Webb Deane Stevens Museum to open dual exhibitions honoring women of the Revolution

For the first time in its history, the Webb Deane Stevens Museum will dedicate its entire exhibition space to the lives and legacies of women, with two new shows scheduled to open May 1.

The dual exhibitions, “Remember the Ladies: Women of the Revolution” and “American Girlhood: Needlework, Memory, and the Making of a Nation,” arrive as the museum prepares for the 250th anniversary of the United States.

“Remember the Ladies,” curated by TR Revella-Hamilton, features a collection of 18th-century portraiture from private and museum collections across the country. The exhibit includes a 1762 Joseph Blackburn portrait of Elizabeth Saltonstall Deane, a Wethersfield resident who organized local supplies for the Continental Army, and a 1794 Gilbert Stuart portrait of New York political matriarch Margaret Beekman Livingston.

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The gallery also highlights the diversity of the Revolutionary era with portraits of Grace Seixas Nathan, a prominent member of Philadelphia’s Sephardic Jewish community, and Queen Charlotte, representing the Loyalist perspective of the empire.

“American Girlhood,” guest-curated by textile scholar Emily Whitted, explores the role of needlework as both an educational tool and a medium of historical record. The exhibit features samplers and genealogical records stitched by young girls between the late 18th and mid-19th centuries.

Margaret Beekman Livingston image via Webb Deane Stevens Museum

The exhibition specifically addresses the racial diversity of early American textile work, showcasing rare samplers confirmed to be the work of Black and Indigenous girls. Curators noted that while needlework was practiced across lines of race and class, makers of color are often historically misidentified as white in archival records.

The museum, located at 211 Main St., is famously the site of the 1781 meeting between George Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau. Executive Director Joshua Campbell Torrance said the new exhibitions shift the focus from the well-known military history to the “universe of women” who were indispensable to the nation’s founding.

Both exhibitions will remain on view through the 2026 season.

2026 events

Remember the Ladies and American Girlhood are accompanied by a wide array of on-site and virtual programs designed to enhance and deepen the exhibition’s emerging themes, and our experience of America 250 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

LECTURE | 250 America’s Tapestry: Fiber Arts & The Revolution
Thursday, Apr 9, 7:00 PM
Discover how a sweeping community embroidery project is stitching together lesser-known stories from the American Revolution in time for the nation’s 250th anniversary.
Tickets: $15 | $12.50 Virtual | $10 Members
*This lecture will be offered in person and via Zoom.

LECTURE | 250 The Art of Collecting
Thursday, May 14, 7:00 PM
Textile historian Ned Lazaro explores the fascinating and very human impulse behind collecting early American schoolgirl samplers—and what these rescued objects reveal about who we are. Lazaro is the Associate Curator of Costume & Textile at the Wadsworth Atheneum.
Tickets: $15 | $12.50 Virtual | $10 Members
*This lecture will be offered in person and via Zoom.

Special Event | 250 Wethersfield 250 Jubilee: Revolutionary War Encampment & Traditional Trades Fair
Saturday, May 23, 2026, 10:00 AM-4:00 PM
Musket fire, master craftsmen, open-hearth cooking, and Colonial games collide in this free, all-day celebration of America’s 250th anniversary on the museum grounds.
FREE

LECTURE | 250 Civic Stitches: Early American Needlework and National Identity
Thursday, Sep 10, 6:00 PM
Guest curator Emily Whitted reveals how schoolgirl needlework was far more than a domestic skill—it was the space where young women in the early republic stitched their civic identities into silk and linen.
Tickets: $15 | $12.50 Virtual | $10 Members
*This lecture will be offered in person and via Zoom.

LECTURE | 250 Women of the Revolution with Zara Anishanslin
Thursday, Oct 1, 7:00 PM
Historian Zara Anishanslin introduces the women who rallied communities, supplied armies, and exposed the deepest contradictions of the new nation—stories of courage that have waited far too long to be told.

Tickets: $15 | $12.50 Virtual | $10 Members

*This lecture will be offered in person and via Zoom.

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Webb Deane Stevens Museum to open dual exhibitions honoring women of the Revolution