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Taking a peek inside Philadelphia’s attic

An exhibit of artifacts from the Atwater Kent Collection helps reveal what makes Philadelphia special.

Newspaper honor boxes are among the items featured in the exhibit "Philadelphia Revealed: Unpacking the Attic" at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Newspaper honor boxes are among the items featured in the exhibit "Philadelphia Revealed: Unpacking the Attic" at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.Read moreJessica Griffin / Staff Photographer

Can the residents of any city make a claim to being more multifaceted than Philadelphians?

We’re sports-loving — Joe Frazier’s boxing gloves, the turnstile from Shibe Park. We’re refined and elegant — we are Marian Anderson, we inspire portraits by Charles Willson Peale and Henry O. Tanner. Philadelphia is the place where the Founding Fathers forged a nation, and where people of color and LGBTQ activists fought, and continue to fight, for civil rights.

We are a city of joiners, workers, families, neighborhoods. We love to eat. We cherish the past.

All these attributes and more are on display in Philadelphia Revealed: Unpacking the Attic, an exhibit of more than 650 historical objects and images — from the sublime and precious to the ordinary and mundane — now at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Taken together, these objects — from the Atwater Kent Collection at Drexel University — reveal what makes Philadelphia special. Who we are. What we hold dear.

So what is the Philadelphia revealed in the PAFA show? A city that’s rough, exuberant, and contentious.

Beginning in the 1930s, the Atwater Kent Museum occupied a building designed by famed architect William Strickland at Seventh and Chestnut Streets to hold the Franklin Institute, which, at that time, was a trade school.

The structure had been purchased by Atwater Kent, the inventor and philanthropist who made his millions by selling high-end radios. He donated the building to the city, along with some money to buy items to fill it, with the expectation that the city of Philadelphia would cover operating costs.

Over time, as the collections and aspirations of the museum grew, the trustees and staff raised private funds to expand educational offerings and mount award-winning shows.

But the building’s small size, awkward layout, and off-the-tourist-route location combined to constrain possibilities. Exhibits were shoehorned into tiny spaces.

As attendance slowly declined, some in city government questioned whether the modest subsidy it provided was worth it.

In July 2018, the Atwater Kent Museum finally closed its doors. Museum trustees and city officials began to search for a partner institution with the interest and capacity to care for, display, digitize, share, and grow the collection. Drexel University stepped forward.

The partnership made sense since Drexel has a sophisticated museum studies program, experience in developing digital databases, and experience in managing other museums, including the famed Academy of Natural Sciences.

In 2019, two public meetings were held so people could have their say, and a surprising 400 people came to share their views. Some expressed concern that important items might be sold.

Others wanted to ensure the collection — call them treasures from Philadelphia’s collective civic attic — would not sit in storage, but would rather be seen and shared. The matter ended up in Orphans Court, the entity that oversees not-for-profit organizations, and after some legal back and forth, the city agreed to transfer ownership of the collection to Drexel.

To assure proper stewardship, Drexel promised to establish a collections evaluation committee to evaluate each item, and an oversight committee.

That’s when things began to improve. The collection Drexel received was in a sorry state, but no longer.

Since 2020, the university and others have committed substantial resources so Philadelphia’s crown jewels receive top-of-the-line care.

Soon, some objects will be loaned to history-loving organizations, from community groups to major museums, to create exhibits that tell their own cut of the Philadelphia story.

Some might be displayed in a special gallery, perhaps at PAFA, maybe City Hall. New items will be added because history never stops.

Drexel is also committed to keeping the Atwater Kent Collection intact and in the public domain. This is vital so that all these treasures can eventually be reconstituted into an exciting new museum of Philadelphia artifacts that a city like ours, so rich in history, deserves.

Nancy Moses served as chair of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and executive director of the Atwater Kent Museum. Her new book, “The Rescuers: The Remarkable People Who Saved World Heritage,” will be published in February. The “Philadelphia Revealed: Unpacking the Attic” exhibit runs through April 6.