backstory: Origin stories
Our newest exhibition, The Declaration Distributed: Westchester County’s Holt Broadside of 1776, is an origin story… an origin story of the ways in which one sheet paper spread the word of New York’s July 9, 1776 adoption of the Declaration of Independence. What I want to share with you today, however, is the origin story of the exhibition.
Several years ago, in 2020, I shared with you the ways in which exhibition-making takes a fair amount of time. You can click to read it here. The Declaration Distributed started, if you can believe it, back in June of 2019, June 17, 2019 to be exact. It was on that day that I attended a meeting on campus with Revolutionary Westchester 250 President Constance Kehoe, SUNY Purchase Professor of History and campus historian Lisa Keller, and the legendary editor of the legendary Encyclopedia of New York City, Kenneth T. Jackson. I had no idea what the meeting was going to be about and for the first couple of minutes, I was mostly just star-struck by Ken Jackson.
Connie, Lisa, and Ken wanted to know if I might consider exhibiting the Holt Broadside here at the Neuberger Museum of Art.
The what? What is a Holt Broadside?
And… sounds like history… the Neuberger Museum of Art is an art museum. But as I listened, I quickly realized just how right-a-fit the project would be for us.
The Holt Broadside embodies much of what we strive to teach here at the Neuberger and at SUNY Purchase: inventive ways of thinking about the world, and ways to speak truth to power by aligning critical thought to our passionate beliefs. My vision of this project as a right fit for the Neuberger was cemented when Connie, Lisa, and Ken explained to me that the first reader of the Holt in New York State was John Thomas, who lived here on this land, just a stone’s throw from where we are gathered right now, a critical connection that ties our histories here closely to the history of the Holt.
Seven years in the making, and plenty more stories to come before the show closes on December 20. Come see the show and stay tuned here for more.
Tracy Fitzpatrick
Director, Neuberger Museum of Art
PS. Here is a really nice write up about The Declaration Distributed by Michael Balter in The Croton Chronicle: See Westchester County’s very own copy of the Declaration of Independence at Purchase College, from now until December 20. A big thank you to Michael for the article and the photo of me we used here!
