For R. Scott Stephenson, it was watching a feature on a children’s TV show. For Matthew Skic, it was a discarded juvenile biography of the boy who chopped down the cherry tree.
Those moments led them to Philadelphia’s Museum of the American Revolution (MOAR), which is now deep in preparations for its showcase moment, the upcoming 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Both men joined the MOAR staff before it officially opened on April 19, 2017. Stephenson is now the CEO and President of the museum, and Skic is its senior curator. While the approximately 100 full- and part-time staff at the museum, along with volunteers, will play a pivotal role in the institution’s celebration of the 250th anniversary — called the Semiquincentennial — Stephenson and Skic are leading the effort.
They were not born with an encyclopedic knowledge of the American Revolution, but were drawn to the period by early childhood experiences.
“I got steeped and interested in that period through a public consciousness of American history around the Bicentennial,” said Stephenson, a native of Pittsburgh. “I had this very distinct memory of watching my favorite morning show, Captain Kangaroo, and remember there was something about the Bicentennial. (It was) like the first time I thought about what 200 years meant, what does it mean for America to be 200 years old.”
Skic was in first grade when his interest in the past “took off.”
“I found the discarded book about George Washington that fueled it, and I wanted to learn more and more. I went to local historical sites like Washington’s Crossing State Park, and Princeton Battlefield State Park, and visited places like the old barracks in Trenton. It blossomed from there,” said Skic, who grew up in Hopewell Township, in Mercer County, N.J.
Stephenson began at MOAR as Director of Collections and Interpretation, then Vice President of Collections, Exhibitions and Programming. He was part of the senior leadership team that raised $173 million to build and open the museum. The original campaign goal was $150 million.
Skic joined MOAR in 2016, after he graduated from the University of Delaware. He has curated and co-curated multiple exhibitions, including “Hamilton Was Here: Rising Up in Revolutionary Philadelphia”; “Cost of Revolution: The Life and Death of an Irish Soldier” and “Liberty: Don Troiani’s Paintings of the Revolutionary War”.
A big tent, a rare find
There are two items in the museum’s collection that are special to Skic; the first is one of the museum’s “star” attractions, George Washington’s army tent.
“It’s hard not to be enamored with George Washington’s headquarters tent, it’s such an iconic item in our collection, and it’s a great way to help to tell the story of George Washington’s leadership during the Revolutionary War,” he said.
Skic said visitors will learn about “the many different people who were involved running the headquarters of the army, from Alexander Hamilton [as] aide-de-camp to General Washington, to the freed and enslaved people of African descent [who helped] run [the headquarters] on a daily basis, from helping Washington to get dressed in the morning to cooking food that he ate.”
“The tent is a great vehicle for story-telling about the diverse people who contributed to the American Revolution, and the tent is a big thing that drew me to the project to create the museum, particularly the effort to make the replicas of the tent that we use in a traveling education outreach program for the museum,” Skic said. “I learned about the project to create those replicas, which were done in partnership with Colonial Williamsburg. I learned about that in 2013, and followed along that project, and the tent helped draw me into this effort.”
There is an hourly showing of the film “Washington’s War Tent,” which lasts 12 minutes.
The second item special for Skic was a “discovery” he made in 2023, helping to identify an eyewitness sketch of the Continental Army marching through Philadelphia in 1777. “This was an acquisition we were able to make for the museum [through] a generous donation from the collector that owned it, but she didn’t recognize the significance of the sketch or what it was depicting,” said Skic. “I was able to identify it and help share that discovery, which is an extremely rare thing to have. This is the closest thing we can get to a photo of George Washington’s army.”
The pen-and-ink sketch on laid paper shows soldiers and camp followers of the Continental Army’s North Carolina Brigade marching through Philadelphia on August 25, 1777. The sketch is attributed to the Swiss artist Pierre Eugène du Simitière, who was in Philadelphia on that date.
Timetable for 2026 exhibits
On April 19, the museum will mark the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the Revolutionary War with the exhibit “Banners of Liberty: An Exhibition of Original Revolutionary War Flags”. The exhibition will feature the largest gathering of rare and significant Revolutionary War flags in more than two centuries. The museum will display 15 such flags, says Stephenson, adding that there are only 30 known to exist. You would have to have been alive in 1783 to have seen this many of the flags at one time, said Stephenson. The banners will be on display until August 10.
The celebration will culminate with “The Declaration’s Journey” that will open on October 18, 2025, and run through January 3, 2027.
“This exhibition will gather together for the first time in one place some of the most important and rare documents, works of art, and artifacts from around the world that reflect the complex 250-year history and legacy of the Declaration of Independence,” according to the museum website, and will be accompanied by educational resources for teachers and students. It will also feature a series produced in partnership with WHYY that will be shared nationally.
(MOAR is currently negotiating with the U.K.’s National Archives to borrow a printed copy of the Declaration of Independence that was sent by the Continental Congress to King George III.)
Stories that connect
One of the biggest challenges MOAR will face – as will many other cultural outlets in the region – is how to connect visitors’ lives to the Semiquincentennial.
Human stories are key, said Stephenson.
“I think another problem we have to confront is that many people assume it is a story that isn’t relevant for them, and that includes people who think nothing happened before they were born, but it also includes some communities that have traditionally been left out of the story,” he said. “I think that we have to be very proactive in this outreach, we have to work very hard to get somebody through the door. If I can get somebody here, by the time they’ve been through the screening on the tent film, I got ’em.”
In the nearly five decades since the celebration of the Bicentennial, attitudes and beliefs about the nation’s founding have changed, and not everyone views July 4, 1776 as a day of independence.
“Sometimes the revolution is critiqued for being conservative for all the things that it didn’t do,” said Stephenson. “There was a revolutionary promise from the very beginning, places like New Jersey where suffrage was broader than we’re led to believe, where free people of color could vote; women could vote, and it’s a good reminder … we tend to think of the story of rights, story of a linear expansion over time. It’s been two steps forward, three steps backward sometimes.”
MOAR is one of five organizations in the region that are part of the “Revolutionary City Collaborative.” The others are the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Library Company of Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania (including the Kislak Center for Special Collections and the McNeil Center for Early American Studies) and the American Philosophical Society (APS).
Philadelphia hosted the nation’s Centennial Celebration in 1876, which was a huge success. The 150th celebration in 1926 was not as successful, and the bicentennial was not as big a success as was hoped. Stephenson is confident that this one, and MOAR’s role in it, will be a success.
“I am not worried at all at our ability to meet the challenge,” he said.
