These Truths: The Declarations of Independence

On view until January 2027, the NEH-supported exhibition These Truths: The Declarations of Independence at the American Philosophical Society Museum in Philadelphia explores how Americans used and reproduced the document during the first fifty years of its history. At first it served as a pronouncement of news, later a political tool, and then transformed into a national symbol. pronouncement of news, later a political tool, and then transformed into a national symbol.

The creation of the Declaration was a process, not an event, and its story is more complex than assumed. The many copies of the Declaration in the exhibition offer a reminder that the Declaration’s “truths” were never static and each era reevaluated their meaning.

The exhibition brings together rare versions of the Declaration and related artifacts, including Thomas Jefferson’s early handwritten draft and the chair he sat in to compose it. Visitors can also examine the first printing of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, a map of North America purchased by Benjamin Franklin that hung in Independence Hall as the delegates debated and approved the Declaration, George Washington’s Farewell Address, and the 1818 Benjamin Owen Tyler and 1819 John Binns printings that helped transform the Declaration from a political document into a sacred national text.

Read about the exhibition at The Philadelphia Inquirer, Fox 29 Philadelphia, CBS Philadelphia, and The Philadelphia Citizen.