This thesis examines Charles Willson Peale’s utilization of visual metaphors within his founding institution, The Philadelphia Museum. After establishing himself as a portrait painter, it became second nature for Peale to employ an aesthetic approach when developing museum exhibits and programs. Throughout his practices he continuously used imagery and objects to represent broader fields of research, along with his views as a naturalist and American patriot. By using these allegorical forms to arouse the public’s curiosity, he was able to attract more visitors to his museum and subsequently draw them into the learning process. / text

This study analyzes Norman Vincent Peale's bestsellers, A Guide to Confident Living and The Power of Positive Thinking, through the lenses of metaphoric criticism and invitational rhetoric. Invitational rhetoric includes characteristics such as openness, equality, mutual respect and reciprocal understanding. Metaphoric analysis includes the dominant categories of metaphors, their roles and transition across topics. The dominant tenors of mind and thought were identified, which shows consistency with Peale's main themes such as positive thinking, peace and faith. The meaning of the archetypal metaphors of light, water and sun are also discussed, along with the role of other metaphors in supporting invitational rhetoric. / Master of Arts

abstract: In this thesis, I examine the inclusion of American Indians as museum subjects and participants in Charles Willson Peale's Philadelphia Museum. To determine the forces that informed Peale's curatorship, I analyze Peale's experiences, personal views on education and scientific influences, specifically Carl Linnaeus, George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon and Thomas Jefferson. Peale created a polarized natural history narrative divided between Anglo-Americans and races that existed in a “natural state.” Within the museum's historical narrative, Peale presented Native individuals as either hostile enemies of the state or enlightened peacekeepers who accepted the supremacy of Americans. Peale's embrace of Native visitors demonstrated a mixture of racial tolerance and belief in racial hierarchy that also characterized democratic pedagogy. I derive the results by examining Peale's correspondence, diaries and public addresses, as well as administrative documents from the museum such as accession records, guidebooks, lectures and museum labels. I conclude that although Peale believed his museum succeeded in promoting tolerance and harmony among all cultures, his message nevertheless promoted prejudice through the exaltation of “civilized men.” By studying the social and intellectual constraints under which Peale operated, it is possible to see the extent to which observation of and commentary on ethnic and racial groups existed in America's earliest public culture and shaped early American museum history. Contemporary museums strive for cultural preservation and tolerance, therefore analysis of Peale's intentions and effects may increase the self-awareness of today's museum professionals. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis History 2015

This dissertation investigates the ways in which Philadelphia artists and architects visualized, comprehended, and reformed the city's rapidly changing urban environment in the early republic, prior to the modern articulation of "ecology" as a scientific concept by late nineteenth-century naturalists such as Ernst Haeckel. I consider a variety of different media--including popular depictions and manifestations of Penn's Treaty Elm, fireplace and stove models by Charles Willson Peale, architectural designs for the Philadelphia Waterworks by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, and a self-portrait bust by the sculptor William Rush--in order to demonstrate that the human body served as a powerful creative metaphor in Philadelphia circa 1800, not only for understanding and representing natural processes in political or aesthetic terms, but also for framing critical public discourse about the city's actual environmental conditions. Specifically, I reveal how this metaphorical framework produced a variety of effects in art and architecture of the period, sometimes facilitating and at other times obscuring an understanding about the natural world as an arena of dynamic transformation. By revealing the previously unexplored environmental significance of the objects in question, my dissertation asserts that ecological change played an instrumental role in shaping artistic production and urban development in the decades following United States independence. / Art History