Curator Tour: Created Equal

Join the Kim-Park Program for a curator-led exhibition tour of Created Equal: The Premises and Promises of the Declaration of Independence. The Kim-Park Program for the Study of the Book is pleased to present a guided exhibition tour of Created Equal: The Premises and Promises of the Declaration of Independence with Curator Eric Slauter, Deputy Dean of the Humanities. This program is free and open to all. About Created Equal: On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress voted to declare independence from Great Britain. Two days later, delegates in Philadelphia finalized a document designed to announce and explain that act to readers in America and Europe. The Declaration of Independence asserted the revolutionary right of a people to alter or abolish a government, grounding that principle in the “self-evident” claims that “all Men are created Equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” and “that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Over time, many readers have come to consider the radical philosophical premises in the Declaration as founding political promises of the United States. In doing so, they transformed an indictment of the British King and a manifesto of secession from the British Empire into an American charter of liberty, equality, and rights. But the Declaration’s meaning has never been solitary. From the start, readers disagreed about what its authors intended. Since 1776, radically different interpretations of the Declaration’s ideas have been put to different ends—from demands for the legal, political, and social equality of all persons, to claims for the rights of states to secede from the union, to calls for the revolutionary overthrow of the government. How did the Declaration’s premises become its promises? Drawing on rare materials from the seventeenth century to the present, this exhibition invites you to explore the document’s meanings in its own time, to consider contested interpretations across history, and to reflect on what the Declaration means today. This tour is presented by the Kim-Park Program for the Study of the Book. Visitors to the University of Chicago Library may obtain an entry pass by checking in at Regenstein Library’s entry desk and presenting a current, government-issued photo ID, such as a driver’s license, CityKey, state ID, or passport to confirm identity. Get more visitor information. Pictured: Phillis Wheatley Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753–1784), Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, London: A. Bell, 1773. S866.W5P7 1773 Rare. The Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, The University of Chicago Library.