Harmful arrangements: Ethnography at the National Institute and racial violence in Washington, D.C., 1842–1864

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 1842, the National Institute for the Promotion of Science installed an eclectic collection of natural science and cultural treasures in the United States Patent Office, a fire-proof building in Washington D.C. Inventories, institutional records, and periodicals indicate that the initial curator of the National Institute, the natural scientist Charles Pickering, arranged display cases at the U.S.’s first national museum according to his ethnographic division of racial types. Pickering’s system remained mostly intact until the galleries closed at the onset of the Civil War. As pro-slavery violence grew increasingly intense, the government-sponsored National Institute presented a narrative of progress that was embroiled in racial politics. The violent context that surrounded prominent objects in federal collections, such as the Declaration of Independence and Charles Willson Peale’s George Washington at Princeton (1779), should be remembered as a significant moment in museum and U.S. history as well as a potential measure of change since the antebellum installation.