The Wagner: An Often Unacknowledged Innovative Institution

Today’s field excursion was located at the Wagner Institute in a residential area of North Philadelphia a few blocks off Temple’s campus.  This trip constituted as my fourth visit to the Wagner, and although the exhibits don’t change, I innovatively interacted with the “museum” and examined the collections considering Macdonald’s indication that collecting (arguably an innate human function) is the foundation for museums and provides a valuable connection between the physical and social aspects of society.  William Wagner collected some of the specimens locally, but mostly while traveling in Europe.  Following the trend of many upper class white males, Wagner displayed his treasures through a curiosity cabinet, but more uniquely, gave lectures as accompaniments to his display.  He eventually founded the institute (1896) to 1) act as a larger container for his specimens, but 2) mainly as a vessel to teach science to the public.  Lectures and classes were offered on the first floor as a foundation for understanding the collection assembled on the second level.  In the 1880s Joseph Leidy organized the specimens according to Darwinism evolution stages.  As mentioned in Giebelhausen’s essay, this idea of categorization and thinking of the museum as an instrument trended throughout the late 1800s.  Macdonald also notes that at this time, there is an increase in public desire to rationalize collections and objects’ relational values.  Wagner conforms to this trend through the more strategic deployment of his specimens, but is also innovative in that he uses classroom environments to inform the public about the objects in his collection, giving them a thorough understanding of their context and connections to one another. 

I have walked among the collection before, but this expedition was the first time I was notified that the drawers in each case can be opened to expose more specimens.  I quickly realized they were cumbersome, but to the visitor of the late 1800s, they may have been innovatively interactive.  However, their existence is important because even through difficult to open, they allow more of the collection to be publically accessed at all times.  This use of space provided a solution to one issue Macdonald raises that was debated in the early 20^th century; large portions of collections were often not shown, but kept in storage.  Smaller independent museums popularized such as the Wagner.  Unfortunately it is largely detached from the majority of the Philadelphia community today possibly because it is a small personal collection that never changes.  It stands often unnoticed in North Philadelphia like the outcast building of the neighborhood that was forgotten long ago, but its value and authenticity remains as Wagner intended: to freely provide scientific knowledge to the public.  It remains important as a transitional period museum at a time when scientific knowledge was normalizing and divine abstract thinking was being divided from museum design.