Becoming America: How Science Shaped a Nation

Becoming America: How Science Shaped a Nation, supported by Griffin Catalyst will uncover the science that shaped and was shaped by land, peoples and power towards the emergence of the United States. Through remarkable maps, stunning paintings and extraordinary instruments and artefacts, this landmark exhibition reveals the scientific undercurrents running through a momentous period of history. Delve into four decisive decades from the 1760s to the first US presidency in the 1790s, when a range of peoples drew on diverse scientific knowledge to navigate, survive and cultivate the American landscape. Becoming America connects the colonial scientific ambition that mapped new borders, excavated prehistoric fossils and established plantations with the knowledge, skills and powerful stories of enslaved and free African-descended peoples, and Indigenous scientific practices that predated the new nation and continue to this day. Get up close to a rare surviving 1776 print of the Declaration of Independence, one of the most famous documents in the Western World, and follow the stories of King George III and George Washington, figureheads of shifting national power across this tumultuous period. The exhibition features objects from the personal collections of the monarch and his former subject turned president, capturing their enthusiasm for science and their use of technology and knowledge to project power. This exhibition brings together the rich and complex scientific history that shaped the founding of a new nation, and whose consequences are still felt 250 years later. Some historical material on display uses outdated language and imagery which is considered racist today. What will I see in Becoming America? Becoming America: How Science Shaped a Nation, supported by Griffin Catalyst, features fascinating objects such as: - A rare surviving copy of the US Declaration of Independence from 1776 - An ornate microscope designed specially for King George III - A dugout canoe created using traditional Indigenous American craft methods, commissioned specially for the exhibition - The first known chart of the Atlantic Ocean's Gulf Stream — published by US founder and polymath Benjamin Franklin - A surveying compass used to mark out the Mason-Dixon line, which became a crucial border in the USA's early history - Exhumation of the Mastodon, a sprawling painting by Charles Willson Peale that depicts the excavation of the world's first fully articulated prehistoric skeleton