Opening New Worlds exhibition brings Colonial North America to life

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 19, 2016

CAMBRIDGE, MA—The Opening New Worlds exhibition shines a spotlight on a treasure trove of the largely untapped primary source documents uncovered as part of the multiyear Colonial North American Project at Harvard University. On display through March 2016 in the Lammot du Pont Copeland Gallery in Pusey Library on the Harvard campus (map), the Opening New Worlds: The Colonial North American Project exhibition is free and open to the public between the hours of 9 AM and 5 PM, Monday through Friday.

Hand-drawn maps, scientific calculations, and brightly colored drawings of New England can be found alongside diary entries, letters to family, and last will and testaments, all displaying a wealth of research, teaching, and learning opportunities. The items selected for exhibition bring the public and private lives of colonial men and women to the forefront. They reveal details about the changing Atlantic world, addressing topics such as education, trade, social life, finance, politics, revolution, war, women, Native American life, slavery, science, medicine, and religion. In addition to reflecting the origins of the United States, the materials also provide perspectives on life and work in Great Britain, France, Canada, the Caribbean, and Mexico.

The Colonial North American Project at Harvard University is a multiyear effort to digitize and share images of all known archival and manuscript materials at Harvard Library that relate to 17th- and 18th- century North America. Among the select items on physical display in Opening New Worlds are the papers of John Hancock, including letters from his teenage years; as well as the papers of John and Hannah Winthrop, a Harvard mathematics professor and his wife, both meticulous record-keepers who documented the origins of the American Revolution. The exhibition sections—The Hancocks and Harvard; Politics in the Early Republic; Sermons, Religion, and Native Americans; and The Winthrops: Science, Mathematics, Working Women, and Family—reflect the diverse scope of the project. Documents and objects on display are from the historical collections of the Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Baker Library, Houghton Library, Loeb Music Library, Harvard Law School Library, and the Harvard University Archives.

The website library.harvard.edu/colonial contains links to exhibition information as well as to the Colonial North American Project online presence, which includes a digital archive with more than 150,000 images of diaries, journals, notebooks and other rare documents that is continuously being updated and is available to view free of charge.

Image courtesy of Harvard University Archives.

CONTACT: Harvard Library Communications Office

harvard_library@harvard.edu or 617.496.1519

# # #