Boston Public Library 250

Still Here: A Journey of Public Art in Boston, an art exhibition featuring works created by the 2024-2025 Teen Photography Collective program at the Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston. In collaboration with the Boston Research Center, a digital community history partnership between Boston Public Library and Northeastern University Library, members of Photography Collective explored public art throughout Boston’s neighborhoods.

From November 2024 to October 2025, the ICA Teen Photography Collective members took photos of public art in an effort to preserve these pieces and their stories. By exploring Boston’s ever-changing landscape through a camera lens, members of Photography Collective developed their photographic skills. Members learned about the history of different artworks in Boston and connected with local artists to understand the important role photography can play in preserving history. Still Here: A Journey of Public Art is a reflection on our city of Boston, recognizing the artworks and artists who inspired members of Photography Collective.  

This collaborative documentation effort with ICA Boston is part of the digital project, Neighborhood Public Art, stewarded by the Boston Research Center. This project was made possible by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Maps trace out the complicated history of places, and we can use them to document geography in much the same way that we can use diaries and letters to document biography. 

In the eight cases of this exhibition, we follow the changing spatial forms of the place we now call Boston—from before the landscape carried that name all the way through the struggles, clashes, and dreams that continue to reshape the city today. 

These maps don’t merely depict facts about how the city looked at different moments in its history. Instead, they invite us to contemplate how geographic forces, both natural and human, have constructed the physical and social world around us, through large and small transformations that have transpired over many centuries.

On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress ratified the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. The next day, the first printed copies were sent off and began to circulate throughout the thirteen colonies, which were now, on paper, independent states.

Throughout July and August of 1776, the Declaration was reprinted in major American cities and small towns alike. Some of these new printings appeared in newspapers. Others were issued as large, single-sheet publications known as broadsides. Many versions, in both formats, were printed before the delegates to the Continental Congress began to sign the official handwritten Declaration in early August.

These early printings of the Declaration were created at a time when the independence of the future United States was anything but certain. From the perspective of those who read it in the summer of 1776, we can see the Declaration of Independence in its original form: not yet a famous founding document, but breaking news.

In the exhibition Declarations: Printing a New Nation, see eight different original printings of the Declaration of Independence, and take a journey that explores how the news of independence spread out

from Philadelphia in the summer of 1776 when the ink was not yet dry on the founding documents of a new nation.

In an effort to highlight Boston’s diverse historical resources, the Boston Commemoration Commission has compiled a list of repositories, historical collections, projects, museums, and other places where people can learn about Boston's history. With support from the Boston Public Library, this list will be made publicly accessible as The Boston Historical Collections and Resources Database, a simple, searchable database on the Library’s website. We envision this as a launching point for Boston residents and visitors alike who seek to deepen their understanding of our shared history. This is envisioned as a living resource, and once it is publicly accessible, users will be able to fill out a similar web form to help us fill in any gaps. If you have any questions or concerns, please email communityhistory@bpl.org. 

In the Leventhal Map and Education Center’s exhibition Terrains of Independence, maps will offer the entry point to a reconsideration of the Revolutionary War through the lens of locality and place.

In 1775, a collision of word-historical forces, driven by ocean-spanning empires, conflicts over trade and settlement, and new ideas about society and government, came together in the spark of the American Revolution. Yet although both the causes and the consequences of the Revolution were grand in scale, the war ignited in the tinderbox of a very specific local geography: Boston and the surrounding towns of Massachusetts. 

From April 3, 2025, through March 2026, we invite you visit our gallery to explore the American Revolution using maps and geography to ask the question "Why did it happen here?"

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The Boston Public Library (BPL) is presenting its first major exhibition in nearly a decade. "Revolution! 250 Years of Art and Activism" in Boston will open October 23, 2025. Featuring more than 100 artworks and documentary materials from the BPL’s renowned Special Collections, the exhibition explores America’s evolving struggles for freedom, civil rights, and belonging. The exhibition is part of Road to Revolution, the BPL’s three-year cycle of programs leading to the anniversary of the American Revolution in 2026.

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