The American Experiment: Pursuing Our Promise

A news site goes dark, disappearing its entire archive overnight. A doctored video goes viral, with no chance of a correction or retraction ever catching up to the deepfake. Now that we’re all living deeply digital lives, it’s hard not to feel nostalgic for a more analog time, when you could really get your hands around something – physical objects imbued with profound meaning. A new LBJ Library exhibit, presented in partnership with the National Archives and Records Administration and UT’s Briscoe Center for American History, shines a light on the original documents that have shaped the last 250 years of our country, including the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the Fourteenth Amendment, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Wright Brothers’ Flying Machine Patent. The exhibit will be presented in four programs between now and early January: Pursuing Our Promise, Part 1, May 30-July 9, and Part 2, July 11-Aug. 2; and Evidence of Our Past, Part 1 (Texas documents), Aug. 15-Oct. 18, and Part 2 (U.S. documents), Oct. 21-Jan. 10. – Kimberley Jones