A statewide traveling exhibition on the history of press freedom in America opens this week at Jefferson Patterson Park & Museum in St. Leonard, bringing a project tied to Maryland’s role in the country’s 250th anniversary to Calvert County through late September.
“Revolutionary Maryland: Freedom of the Press Then and Now,” organized by Maryland Humanities, runs July 1 through Sept. 27 at the park, located at 10515 Mackall Road, with hours Wednesday through Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. The exhibition is also showing concurrently at the Frederick Book Arts Center through Aug. 23 and the Garrett County Historical Society Transportation Museum in Oakland through Sept. 26, part of a rotating statewide tour that began in January at the Arundel Center in Annapolis.
The multi-panel exhibit traces the evolution of press freedom from its earliest roots in colonial Maryland through its role in American life today, drawing partly on archaeological work tied to the 18th-century printshop of Jonas and Anne Catharine Green, who published the Maryland Gazette and used their press to protest the British Stamp Act of 1765. The exhibition also highlights more recent developments in journalism, including inclusive outlets like Afro Charities and locally focused news organizations supported by the Tiny News Collective, and situates the topic within growing national concern over hate speech, disinformation and attacks on journalists. Organizers chose to open the exhibition in Annapolis, the site of the 2018 Capital Gazette shooting that killed five newsroom employees, a decision Maryland Humanities has said underscored the project’s stakes.
Calvert County’s connection to the exhibition extends beyond hosting a stop on the tour. Jefferson Patterson Park & Museum is home to the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, known as the MAC Lab, which serves as the state’s central repository and research facility for archaeological collections recovered from sites across Maryland. The MAC Lab is currently overseeing the rehousing and conservation of 170 boxes of artifacts from Archaeology in Annapolis’ mid-1980s excavations at the Green family’s Charles Street home and print shop, where researchers recovered more than 11,000 artifacts, including what is described as the largest archaeological collection of lead printer’s type ever found in the United States. Among the items recovered was a printer’s block bearing a “death’s head” design that Jonas Green used in place of the British crown’s mandated stamp as a form of protest, a piece now held in the collection of Historic Annapolis. Once conservation work is complete, the Green printshop artifacts will be permanently stored at the MAC Lab alongside the more than 200,000 other items already associated with the site, part of a collection that spans roughly 10 million artifacts from archaeological projects statewide.
Jefferson Patterson Park itself spans 560 acres along the Patuxent River and includes more than 70 identified archaeological sites documenting roughly 9,000 years of human occupation, making it Maryland’s State Museum of Archaeology as well as a public park with hiking trails, a reconstructed Woodland Indian village and a historic house museum. Admission to the park and its exhibits is free.
At the Frederick Book Arts Center, companion programming has included a July 11 lecture from historian Seth Gottlieb on the role of Revolutionary-era printing presses and an Aug. 8 conversation with investigative journalist Frank Smyth on press freedom in contemporary times; the center is separately hosting its own summer exhibition, “America Punctuated: Contemporary Responses to 250 Years of America,” through Aug. 23. In Garrett County, the traveling exhibit is paired with a companion display on the history of local newspapers in July, followed by exhibits in August and September addressing social media, online news and fiction and nonfiction publishing.
The project is scheduled to culminate Nov. 18 with a “Community Conversation” at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts in Annapolis, a free public event featuring a keynote address followed by a moderated discussion on how citizens can engage constructively in today’s media landscape.
More information about the exhibition and its tour schedule is available through Maryland Humanities. Questions can be directed to Robert Forloney, the organization’s program officer for partnerships, at rforloney@mdhumanities.org or 410-463-2293.
