Museum Culture in the Anglo-American Atlantic World, c. 1750-1815
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During the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth centuries, the Anglo-American Atlantic world saw a rise in the number and popularity of museums as cultural institutions. By concentrating on the premier museums in each culture, the British Museum and Charles Willson Peale’s Philadelphia Museum, this project seeks to establish two things: 1) the circumstances that allowed museums to become a vanguard in the British and American societies of 1750-1820, and 2) the kinds of changes museums instigated upon assuming a role of significant cultural influence. The social climate of these two populations was such that museums were able to assume a function fashioned by contemporary social conditions. The impacts of the Enlightenment, a rising middle classes, and the creation of a consumer culture coalesced to set the stage for museums to become a force of significant social influence. As these museums gained in popularity, they began to influence their surroundings. They became forums for social change, serving as institutions of education that aimed to instruct both the erudite elite and the “curious” in matters of virtue as well as in matters of intellect. Museums offered a new form of popular entertainment and provided an environment that fostered social mingling between classes. Furthermore, these museums altered their audience’s perceptions of their many worlds, including the natural world, their own culture and national identity, and the world of the “others” that existed outside their borders, particularly the Amerindian, African, and South Pacific cultures. The British Museum and the Peale Museum were used in their respective societies as tools to cultivate a unifying definition of “Britishness” or “Americanness” by creating their own image in opposition to the “others” and by using elements of natural history to instill a sense of pride in the homeland. The institutions’ directors took advantage of the popularity and influence the museums had assumed in their respective cultures and used them to better and strengthen those societies.
Myers, Sherry (2006). Museum Culture in the Anglo-American Atlantic World, c. 1750-1815. Available electronically from