The Peale

The Peale is a community museum, based in Baltimore, Maryland, and a place where anyone can contribute their story to the city’s cultural and historical narrative. Together with creators and storytellers of all kinds, we’re actively redefining the role of museums in society and building the largest archive of Baltimore stories in the world. The Peale opened as the nation’s first purpose-built museum in 1814. Since then, the space has served many purposes, including Baltimore’s first city hall, the first public high school available to people of color in the state of Maryland, and the birthplace of the Baltimore Gas & Electric company, where gaslight technology was first introduced to "Light City." Today, we continue this legacy of adapting to the city's needs by being a platform and showcase for exhibits and cultural programming driven by local creators and storytellers. We are a non-collecting museum. We don’t collect physical objects like paintings, furniture, or artifacts. Instead we support community projects, collaborating with local creators and culture keepers to realize the public programming, outreach, and education that is most relevant to their communities. Anyone can contribute to our growing archive of digital stories about the city – the largest in the world – to help preserve the intangible cultural heritage of Baltimore and cultivate a more complete narrative for our city.