Boston Atheneum: Imagined Nation

Joining Boston and BOLLI's celebration of the nation's 250th, we have planned a visit to the Boston Atheneum for an Art and Architecture tour of their America 250th celebration.  Our docents will guide us through a 90-minute tour of the exhibit.  Visitors are invited to browse the first floor permanent exhibitions prior to the tour.  Below you can read more about this special exhibit.  

The tour is Tuesday, April 28 at 11:30 am, with a payment deadline of April 16.  The group will have lunch together at 1:30 at Carrie Nation, a 2 minute walk from the Atheneum.  The cost is $15. Please contact Margot Walthall margot.walthall@gmail.com. Payment may be made by Venmo or check.

Marking the 250th anniversary of the United States, Imagined Nation invites visitors to explore how artists, writers, and printers have imagined the country’s future from its founding to the present. Through a rotating series of installations unfolding across 2026, Imagined Nation invites visitors to consider the questions that continue to shape the nation today: How is history made and remembered? How are communities created and sustained? And how have ideas of freedom and democracy been debated, challenged, and reshaped over time?

In the Leventhal Room, visitors will encounter rare and perhaps unexpected materials drawn from George Washington’s own library—including his personal copy of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. Alongside Washington’s books on agriculture and military strategy are pamphlets that reveal the era’s contested ideas about slavery, Indigenous diplomacy, and early American politics, offering a complex portrait of the nation at its beginnings.

Additional highlights from the Athenaeum’s Special Collections trace the Revolution’s lasting legacy, from early printings of the Declaration of Independence and maps of the young republic to striking World War II–era posters that show how revolutionary ideals were reimagined generations later.