Exhibit Review: Revolution! 250 Years of Art and Activism in Boston

As of last week, for the first time in nearly a decade, the Boston Public Library in Copley Square is presenting a major exhibition: Revolution! 250 Years of Art of Activism in Boston. It’s the latest in a spate of Boston-area public history endeavors centered around the 250th anniversary of America’s fight for independence, but don’t let revolutionary fatigue set in! Hop on the T, brave the cluster of pigeons you’ll inevitably find on the front steps, and go spend a crisp autumn afternoon soaking up this optimistic retrospective in the warmth of the library. 

Fair warning: you may balk when walking into the exhibition space. It looks unfinished, with plywood and scaffolding and tape everywhere, but that’s intentional – the design vocabulary is meant to mirror our democracy, still in progress. The opening gallery room presents the kinds of objects and interpretation that you would expect from an anniversary exhibition, centering on the 1700s and the narratives that shaped America’s revolutionary history. Engravings abound, including Paul Revere’s oft-reproduced image of the Boston Massacre. Benjamin Franklin’s famous face makes an appearance, too, accompanied by mezzotint portraits of eighteenth-century indigenous chiefs, a few modern artworks interpreting this tumultuous moment, and several photographs from a variety of eras of revolutionary reenactment. Kitty-corner and across the way from the introductory text, a behemoth portrait of George Washington punctuates the room, our staunch first president propping himself up on a cannon and gazing benevolently over this period in history. You’ll have to sidle past him in order to turn the corner.

If you, like me, got stuck on the Revolution! part of the show’s headline and only skimmed the subtitle, what’s around the corner will pleasantly surprise you. We are not stuck in the eighteenth century, not at all: in the next section, we encounter Toussaint L’Ouverture, Haiti’s revolutionary hero, alongside Boston abolitionists and a reckoning with Faneuil Hall’s history as a site of slave auctions. (Jacob Lawrence’s print depicting L’Ouverture is the highlight here.) This section brings us into the Civil War and its aftermath, complete with daguerreotypes, tintypes, and albumen prints to tell the tale – we glimpse Black regiments in the conflict, William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips’ familiar faces, and catch traces of the Underground Railroad. The centerpiece of this long gallery space is a quartet of busts, arranged as a quorum, each one a pivotal figure in the battle for freedom and equality in nineteenth-century America. 

We’re halfway through, and the twentieth century rises quickly to meet us. Across the way from our sculptural friends, you’ll see Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, both shown in local space – Malcolm X is being interviewed by WBZ Radio, while Dr. King is leading his Freedom Rally toward the Boston Common. Artwork from several different decades imbues these photographs with roiling emotional depth, bringing to the fore frustration and determination. BPL’s own mission and early history make an appearance, figuring into a progressive narrative of action toward access to education and strengthening the city’s social safety net. Protests, workers’ strikes, student activism, boycotts, and other kinds of civic pushback are central to this part of the exhibition, which is (in my opinion) the meatiest and yummiest. 

As we turn another corner, the twenty-first century comes into focus, firmly grounded in each of its predecessors. Indigenous activism, LGBTQ+ activism, climate activism, issues of domestic abuse, the movement against police brutality, disillusionment with national symbols – each of these are represented in this final section of the exhibition. Perhaps befitting a municipal building, the conclusion of the exhibition sports no thesis statement, no claim as to the goodness or badness of revolutionary spirit in America, either in history or in the present day. But don’t be fooled – the argument of Revolution! is nonetheless clear. One of the American people’s most robust civic tools has always been our willingness to fight for better, even when that fight is costly; and, here in Boston, revolutionary spirit remains alive and well.  

Of all the 250th anniversary exhibitions I’ve seen thus far, this is my favorite by a mile. Admittedly, I’m no buff of this period of history, so I love the way that Revolution! takes the Revolutionary War as its starting point and runs, runs, runs. The breadth of this show is unmatched, and it works very hard not only to bring the ideals of our country’s historical revolution into the present day, but also to trace them throughout its entire history. It’s exceptionally well-balanced, and minority or against-the-grain narratives of revolution and resistance are expertly woven in. None of these aspects feel tacked-on, or included as an afterthought – they’re ingratiated, load-bearing elements of the whole.

There are several strong through-lines that anchor the show, and these are crucial structural components. Many of the section headings end with a few reflective questions for the visitor, ranging from broad and open-ended to tailored and object-specific. These provide thematic stability to an exhibit which is primarily chronologically organized, keeping us from settling mentally into the well-worn, dominant historical narratives that might obscure what the exhibition is encouraging us to think about. 

Direct pictographic comparisons likewise make cross-period connections easily accessible. The towering portrait of George Washington at the start is mirrored by an artistic interpretation of it at the end, and four different versions of Paul Revere’s Boston Massacre engraving are presented at different points in the exhibition (the original, a reimagining from 1856, a version made by an artist during the Vietnam War, and a close modern copy emphasizing Crispus Attucks’ race).  

Far and away the best part of the show is its grounding in the city of Boston and the surrounding areas. As the quote-unquote “cradle of the American Revolution,” you might think this is a tacit part of the exhibition’s brief – and yes, it is. But I would argue it’s also much, much more.

This is not a bare minimum geographical linkage, but rather a community-oriented emotional tie, and it’s achieved in large part through the inclusion of dozens and dozens of archival press photographs from the BPL’s Boston Herald-Traveler Photo Morgue collection. (I want to see the whole entire collection, and I want to see it NOW.) The revolutionary connection to Boston doesn’t end or go fuzzy as we leave the eighteenth century in this exhibition, but instead becomes stronger, threefold – we only get more local, more invested, more enmeshed in the area as we move forward through history. National protest movements appear primarily as they touched the people of Boston, and as the communities responded. Protests and issues that were less prominent nationally, but were crucial to local and regional history, are given significant, conscientious airtime. 

The result is a wonderfully local, exceedingly satisfying exhibition experience. If you’re beginning to tire of the myriad revolutionary exhibitions around every corner, Revolution! is a breath of fresh air. And if you’re just getting jazzed by the revolutionary fervor, let Revolution! set the bar, and set it nice and high. 

Boston Public Library’s Revolution! 250 Years of Art of Activism in Boston will run through April 21, 2026. Read the press release here.

by Madeline Gartland, Tufts MA in History and Museum Studies ’26