Relics and reflections: Museum exhibits echoes of the Revolution
Commemorative objects, relics, and contemporary artworks are featured in the Acton Museum’s latest showcase.
Americans have remembered the Revolutionary War in some distinctive ways over the last 250 years.
On one occasion, it was by repurposing a war-era gown to wear at Acton’s 1875 centennial ball, as a descendant of its original owner did. On another, by creating a piece depicting the Statue of Liberty shedding a tear, as current Middlesex School student Ada Sprong did.
These and more commemorative objects, relics, and contemporary artworks are featured in Revolutionary Legacies, the third in a series of special Revolutionary War showcases at the Acton Museum.
The exhibit, opening March 27, explores how the war has been remembered at key moments — in 1824, 1875, 1975, and 2025 — and complements the museum’s ongoing exhibition, April 19, 1775.
“Right from the beginning, Americans found powerful ways to hold on to the events of the Revolution,” says Christie Jackson, museum curator and director of exhibitions. “They saved personal objects to pass down their experiences to future generations, sometimes even reusing and transforming those objects to build new stories.”
The exhibit features art by high school students who reflected on the nation’s founding and its echoes to the present day. Their work enabled Jackson to “create an exhibit that felt energetic, forward-looking, and engaging,” she says.
Among those selected for inclusion in Revolutionary Legacies is Monica Meng’s “The Invitation,” in which a young woman is asked “to go back in time to engage with history and witness its events firsthand,” says the artist, a Acton Academy student.
Woodworks
Other items include a circa 1920 model of the North Bridge crafted by Concordian Edwin A. Buttrick from nearly 20 wooden relics of various historical sites such as Mount Vernon and the frigates USS Constitution and USS Merrimac. A 19th-century miniature casket incorporates an original piece of George Washington’s mahogany coffin, preserved when his remains were moved to the marble sarcophagus at Mount Vernon in 1837.
Revolutionary Legacies is the first exhibit curated by Jackson, who joined the museum staff last fall.
The exhibit is made possible in part by grants from Mass Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Decorative Arts Trust, the Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism, the Freedom’s Way National Heritage Area, the ’Quin Impact Fund, Concord250, the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati, and by the Massachusetts General Court and Secretary of State William F. Galvin for Veterans’ Heritage Grant Program.
“Looking at the memory of the Revolution also prompts us to think about our hopes for the next 250 years,” says Jackson.
“What will our commemorations reveal about our times?” she asks. “What legacy will we build together?”
Jackson and curator David Wood will offer gallery talks on the exhibit at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. on March 27. The museum is open Thursday through Sunday from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. until March 28, when its spring hours will expand to include Tuesday and Wednesday.
