Peale graced his children with some truly loaded first names — Raphaelle, Rembrandt, Titian and of course Rubens. And they all attempted to follow in their father’s footsteps, both as painters and as curators of their own museums.

Raphaelle tried to open one in Charleston. Rembrandt set one up in Baltimore (unfortunately timed for the War of 1812). Baby brother Titian took the reins in Philadelphia and became the family’s most prolific naturalist.

Rubens, at first more interested in the sciences than the arts, operated the Philadelphia museum before coming to New York City in 1825 to set up his version of his father’s dream. The address for the Peale Museum of New York City was 252 Broadway (across from City Hall on the west side) in a building then known as the Parthenon.

The museum opened on October 26, 1825, to monopolize on a huge city celebration occurring that day: the opening of the Erie Canal. By 1840, Peale would change the name to the New York Museum of Natural History and Science.

Rubens’ museum would have had much the same makeup as the one in Philadelphia : great displays of stuffed animals in natural settings, display cases of butterflies and insects, postulations of pre-Darwinian scientific theories laid out over several rooms and supported with lectures and even theatrical productions. One book refers to Rubens as a “popularizer of scientific discoveries and a manager of theatrical attractions.”

In 1826, Rubens imported two mummies from Cairo for display; after 16 days of presenting the draped bodies, he presented for the interest of the “scientific and the curious” the unwrapping the age-old corpses in the museum lecture room.

His museum also featured fine arts and historical portraits, some by his own family members, others by respected painters as Bass Otis.

Rubens was sensitive to some of the cheap ploys of the Philadelphia Museum (live animals, displays of human deformities) and tried to keep his New York museum a dignified affair, although today we would find its use of waxworks and flashy lectures rather silly.

Above: an illustration entitled ‘Mesmerism on Wall Street’

Rubens adherence to the scientific led him into some unusual directions. He became mesmerized, if you will, by the theories of Fredrich Anton Mesmer, who believed a magnetic fluid in the body controlled the personality. A precursor to hypnotism and later the intellectual embrace of clairvoyance, mesmerism was such a popular distraction that Rubens placed a New York newspaper advertisement on February 8, 1841, claiming “a demonstration on the principle of animal magnetism” would be presented at his museum.