A Suddenly Shuttered Museum May Be Selling Off Its Treasures. History Society History?

Nearly 60 years ago, when Americans were standing in lines to see Vivian Leigh and Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind, one of the nation's oldest and most prestigious historical societies declared a bold new mission.

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP) acknowledged in 1939 ``obligations to the community as a whole as differentiated from its obligations to the world of historical scholarship.''

And the society expressed ``a deep concern for the life of the people as well as a desire to record the actions of their leaders.'' It explained that ``here in Pennsylvania - from the beginning the most cosmopolitan and democratic of all the states - history concerns itself with the Finns and Swedes, the Dutch and English, the Scots-Irish and Germans, the Negroes and Slavs, without regard to their status, their beliefs, their color, their accent.''

In short, on the eve of World War II, HSP turned itself from a blue-blood, white gentleman's aerie into a society dedicated to ``the whole community and not merely a portion of it.''

Now, HSP has renounced this vision.

The 1939 mission statement has been scrapped - quietly, mistakenly, unnecessarily. The HSP is reinventing itself in its pre-1939 image. It will no longer invite the public to see exhibits built from its fabulous collections.

It will have no exhibits because it is warehousing - and possibly selling off - its national treasures, everything from William Penn's family cradle to the Lenni Lenape wampum belt presented to Penn as a solemn record at the fabled friendship meeting in 1682. Portraits of George Washington by Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart and Thomas Sully. The telescope John Paul Jones used on board the Bonhomme Richard during the moonlight battle when he exclaimed, ``I have not yet begun to fight.'' The desk George Washington used in Philadelphia when the city was the nation's capital.

Over the last five years, HSP's museum curators have been fired because they will have nothing to curate, preserve and exhibit. The Summer History Camp is history. The long-term exhibit on ``Finding Philadelphia's Past,'' which has thrilled and informed visitors for eight years, has closed. Public programs have been virtually eliminated.

Why is one of the key repositories of our national memory being eviscerated?