1776 in Conversation at the JCB and the Hay

June 09, 2026
The image contains a drawing of a child holding a US flag and a small sword above a drawing of a rooster pulling at the British flag.

At first glance, it might seem that the exhibitions currently on view at the John Carter Brown Library and the Hay Library have either everything in common or nothing in common at all. On the one hand, both have been carefully engineered to occupy relatively small spaces -despite the breadth of the topics that they cover- in rare books libraries on Brown University’s campus. Under the careful direction of curators Gwendolyn Collaço, Anne S.K. Brown Curator for Military & Society at the Hay, and JCB Director Karin Wulf and Postdoctoral Fellow Kathleen Telling, the two exhibitions maximize the number of items on display, offering up a fascinating combination of books, documents, and objects that bring us face to face with the late 18th- to early 19th century. They both highlight the year of and the years preceding and following the American Revolution, illustrating the many ways that Brown University, the JCB, the Hay, and institutions across the country are marking the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding.

Both exhibitions decisively place the American experience within a global comparative framework during the Age of Revolutions. Collaço’s selections for “Fashioning Insurrection: From Imperial Resistance to American Orientalism” include elements from revolutions that took place in Greece, India, and Algeria alongside their American receptions. They are mounted on the walls of the gallery, fill glass cases, and dot the wall in the middle of the room. The exhibition evokes the colors, styles, and shapes of three empires: the Greek War of Independence against the Ottomans (1821–29), the Ottoman Algerian resistance to the French (1830–48), and the Indian uprising against the British (1857-58). In fact, the Z-shaped wall has been modified to include a Mediterranean arched window and pointed Mughal window (jali) complete with lattice cut-outs.

For their part, the results of Wulf and Telling’s work paring down the many, many items that could have been included from the JCB’s collections reflect the focus of “1776 Across the Americas.” Although oversized facsimiles of the US Declaration of Independence are featured in both the center case of the Bromsen Room and suspended above the visitors, the exhibition draws from US states as far west as California, emerging nations the length of the hemisphere, and communities of humans and non-humans living in the southernmost reaches of South America and the islands of the Caribbean. From this perspective, then, there would seem to be very little overlap in the content of the two exhibitions.

The exercise of holding these possibilities of difference and similarity together is precisely what reveals the richness of both exhibitions as well as the overarching themes that the three curators have evoked. The latter echo across the many items highlighted at the Hay and the JCB, encouraging us to think about them in terms of our current reality. A few that easily come to mind are empire, nationhood, international trade (including slavery in both cases), and popular cultures. Both exhibitions also highlight scientific discoveries, political satire, and throughlines that consistently refer back to the connections that stretch across oceans and borders.

Both exhibitions have a few show-stoppers to offer visitors. There is no question that viewing a copy of the US Declaration of Independence that was purchased in 1776 by Daniel Gould, a soldier in Boston who included the phrase “Agreed to by Daniel Gould” in his own hand on the back of the document, or the stunning Tiffany and Company sword and scabbard featured in the Hay exhibition is worth the (free) price of admission any day.

And both also offer items that speak to the human condition in more understated ways. As we move through the “Fashioning Insurrection” exhibition, we are reminded of the ravages of war by a photograph from 1858 titled “Interior of the Secundra Bagh after the Slaughter of 2,000 Rebels by the 93rd Highlanders and 4th Punjab Regiment.” Four dejected people and one blurry horse sit among the bones of the fallen. The horrors of combat and death cannot help but remind us of our own contemporary landscapes of destruction and desolation.

At the JCB, a slip of paper near the entrance to the Bromsen Room informs the reader that “the bearers are permitted to depart the hospital, they being sufficiently freed from the infection of the small pox.” The bearers were Nicholas Brown and his children. Anyone who lived through the COVID-19 pandemic will undoubtedly be reminded of our own dog-eared vaccination cards and their scrawled signatures and dates.

In the end, then, it is our experiences and their connections with those of the people who came before us that link these exhibitions, tracing an invisible line across Brown’s main green. We invite you to visit them in person or online and encounter the unexpected divergences and intersections that they trace for us across the historical documents, personal diaries, scientific drawings, and other elements. “1776 Across the Americas” and “Fashioning Insurrection,” separately and especially in conversation, highlight the challenges and triumphs that define the human condition, now and through the many pages of our shared and individual pasts.

Interested in viewing the exhibitions? Learn more at https://jcblibrary.org/visit/ and https://library.brown.edu/create/libnews/fashioning-insurrection-exhibit/!

The connections between the two exhibitions were also the focus of a conversation between Karin Wulf and Gwendolyn Collaço. View the recording here!