The exhibit, starting later this year, represents the first time the two iconic objects have been displayed side-by-side.
When envisioning its major exhibition marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026, the Museum of the American Revolution sought out objects that represent the document’s enduring power, complexity, and unfilled promise.
Two of those items, the museum said on Monday, will be the plain, old-fashioned chair that Thomas Jefferson used while drafting the Declaration in Philadelphia in 1776, and the hard metal prison bench from which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. composed his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” in 1963.
“Two very different pieces of seating furniture … that grapple with important moments in American history,” said senior curator of the Revolution Museum, Matthew Skic. “A direct way of prompting that the American Revolution, as we see it today, the experiment in liberty, equality, and self-government sparked in the 18th century, is unfinished and yet enduring.”
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