Curators and Culture: The Museum Movement in America, 1740-1870

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2 The Moderate Enlightenment, 1780-1800: The Museum for the Respectability It was the Enlightenment, and America's reaction to it, that completed the transformation of cabinets into museums. As previously noted, during the years 1780 to 1800, the old exclusive "for members only" cabinet began to fade away, to be replaced by the more democratic and open museum. It is important to remember , however, that the exclusivity did not fall away overnight . The owners of these pioneer museums were themselves members of the respectability. Necessity drove them to open their museums to the public, but once they had taken this step, the proprietors came to realize that their museums could be socially useful. The "lower orders"-hired hands, menial laborers, merchant sailors, and the like-sought entertainment and needed education . The museum could be used to give both. At first, of course, these efforts were somewhat tentative. The museum's audience was wider than the cabinet's, but it was still not as broad as it would be later. The key to understanding the transformation from cabinet to museum is the Enlightenment in America. Like museums, the Enlightenment changed in America to fit the American culture. America had no classical past, no royalty or nobility, no strong established church; in short, there was little against which to rebel. The Enlightenment in America was less contentious than in Eu- The Moderate Enlightenment 27 rope, although it was not static. Henry May, in his important work The Enlightenment in America, divided the Enlightenment into four phases, the Moderate, Skeptical, Revolutionary, and Didactic . He held that the Moderate Enlightenment, mainly a British invention, was dominant in England from the time of Newton and Locke to about 1750, and in America to about 1800. The Skeptical and Revolutionary Enlightenments, both centered in France, had little effect on America. The Didactic Enlightenment, originating in Scotland, took the United States by storm in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.1 It was the Moderate and the Didactic enlightenments that strongly affected American museums. The Moderate Enlightenment, like any complicated social phenomenon , sprang from a number of causes. Its founding fathers were Newton and Locke. Newton had bequeathed to the world an understanding of a cosmic system governed by explicable and regular laws and a "faith in Reason as competent to penetrate the meaning of those laws and to induce conformity to them."2 Locke added to it a belief in the freedom of the human mind, and an ardent humanitarianism. As the Enlightenment developed, other concepts were added: the doctrine of progress, a faith in the perfectability of man, and the desire for balance, order, and moderation in all things. Certain philosophes came truly to believe that if the laws governing the universe could be discovered, and if people could be persuaded to conform to them, the result would be universal happiness and the perfection of mankind. The Moderate Enlightenment emigrated from Britain to America in the 1750S, just as it was waning in the mother country, and deeply affected the first generation of museum proprietors. There is no mystery why this should be so. According to Henry May, "As in England, the ideas of the Moderate Enlightenmentthe formulae of balance, order, and rationality-were especially attractive to the urban, the successful, the striving, the up-todate ."3 Urban, striving and up-to-date-these are qualities that described the pioneer curators, Pierre Eugene Du Simitiere, Charles Willson Peale, and Gardiner Baker. Donald Meyer, in his study, The Democratic Enlightenment, confirmed May's insight, 28 The Moderate Enlightenment saYIng, "To be sure, the Enlightenment was an elitist (though not an aristocratic movement)-theoretically welcoming all free and inquiring minds, but, in fact, limited to those with talent and the opportunity to participate in the intellectual life."4 The pioneer curators were all members of the respectability, and had both the talent and the opportunity to participate in the intellectual life of their communities by building a museum. They were thus members of a privileged class, but they were not content to merely enjoy life without contributing to their society . J. R. Pole neatly summed up the feelings of the respectability in the 1770s: "Privilege certainly existed in America and so did distinctions of class and fortune. But privilege was not a principle; even the privileged tended to see themselves as earning their social keep. "5 Imbued by this sense of obligation to...