The Crossing: Picturing the American Revolution

To commemorate 2026, the 250 th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Michener Art Museum will introduce new perspectives on a related event that also occurred in 1776: the crossing of the Delaware River by George Washington and his troops on Christmas night to surprise Hessian soldiers stationed at Trenton, New Jersey, marking a major turning point in the American Revolution. The German American artist Emanuel Leutze (1816-1868) exhibited his vision of this scene in New York in 1851, and it was eventually published as a popular engraving and donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Leutze’s heroic celebration of Washington’s leadership and military might, painted nearly a century after the depicted event occurred, became an iconic example of American history painting. Modern and contemporary artists have provided new perspectives on this larger-than-life-size work, reexamining the conditions and accounts of the 1776 crossing and considering the peoples, perspectives, and histories that are not represented within Leutze’s composition. The Crossing: Picturing the American Revolution will feature works by local, national, and international artists Edward Hicks, William Francis Taylor, Charles W. Hargens, Robert Beck, vanessa german, Ai Weiwei, and others that offer new conceptions of this historic event and expand our understanding of history painting. By presenting these wide-ranging depictions of such an iconic moment in the nation’s history, the project will show that the task of memorializing and responding to the past through the arts has always elicited dialogue and called for further engagement. The Crossing is an invitation to the ongoing work of understanding America’s past and imagining its future possibilities.

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