Exhibition dates:
February 18, 2005–December 11, 2005

The American Philosophical Society (APS) was America’s first academy of science. Philosophical Hall, the Society’s headquarters, also housed an important library collection and the country’s first major museum. Before there was a Smithsonian Institution or a Library of Congress, the APS collected everything under the sun, including documents penned by the Founding Fathers, models of clever inventions, plants found by Lewis and Clark on America’s western frontier, and much more. All these objects contributed to “the promotion of useful knowledge,” the mission of the APS laid out in 1743 by its founder, Benjamin Franklin.

A new exhibition at Philadelphia’s oldest new museum, Treasures Revealed: 260 Years of Collecting at the American Philosophical Society, presents highlights from this remarkable collection. Visitors will see important documents, scientific specimens, patent models, portraits, maps, rare books and manuscripts—as well as painter’s palettes, lantern slides, Sumatran writing sticks and silhouettes of famous patriots from Peale’s Museum. These treasured items fascinated our ancestors and continue to inspire wonder today.

Seventy-five carefully selected objects, 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. The materials on display evoke a cavalcade of superlatives—“unique,” “rare,” “one-of-a-kind,” not to mention “intriguing,” “odd,” and downright “bizarre.” 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 printed the Declaration again 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 1785 paddle-driven boat. John Fitch made the first successful trial of a steamboat on the Delaware River on August 22, 1787.

Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of President George Washington painted in 1797.

“Spirit” photographs, including a picture by 19th-century French photographer Nadar purporting to show a man visited by a ghost.

John von Neumann’s 1945 draft of the first stored computer program.

Following in the footsteps of the great artist-naturalists like John James Audubon and Mark Catesby, 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 on the Western Shore of Maryland, was invited to create “visual stories” for the exhibition. Her work, dispersed throughout the show, interprets and re-interprets the historical record presented in Treasures. Her 21st-century take on themes such as silhouettes, natural history drawings, moon mania, and atomic bomb testing are mounted alongside artifacts on display. They are intended, she says, “to create a parallel universe” of art objects that both comment on and challenge conventional wisdom.

Press Information [pdf]

This exhibition is made possible in part by the Richard Lounsbery Foundation and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.