Indeed, the Wagner straddles two eras.  It is at once a 19th century natural history museum preserved in amber and a contemporary institution with an active educational mission.  It is both a historical artifact and a living institution, and each has its own appeal and set of priorities.  In the first case, the building, library, and extensive specimen collection draw visitors looking for a authentic representation of a 19th century institution, while in the second, it must provide free, contemporary scientific educational programs to the community.  To maintain authenticity requires constant preservation of the Wagner’s structures and specimens.  The educational programs require the development of attractive and relevant programs and continual community outreach.  By engaging the public on both fronts, the Wagner seeks to establish a balance between its past and present, preservation and growth.

Leaving the Wagner, heading toward Broad Street via Montgomery Avenue, one wonders how its location has helped and/or hurt the Institute over time.  Located on the relative outskirts of the city’s most attractive commercial and cultural districts must have had some effect on frequency of use and effectiveness of its mission.  One wonders how it might look if William Wagner had decided to build his educational institute near what are now Independence National Historical Park or the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.  Would it resemble the American Philosophical Society or the Academy of Natural Sciences?  Certainly its relative isolation made it easier to preserve the collection and structure in its 19th century form.  But has it also limited the execution of its mission?  Moving through the construction dust of Temple University’s expansion project, one wonders how current changes will affect Institute’s future.