The American Philosophical Society is the oldest learned society in the United States. Founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743, it continues its mission of “promoting useful knowledge” through research, fellowships, and public outreach.
The APS Museum has a rotating exhibition space that changes every year. This year’s exhibition, These Truths: The Declarations of Independence, explores how Americans used and reproduced the document during the first fifty years of its history. At first, it served as a pronouncement of news, later a political tool, and then transformed into a national symbol. These Truths draws on the APS’s extensive Library and Museum holdings. Highlights of the exhibition include a first printing of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the chair Thomas Jefferson used while writing the Declaration of Independence, John Binns’ 1819 printing of the Declaration, and William James Stone’s 1823 printing of the Declaration.
Visit https://www.amphilsoc.org/visit-museum for more information.