Wisconsin magazine of history: Volume 43, number 3, spring, 1960

              HISTORY MUSEUMS:
FROM CURIO CABINETS TO CULTURAL CENTERS
By Edward P. Alexander
A nationally known authority
discusses the rise and
development of the modern museum
rr^UE HISTORICAL MUSEUM in the ¦*- United States today is an amalgam of at least three important cultural movements, the first of which is the historical society itself. Soon after independence had been won and the federal constitution adopted, historical so¬ cieties appeared in this country. Their found¬ ers were men of restless imagination and abundant energy. They wished to emulate the antiquarian societies of Western Europe, but they were also possessed of an ebullient patri¬ otism. According to them, Americans had de¬ feated the powerful British Empire and wrested for themselves the rare opportunity to set up new governments at both the state and federal levels. Not since the days of Greece and Rome had such political progress been attained. Jef¬ ferson, John Adams, Madison, and the other founding fathers had made contributions to world civilization that should never be forgot¬ ten. The historical materials of this great con¬ tinuing social experiment should be gathered, preserved, and disseminated.
The Massachusetts Historical Society, founded in 1791, was followed by the New- York Historical Society (1804), and the Amer¬ ican Antiquarian Society (1812). By the time the State Historical Society of Wisconsin was established in 1846, more than fifty national organizations reflected this spirit of cultural manifest destiny.
* Adapted from a paper read at the Founders Day banquet held January 16, 1960, at Milwaukee.
Most of the societies marked out too broad an area for their activity. In New York, for example, John Pintard and his associates tried "to discover, procure, and preserve whatever may relate to the natural, civil, literary, and ecclesiastical history of the United States in general, and of this State in particular."^ Spe¬ cial committees collected in the fields of zool¬ ogy, botany and vegetable physiology, miner¬ alogy and fossils, and coins and medals. As late as 1858, the Lenox Collection of Nineveh Sculptures was accepted and in another two years Dr. Henry Abbott's Egyptian materials including three huge mummies of the sacred bufl. Apis. Not only were American historical portraits and paintings sought, but the society had the greatest gallery of European art in New York City until the establishment of the Metropolitan Museum in 1872.
Gradually, however, most historical societies gave away their natural history specimens, confined their fields to state or regional bound¬ aries, and paid major attention to library materials. Though in 1855 the American An¬ tiquarian Society accessioned the jawbone and tusk of a wild hog that lived along the Poto¬ mac River in the early nineteenth century, Christopher Columbus Baldwin, its talented librarian, tried to keep its collections free from such "antique trash." He also declared it ab¬ surd "to pile up old bureaus and chests, and stuff them with old coats and hats and high- heeled shoes."^  Such a statement is nothing
' R. W. G. Vail, Knickerbocker Birthday: A Ses¬ quicentennial History of the New-York Historical So- ciety, 1804-1954  (New York, 1954), 451.
" Leslie W. Dunlap, American Historical Societies, 1790-1860  (Madison, Wisconsin, 1944), 75-76.
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