Feminizing History: Classical Murals Of The Founders With Added Ladies
07/16/2023
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At 700 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in downtown Washington, DC you will find the National Archives Store. There you can browse our nation's founding documents and purchase copies of them to hang on your living-room wall.

A friend of mine did so recently. He was astonished to find that the Barry Faulkner murals of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution have been modified.

These two pictures were painted in the mid-1930s by professional artist Barry Faulkner as decorations for the Capitol Rotunda. One showed 28 of the Founders (Declaration of Independence), the other 25 (The Constitution).

All were male.

Well, no more of that toxic masculinity! The reproductions you buy at the National Archives Store today show lots of females—around fifteen or twenty percent of the figures portrayed.

My friend bought one and showed it to me.

Whether the original paintings themselves have been similarly feminized, I am afraid to inquire.

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