Other figures in American history might have outshone him in one area or another, but none came close to matching the extraordinary breadth of accomplishments of Benjamin Franklin.
If he is best remembered today as a diplomat, scientist and Founding Father, such pursuits only scratch the surface of his interests. Add printer, writer, inventor, politician, postmaster and civic leader.
Franklin stands as America’s ultimate Renaissance man. In a 1738 letter to his mother, he wrote, “I would rather have it said, ‘He lived usefully,’ than, ‘He died rich.”‘ And useful this pillar of early American history proved to be.
His limitless versatility and accompanying curiosity about everything around him are among the chief qualities celebrated in a traveling exhibition marking the 300th anniversary of his birthday on Jan. 17, 1706.
Because Franklin was a few decades older than the rest of the principal founders, such as George Washington, who was born in 1732, his is the first tercentenary to be celebrated.
“Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World,” which opens Friday at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, is the most ambitious such exhibition ever assembled.
It brings together more than 250 artifacts, including rare copies of the five founding documents, such as the Declaration of Independence and Treaty of Paris. Franklin is the only person to sign all of them.
The show is the largest and most important undertaking of the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary, with about half of the nonprofit organization’s budget of more than $12 million devoted to the offering.
It is expected to draw 120,000 people in Denver, the only Western stop for the touring exhibition, which opened in December 2005 in Philadelphia and next travels to Atlanta before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Paris.
“It’s been deliberately designed to be non-Philocentric, non-Easterncentric but in fact an exhibition about a man whose story is as compelling to the Cub Scout in Denver and the citoyen in Paris as to the person who lives in Philadelphia,” said Page Talbott, associate director and chief curator of the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary.
Besides Franklin’s general appeal, Talbott said, the enormous range of his activities and fascinations should offer something of interest to virtually anyone, regardless of age or background.
“If you’re a Mason, if you’re a firefighter, if you’re an amateur astronomer, if you’re a history buff, if you like guns, if you like clocks, there are just so many different points of access,” she said.
If Franklin was very much a man of his time, he also seems very connected to ours. That’s why nearly 217 years after his death, he seems as relevant as ever. Consider some of the defining aspects of contemporary American culture and how attuned he was to them.
Media? He built a printing empire and knew how to use the most up-to-date information outlets of his day to influence public opinion.
Multiculturalism? He lived in Great Britain and France for extended periods and was well-versed in French, Italian, Spanish and Latin.
Technology? He was one of the leading scientists of his time, working in areas such as health, oceanography and electricity.
Entrepreneurship? He started with nothing and was rich enough to retire by age 42.
Equally important is the kind of man he was. Unlike the other Founding Fathers who were more aristocratic, aloof or intimidating, Franklin was at heart a tradesman – pragmatic, down-to-earth and always ready with a witticism.
“Ben Franklin, that ambitious urban entrepreneur, seems made of flesh rather than marble; addressable by nickname, he turns to us from history’s stage with eyes that twinkle from behind those new-fangled spectacles,” writes Franklin biographer Walter Isaacson in the show’s companion book.
“He speaks to us, through his letters and hoaxes and autobiography, not with orotund rhetoric but with a chattiness and clever irony that is very contemporary, sometimes unnervingly so. We see his reflection in our time, which can be a bit disconcerting.”
Trying to come to terms with such a multifaceted person was a huge challenge, and organizers tried to construct a balanced overview of his life, structuring the exhibition both thematically and chronologically and intermixing artifacts with more than 40 interactive activities, including a 25-foot re-creation of a ship.
To make the show as user-friendly as possible, a visitor’s guide is available in Spanish, and another one was created for children, employing a cartoon squirrel named Skuggs.
“Part of our original conception is that this exhibition be accessible across ages, accessible across intellectual boundaries, accessible across language and certainly accessible in the federal meaning of the word – people in wheelchairs and so forth,” Talbott said.
And for a show about America’s ultimate egalitarian, such accessibility only makes sense.
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
“Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World”
HISTORY, SCIENCE AND ART EXHIBIT | Denver Museum of Nature & Science, 2001 Colorado Blvd.; Friday through May 20, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day |Free with regular museum admission: $10, $6 children 3-18 and seniors 65 and older, free for members | 303-322-7009 or dmns.org.
Inventions and writings that helped change the world
From the first electrical battery and the first printed version of the Declaration of Independence, “Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World” offers a glimpse into the mind of America’s Renaissance man.
“Poor Richard’s Almanack,” 1733: This is the only known copy of the first issue of Franklin’s famous almanac, which mixed information tidbits with proverbs, humor and poetry.
In preparation for this exhibition, the fragile pamphlet was washed in baths of calcium deionized water, humidified and flattened, and it was rebound using unbleached linen thread and the original cover.
Glass armonica, 1761-1762: Drawing on the well-known sounds that glasses make when their rims are rubbed, Franklin invented an instrument in which tuned glasses are arranged concentrically on a horizontal rod and activated using a crank connected to a pedal.
More than 5,000 armonicas were in existence by the end of the 18th century, and Mozart created a quintet for the instrument in 1791. Franklin owned this example, which is housed at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute.
Declaration of Independence, Dunlap Broadside, 1776: The first printed versions of this key document were created in the evening of July 4, 1776, by John Dunlap in Philadelphia. Just 24 copies of what are known as the “Dunlap Broadside” are known to exist, with this one coming from the Library of Congress.
“Electrical battery” of Leyden jars, ca. 1760-69: Franklin coined the term “electrical battery,” applying it to a group of Leyden jars – a kind of electrical capacitors – placed in a partitioned wooden box and hooked together to create a larger, combined charge.
He wrote about his experiments using the battery in one of five letters sent to Peter Collinson, a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and published in 1751 in a pamphlet titled in part “Experiments and Observations on Electricity.”
English common press, ca. 1720: In 1724, Franklin traveled to London to buy equipment and supplies to start his own printing shop. But after discovering that a promised line of credit was not forthcoming, he had to find work with local printers.
He worked at this press in 1725-26 in the shop of John Watts before returning to America. It was exhibited at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876 and sold to the Smithsonian Institution in 1901.
Peter Cooper, “The South East Prospect of The City of Philadelphia,” (below) ca. 1718: This long, horizontal work is the oldest surviving painting of a North American urban center. It offers a sense of what Franklin probably saw when he ventured to Philadelphia in the fall of 1723 at age 17.
The exhibition contains 31 paintings, five watercolors and two sculptures, including an array of portraits of Franklin and people associated with him.
-Kyle MacMillan
