In honor of the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Princeton University Library (PUL) will open two American Revolution-themed exhibitions in the spring, the Library announced this week. The exhibitions will draw on a vast array of paintings, documents, manuscripts, and rare book collections, exploring the Revolution at a national and local scale.
The first exhibition, “‘Nursery of Rebellion’: Princeton and the American Revolution,” will run from April 15 through July 12 in the Milberg Gallery of Firestone Library and features an original copy of the Declaration of Independence, as well as one of 13 remaining original copies of the U.S. Constitution.
“This exhibition is one of those things that you can only really experience at a place like Princeton,” exhibition co-curator and associate history professor Michael Blaakman said. The University is one of six academic institutions that holds a Dunlap Broadside Declaration of Independence, the earliest copies of the document, printed on July 4, 1776.
Early printings of the Bill of Rights and the Federalist Papers, correspondence between George Washington and James Madison, and letters exchanged among militiamen are among the other artifacts of national significance that will be displayed in the exhibit.
While the exhibition aims to “tell a national story of the American Revolution using some of these treasures,” Blaakman noted that it also seeks to illuminate local and individual experiences from the period.
“Nursery of Rebellion” urges audiences to “think about the American Revolution as not just the story of men in wigs and breeches with outstretched fingers spouting off about liberty, but also an experience that affected everybody in the diverse society of 18th-century America,” Blaakman said.
Reflecting that dual focus, materials shown during a Jan. 23 preview of the exhibition included a book of poems by Phillis Wheatley, the first published African American poet, as well as firsthand accounts of the battles of Trenton and Princeton.
The exhibition also sheds light on how both the town of Princeton and the University experienced the Revolutionary era.
Blaakman explained that the title of the exhibition, “Nursery of Rebellion,” comes from a 1783 letter by College of New Jersey faculty written to the Continental Congress offering the use of Nassau Hall for Congress as a Capitol building. “What [the letter] says is that we gained a reputation as a ‘nursery of rebellion’ and were targeted by the British during the war,” Blaakman told the ‘Prince,’ referring to the Battle of Princeton in 1777.
“You’re getting to see the alumni of this institution and read their experience of the American Revolution, including the Tea Party letter, [and] burnings of effigies out in front of Nassau Hall — which might be the earliest protest movement at Princeton,” Gabriel Swift, co-curator of the exhibition and librarian for Early American Collections in PUL’s Special Collections, told The Daily Princetonian. “You’re just getting to see that rich, long history that is alive today.”
Blaakman added that the exhibition will also feature the only known pre-Revolutionary portrait of an American undergraduate in academic dress, borrowed from the Princeton University Art Museum. “Not only will you get to read the letters of your predecessors as Princeton students, but you get to look one right in the eyes,” he said.
A second exhibition titled “Real and Remembered: Princetonians Caught Between Study and Revolution” explores the Revolution’s impact on the University’s institutional identity and culture. Curated by PUL staff April Armstrong GS ’14, Ashley Augustyniak, and Rosalba Varallo Recchia, “Real and Remembered” will be open from May 2026 to April 2027 in the Mudd Manuscript Library Gallery.
“Our commitment all along has been to try and do something to commemorate the 250th [anniversary] that is about how actual people lived through this history, and to keep the experience of history and the power of archives to make it come alive,” Blaakman said.
The two exhibitions are set to open to the public in the spring and will be free.
Sena Chang is the associate News editor for the ‘Prince’ leading investigations. She is from Japan and South Korea, and she often covers local politics and student life. She can be reached at sc3046[at]princeton.edu.
Jerry Zhu contributed reporting.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
A correction was issued at 11:58 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 25: The photo caption, which had previously referenced the copy of the Declaration of Independence as one of 13 original copies of the document, was corrected. In reality, it was one of 26 surviving copies. The ‘Prince’ regrets this error.
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