These Museums and Galleries Provide Inspiration for Brandywine Valley Collectors

Adobe Stock / OceanProd

For collectors of all stripes, inspiration is easy to come by.

Whatever we collect and no matter how long we’ve been collecting it, we need some place to go for inspiration and education. One-dimensional magazines, online sites and social media can only do so much to sate this desire to see and know more.

One possibility is visiting the people who’ve been collecting for years and doing it with a professional staff—and often a hefty budget made possible by private donors and perhaps even public funding.

Here are some thoughts on local institutions—or those a few hours away—that may change your perspective on your own collection. Even if you’ve visited before, you may want to check them out again for new exhibitions and acquisitions.

Automobiles

An affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, the Antique Auto Club of America Museum in Hershey, Pennsylvania, has a strong educational and experiential component, with both a permanent collection and rotating exhibitions. The Simeone Foundation Automative Museum in southwest Philadelphia accentuates speed, featuring more than 75 antique and modern racing cars, from Alfa Romeo to Porsche. The America On Wheels museum in Allentown is home to 75 cars, trucks, motorcycles and bikes, with new exhibitions every six months.

Adobe Stock / OceanProd

Watches

Owned and operated by collectors, the National Watch and Clock Museum in Columbia, Pennsylvania, houses a collection of more than 12,000 clocks and watches, plus exhibits on the art of making timepieces. For the serious collector, it also has a library and research component.

Adobe Stock / yasmin

Owned and operated by collectors, the National Watch and Clock Museum houses a collection of more than 12,000 clocks and watches.

Furniture

Of course, the treasure in our backyard is Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library —and it’s difficult to capture in words the breadth and depth of its collections, encompassing over 90,000 objects. Winterthur is also an important scholastic research center and training ground for repair and restoration. In Washington, D.C., the National Gallery of Art houses the Kaufman Collection of American furniture and furnishings, dating from 1700 to 1830.

Stamps

The Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum in D.C. includes exhibits that go beyond stamps, highlighting the people and the vehicles that have delivered mail through history. For the philatelist, the go-to is the William H. Gross Stamp Gallery, with hundreds of pullout frames containing more than 20,000 objects, including noteworthy stamps that have never been on public display.

Coins

Returning to the Smithsonian, we find a mind-boggling collection of currencies past and present from all continents. The National Numismatic Collection houses approximately 1.6 million objects and is believed to be the world’s largest collection of money and “transactional objects” in the world. Here, you can also find the U.S. monetary system’s collection of record, plus the collections of the U.S. Mint, Treasury and Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Don’t worry about the forms of payment accepted if you visit—admission is free.

Earthenware

Depending on your area of interest, start with the Smithsonian and Winterthur collections and exhibits, then check out the New York museums, which often have extensive fine ceramics collections. If your interest is American pottery, from Colonial days to the farm stoneware collections of the previous century, check out the Maryland auction house Crocker Farm.

Art

Let’s assume your collection of paintings, sculptures and objects are part of the decorative scheme of your home, and not acquired solely to buy and sell. Within an hour’s drive, you have the Brandywine Museum of Art, Delaware Art Museum, Winterthur, Biggs Museum of American Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and a dozen others. Still, part of the inspiration of collecting art for your own pleasure is visiting local, professionally run galleries—not just to buy but to see what new artists are worth discovering. Part of the attraction of any museum or gallery goes beyond what’s on the wall to who’s curating the collection. In addition to perhaps purchasing a painting by a new artist, you may even be able to chat with them at their next opening.

Wine

Like art on the wall, collecting wine has an everyday relevance. Sooner or later, you drink your collection, which is good as there are no wine implement museums nearby. As with art, people who sell wine are valuable resources for new things and fresh ideas. Most wine collectors with a few hundred bottles in their cellars have their favorite merchants, but other stores may hold some surprises.

Farm Implements

The best bet is the Landis Valley Village & Farm Museum in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Not only is it a Colonial Williamsburg-style village museum, but it’s also home to the Heirloom Seed Project and a museum store.

Books

If you’re new to the area, you may not know about Baldwin’s Book Barn just outside West Chester. It’s as close to a museum as any used and rare book seller can be.

Model Railroads

The National Train Collectors’ official train barn is the National Toy Train Museum in Strasburg, Pennsylvania, which boasts seven operating, interactive train layouts.

Of course, there are museums and exhibits we’ve missed here. But isn’t the role of a collector to search out the places and items most have overlooked?

Related: Traditional Ceramics Find a Welcome Home in the Brandywine Valley