Charles Willson Peale: The Artist in His Museum (Self-portrait, 1822). Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Via Wikipedia
Illustrated lecture and book signing with author Nathaniel Popkin
Date: Tuesday, June 10
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $8
Buy tickets here
*** Offsite: Morbid Anatomy Museum (New Space) , 424A 3rd Avenue (Corner of 7th Street and 3rd Avenue)
Presented by Morbid Anatomy
*** Copies of Lion and Leopard will be available for sale and signing
Artist, inventor and naturalist Charles Willson Peale is best remembered today as the founder of the first American museum. His Philadelphia Museum-opened in the 1780s-displayed side by side his own paintings and taxidermy, the first displayed skeleton of an American mastodon, and other assorted curiosities arranged according to the principles of Linnaean taxonomy. Blurring our contemporary boundaries between art and science, Peale’s museum can be seen as a kind of missing link between the Cabinets of Curiosities of old and today’s museums.
In this talk, Nathaniel Popkin-author of the new novel Lion and Leopard about a fictional ideological clash between Peale and the artist John Lewis Krimmel-explores the origin and development of Peale’s worldview and they ways in which it informed both his museum and the nation it was intended to serve. Here is the story of a driven man who sought to collect and categorize all of nature so that it could be understood and exploited. Learning about, understanding, and controlling nature—including one’s own animalistic heart—was essential to becoming a citizen in the new republic.
Nathaniel Popkin is a literary writer, journalist, historian, and the author of three books, including the 2013 novel Lion and Leopard. He is co-editor of the Hidden City Daily and senior writer of the Emmy award winning documentary, “Philadelphia: The Great Experiment.” Popkin is the fiction review editor of Cleaver Magazine and contributes to the Wall Street Journal Weekend Review, Public Books, The Smart Set, Fanzine, and the Dactyl Review.