Another exciting season at the American Philosophical Society's Museum concluded on December 29, 2024. The exhibition, Sketching Splendor: American Natural History, 1750-1850, featured a few of the numerous natural history illustrations from the APS’s collections. Museum staff welcomed over 80,000 visitors into historic Philosophical Hall to view Sketching Splendor. Even more visited during private tours and programs throughout the exhibition’s run.
Alongside new gallery renovations, the Education and Museum staff took the opportunity to incorporate more engagement opportunities. One of the additions for the year, spearheaded by Education Programs Manager, Ali Rospond, was to create a drawing table. At the drawing table, visitors used their observation skills like the naturalists highlighted in the Museum to sketch an image relating to natural history.
The table was a huge hit, with creativity abounding from visitors of all ages. Some drew inspiration from the plants and animals in the gallery, their favorite animals, or sketched their own unique interpretation of the prompt (one of my personal favorites was a unicorn standing in front of Independence Hall).
Many signed their names, ages, hometowns, and home countries, from Brazil, Scotland, Australia, Japan, and more. Visitors could take their drawings home with them or leave them on display shelves in the gallery for others to enjoy. Throughout the year, we saved all of the sketches that visitors left—7,663 drawings in total. A selection of these drawings were displayed for the attendees of our January Lunch at the Library lecture. We will continue to keep these as a snapshot record of our visitors from 2024.
Our gallery design is ever changing to adapt to the year’s current topic, and our staff is always creating new ways to engage with our visitors. While this year won’t have a drawing table, there are a few surprises in the works for Philadelphia, The Revolutionary City. Be sure to check them out after we open for the season on April 11, 2025.