Take an audio tour of The Peale, Baltimore's Community Museum and oldest museum building in the United States! Listen to WYPR's Aaron Henkin recount the fascinating stories that surround this historic building. Includes 16 stops.
Hailing from the Peale family of artists, natural scientists, and innovators, Rembrandt Peale was the second son of Charles Willson Peale. The elder Peale had opened the first American museum in his home studio in Philadelphia in 1784, eventually moving it to rented premises. In his 1822 self-portrait, Charles Willson Peale lifts the red curtain to invite us into the “Long Room” in the building that is known today as Independence Hall.
Portraits line the tops of the walls in this gallery. Despite having started his career as a saddle maker, Charles Willson Peale became a leading artist of his day and renowned for his portraits of contemporary Americans, which was the family’s bread and butter. George Washington reportedly remarked that he had been painted so many times, by so many Peales, he’d been “Pealed all around.”
In the early 19th century, museums were not yet divided by subject matter. Mastodon skeletons were displayed alongside other natural history specimens and fine art, including European masterpieces, in both the family's Baltimore and Philadelphia museums. Charles Willson Peale invites us to explore his collections of taxidermied animals and paintings, and the visitors depicted in this painting model for us the kinds of experiences we should expect in the museum: learning, inspiration, and wonder.
You can see another painting of Peale’s Long Room gallery from the same year by his son, Titian Ramsey Peale, in a mural on the second-floor landing.
