Objects and Their Stories

Every object in our collection has multiple stories. The challenge is choosing which to tell.

Take the tea chests from the Tea Party—we have fragments, pieces the colonists missed. One story: brave patriots striking against tyranny. Another story: organized destruction of private property. Another: cheap East India Company tea threatening colonial smugglers' profits. All true.

Or Paul Revere's silver work. Beautiful craftsmanship. Also, evidence that the patriot elite could afford luxury goods while most Bostonians struggled. The Revolution was not made by poor people—it was led by merchants and lawyers and craftsmen with something to lose.

The hardest objects are the ones connected to enslaved people. We have bills of sale, accounts of human beings as property, documented alongside the liberty rhetoric. I don't hide these. They belong in the same galleries, the same conversation.

Museums used to tell simple stories: good versus evil, progress toward freedom. We can do better now. We can hold contradiction. Objects don't change, but our questions do.