Behind the Crimson Curtain: The Rise and Fall of Peale's Museum

About this book

In 1786, Charles Willson Peale created the most important, and most famous, museum in Revolutionary-era America. A fusion of natural history and art, Peale's Philadelphia Museum was meant to be an embodiment of the Enlightenment. "Behind the Crimson Curtain" provides a unique window into science, art, and the Enlightenment in early America, and how these fed the appetites of a public hungry for "rational entertainment."