‘A museum without walls’: the Atwater Kent collection is now accessible online

On Wednesday, Drexel University announced that the Atwater Kent collection will be uploaded to a digital database, making more than 130,000 artifacts of Philadelphia and American history available online for public viewing.

Historical objects like George Washington’s writing desk, Abraham Lincoln’s hat, Joe Frazier’s boxing gloves, and many, many more will now be on virtual display for the first time.

“The launch of this digital database is a major milestone in stewarding the Atwater Kent collection and sharing it with the public,” Drexel president John Fry said in a news release. “Drexel’s role in preserving the history of Philadelphia extends the university’s commitment to civic engagement while furnishing a new opportunity to showcase the considerable talents of our professional staff, students and faculty.”

The digital database currently has more than 1,200 artifacts, but Stacey Swigart, director of the Atwater Kent collection, said it will one day display the entire collection.

“You can go down so many rabbit holes into so many topics of Philadelphia history just by looking at an object,” Swigart said. “It’s kind of this daisy chain of so much information, and it’s just fantastic.”

Typically, only 200 to 300 artifacts are displayed at one time. But with the online database, viewers will get a glimpse of all the history that makes up the expansive collection.

“It’s kind of a museum without walls,” Rosalind Remer, senior vice provost for collections and exhibitions at Drexel, told The Inquirer. “And it’s much more about access and equity of access now than it’s ever been.”

The objects were all initially housed in the Philadelphia History Museum, which shut down in 2018. In April 2022, the city transferred control over the artifacts to Drexel, after months of court hearings.

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Through a partnership with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the collection will be physically housed inside the museum’s Hamilton Building for further preservation, cataloging, and sharing of archival materials. Along with public access online, Drexel will organize two exhibitions at PAFA this summer and in 2024. The first exhibition, “Seeing Philadelphia,” showcases views of the city using prints, drawings, photos, paintings, and maps. “Philadelphia Revealed” will be a large-scale display that tells the “diverse stories of Philadelphians over 300 years.”

“Seeing Philadelphia” will run from early July through September, and “Philadelphia Revealed” will be available for viewing from July 4, 2024, to early 2025.

Remer said the database will also be a place for local institutions to view artifacts and submit loan requests so they can add them to small exhibitions of their own.

“We’re going to blanket the city with this stuff,” she said. “It’s going to be at community centers, schools, shopping centers, airports, you name it. This collection is going to be where people are already going, so they can see it, appreciate it, and not have to make a dedicated trip to a museum.”

For more information and to view the collection, visit philadelphiahistory.org.