Two portraits of George Washington hang side by side on a wall at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, and the gap between them tells a story about America that no textbook quite captures. On the left, in a Civil War era print, Washington rises through a bank of clouds, framed in light and looking almost saintlike. On the right, in a contemporary work by artist Valerie Hegarty, his portrait has been melted and mounted on a large stick. As New Hampshire moves toward the nation’s 250th anniversary, that contrast is the heart of a new exhibition, “Revolution Reconsidered: History, Myth, and Propaganda,” which New Hampshire Public Radio recently spotlighted as one of the more provocative cultural projects tied to the semiquincentennial.
The show runs through August at the Hanover museum, and it arrives at a moment when patriotism itself feels contested. For Granite Staters preparing to mark 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the exhibit offers something more challenging than celebration: an invitation to look closely at the images that have shaped how Americans remember their founding, and to ask who made them, when, and why.
A wall built to start an argument
Elizabeth Rice Mattison, the exhibition’s co-curator, said the two clashing Washingtons were placed together on purpose. The installation, she explained, is designed to explore fundamental questions about the country’s past and its present. “How is the American Revolution constantly being reconsidered?” she asked. “Not only by everyday people, but also being crafted by artists themselves over time, and the ways in which those intersect with ideas of American history, of the mythology of the United States, and, of course, with propaganda over the centuries.”
The Civil War era print, titled “The Spirit of the Union,” shows Washington in an almost Jesus-like pose, rising into the clouds. To modern eyes, Mattison acknowledged, the image can seem fantastical and even a little silly. But in the fractured years around the Civil War, that reverent vision did real cultural work, reaching back to the revolutionary moment to try to bind a divided nation together. Hegarty’s melted Washington, placed directly across from it, asks viewers to question that reverence rather than simply absorb it.
That juxtaposition reflects the curatorial team’s larger method. Mattison described sitting down with colleagues who brought different educational backgrounds and different perspectives on the United States, then combing the museum’s collection for objects that spoke to American history in ways that were celebratory, critical, and questioning all at once. “Oh my gosh, we have so many images of George Washington, from the heroic to the absolutely ridiculous, particularly from our current perspective,” she said.
Propaganda is not a dirty word here
One of the exhibition’s central arguments is that the imagery of the Revolution has almost always served a purpose beyond simple remembrance. In the 18th century, Mattison noted, part of that purpose was the enduring myth of a ragtag colonial militia that somehow bested the most powerful military in the world. By the 1940s, the same revolutionary iconography was being repurposed to recruit Americans for the fight against Nazi Germany.
She pointed to a World War II recruiting poster, produced by the United States Office of War Information in 1943, that carries the dates 1778 and 1943 alongside the slogan “Americans will always fight for liberty.” On one side stand soldiers in Revolutionary clothes; on the other, soldiers in World War II uniforms. “It’s such a seemingly simple work that this poster is doing, but connecting that moment, 1778, that’s the year the French joined the American Revolution, to that present day World War II moment,” Mattison said. The Revolution, she argued, “never really ceases to be an image or an idea in our imagination, but becomes this constant touchstone, this motivating factor, this rallying cry for Americans over time.”
That insight reframes how visitors might read every patriotic image they encounter, from a campaign logo to a beer label. The exhibition suggests these are not neutral pictures floating in space but active participants in shaping a shared sense of who Americans are.
Whose Revolution?
The show does not shy away from the harder edges of the founding mythology. Mattison noted that the same George Washington celebrated as a saint in 19th century prints was known to Indigenous peoples as the town destroyer, a reference to his role in the destruction of Native settlements. Placing Hegarty’s critical work beside the celebratory “Spirit of the Union,” she said, pushes visitors to look again, to look anew, and to question the version of the past that so many of these images worked hard to construct.
That willingness to complicate the story has resonated with visitors. Mattison said many have come specifically to think back on American history, and that Hegarty’s piece in particular has helped people see familiar objects not as settled facts but as constructions. “We love it when visitors come and have a conversation with a work of art,” she said, adding that an object can make it easier to discuss difficult subjects than a face to face conversation would. “It’s so much easier to talk about difficult subjects when we have an object triangulating that conversation for us.”
A timely conversation for New Hampshire
The exhibition lands as New Hampshire institutions across the state grapple with how to commemorate the semiquincentennial in a way that feels honest rather than rote. Schools, museums, and town historical societies are all wrestling with the same tension between pride and complexity that “Revolution Reconsidered” puts on a single wall. The Hood’s approach, asking visitors to question rather than simply salute, fits a broader statewide conversation about how to tell the founding story fully.
That conversation is playing out in many forms. It includes efforts to bring Indigenous and Abenaki history into New Hampshire classrooms, the patriotic craftsmanship behind projects like Flag Works Over America’s semiquincentennial banners in Concord, and the way the state’s bicentennial farms embody themes of adaptability across 250 years. The Hood exhibit adds a distinctly artistic voice to that chorus, reminding Granite Staters that the Revolution has never been a fixed picture but a canvas each generation repaints.
“Revolution Reconsidered: History, Myth, and Propaganda” is on view through August at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in Hanover. Admission to the Hood is free.
For related coverage, see our reporting on SNL Alum Rachel Dratch Tells Dartmouth’s Class of 2026 to Turn Rejection Into….
