MA250

1776: Declaring Independence
2026-04-18 09:30 - 16:00, 2026-04-21 09:30 - 16:00, 2026-04-22 09:30 - 16:00, 2026-04-23 09:30 - 16:00, 2026-04-24 09:30 - 16:00, 2026-04-25 09:30 - 16:00, 2026-04-27 09:30 - 16:00, 2026-04-28 09:30 - 16:00 (America/New_York) and 4 more dates | Massachusetts Historical Society, Boylston Street 1154, Boston, Massachusetts, 02215, United States
Featuring manuscripts, artifacts, and rarely seen treasures, this exhibition captures a monumental moment in American history.
In 1776, people grappled with ideas of liberty, loyalty, and the role of government in society. Private letters, intimate diaries, and newspaper accounts reveal how the Declaration of Independence grew from draft to founding document. 1776: Declaring Independence spotlights handwritten copies of the Declaration by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson as well as multiple early printings, including a rare Dunlap broadside. On and off the page, we explore how it echoed across the commonwealth and around the world, reshaping the colonists’ chances of launching a new nation. How did the Declaration change Americans’ quest for liberty, then and now? We invite visitors to trace the Declaration’s complex legacy as a national beacon for celebration and protest.
Check here for closures and more admission information: https://www.masshist.org/visit/hours-and-admission

Picturing the Revolution
2026-04-18 09:30 - 2027-01-03 16:30 | Flynt Center of Early New England Life, Old Main Street 37, Deerfield, Massachusetts, 01342, United States
Throughout the American War for Independence, scores of images circumnavigated the globe, fighting their own battles to establish a comprehensible narrative for the momentous events occurring in British North America. Differences in politics, disruptions in communication, and the delay of thousands of miles of distance produced competing and often contradictory accounts. Some images became enduring representations of the conflict. Others faded from memory.
Drawing from Historic Deerfield’s rich collection of Revolutionary-era materials, this exhibition explores the diverse ways that 18th-century individuals “pictured” or understood the Revolution as it unfolded. Looking across prints, drawings, maps, broadsides, portraits, powder horns, ceramics, and satirical cartoons, Picturing the Revolution highlights how images shaped local and global perceptions of the war: its landscapes, its actors, its causes, and its goals. Mining these complex visual records reveals the often-overlooked importance of pictures in the shift from revolt to revolution, and in envisioning a future for the new nation.
This exhibition has been made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism.

Dressing the Revolution: Fashion and Politics 1760–1789
2026-04-18 09:30 - 2027-01-03 16:30 | Flynt Center of New England Life, Old Main Street 37, Deerfield, Massachusetts, 01342, United States
The exhibition includes more than 20 garments, accessories, textiles, and prints that illuminate the complex role of clothing at the time of the American Revolution. By posing new questions about fashion’s relationship with class, race, and gender, Dressing the Revolution: Fashion and Politics 1760–1789 places clothing at the center of the political debates, shedding light on dress as a powerful tool that communicated not just status and identity, but political affinities during this volatile period.
The exhibition begins with a look at the consumer revolution of the mid-18th century when an abundance of highly desirable imported goods, especially finished cloth and accessories, became widely available to all levels of society in the Colonies. Fashionable dress connected Colonists with England but also contributed to the construction of personal identities and social status, while providing the potential for social mobility.
When Britain imposed onerous taxes in the 1760s, perceptions around wearing fashionable dress began to change. Patriots called for non-importation and nonconsumption of British goods while advocating for more sober, American-made clothing. Women stepped into new political roles through the many highly publicized spinning bees, putting action to words in their industry and self sacrifice. While the Homespun Movement remained largely symbolic, it nevertheless changed the narrative around the public display of clothing.
Fashionable dress remained a topic of heated debate, and public scrutiny, when consumption of imported goods resumed after the tariffs were lifted. Clothes, whether modest or fashionable, could be read for their political implications. When the Revolution brought closed ports and hardship, Colonists often made due by maintaining and altering existing clothes and dressing more plainly. The show concludes with a look at dressing in the new Nation and the conflicting urges to balance familiar calls for republican modesty and virtue with a new eagerness for American-produced fashions.
This program is made possible by a grant from The Coby Foundation.

A Town Divided: Deerfield in the Age of Revolution
2026-04-18 09:30 - 2027-01-02 16:30 | historic deerfield, Memorial Street 16, Deerfield, MA, 01342, United States
This exhibition explores how a rural Massachusetts community responded to the upheaval of the late 1760s through the 1780s. Using objects, documents, and personal narratives, it will present multiple perspectives on how Deerfield residents embraced, rejected, or questioned Revolutionary ideals. While many associate the Revolution with Boston or battlefield sites, A Town Divided brings the promises—and contradictions—of the Revolution to life through the lens of a deeply divided rural town in western Massachusetts.
As in other communities, Deerfield’s citizens struggled to adapt to an everchanging social, political, and economic landscape as rebellion and war affected villages far from urban centers and coastal cities. In Deerfield, which was evenly split between Loyalists and Whigs, conflicts between neighbors upturned lives and polarized the community. By expanding and interpreting Deerfield’s stories, the exhibition investigates overlooked aspects of the Revolution, highlighting a period when Americans faced severe challenges but eventually emerged a new nation.
Objects, documents, and voices from the period allow us to access the urgency and uncertainty of the era. The ideals of equality and liberty engaged not only Loyalists and Whigs, but also rich and poor, women and children, African Americans (both free and enslaved), and Indigenous people.
This program is made possible by a grant from Mass Humanities, which provided funding through the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

The Road to Revolution: Massachusetts and the Independence Movement
2026-04-18 10:00 - 17:00, 2026-04-19 10:00 - 17:00, 2026-04-20 10:00 - 17:00, 2026-04-21 10:00 - 17:00, 2026-04-22 10:00 - 17:00, 2026-04-23 10:00 - 17:00, 2026-04-24 10:00 - 17:00, 2026-04-25 10:00 - 17:00 and 7 more dates | Old State House, 206 Washington St, Boston, MA, 02109, United States
Explore major Massachusetts events in the first year of the American Revolution at the Old State House, where protest turned into action and the momentum for independence accelerated. Created through a partnership between Revolutionary Spaces and the Massachusetts Historical Society, The Road to Revolution: Massachusetts and the Independence Movement invites visitors to step into 1775 and 1776—a moment defined by uncertainty, debate, and decisions that would reshape the world.
