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Becoming America: How Science Shaped a Nation

The Bald Eagle

Time Out has highlighted Becoming America: How Science Shaped a Nation, a major free exhibition supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation, opening at London’s Science Museum on October 23, 2026, to mark 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Spanning four decisive decades from the 1760s to the first U.S. presidency in the 1790s, the exhibition explores how science and technology shaped the land, peoples, and emerging identity of the United States. More than 100 maps, paintings, scientific instruments, and artifacts will illuminate the knowledge and experiences of Anglo-American colonists, Indigenous Americans, and enslaved and free people of African descent. Highlights include a rare surviving 1776 print of the Declaration, objects associated with King George III and George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin’s pioneering chart of the Gulf Stream. Read more here.

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