Displaying items by tag: thomas jefferson

Perhaps the most bizarre bit of business in the multimedia exhibition “Jefferson and Palladio: Constructing a New World” is a video of an imaginary confrontation between Thomas Jefferson and Andrea Palladio, depicted as silhouettes.

At one point, Palladio, the Italian architect, who died in 1580, chides Jefferson, the American architect and statesman, who died in 1826, for never traveling to the Veneto region of Italy during his European migrations to see firsthand the villas that so influenced his designs and, consequently, American public architecture.

Thomas Jefferson’s handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence, on loan from The New York Public Library, and the Delaware copy of the US Bill of Rights, on loan from The US National Archives, two of the most iconic documents in American history, are in the UK for the first time and on display at the British Library from last Friday in the world’s largest exhibition about Magna Carta.

"Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy" unites over 200 exhibits, including iconic documents, such as two of the four surviving 1215 Magna Carta manuscripts, artworks, medieval manuscripts, Royal remains, weaponry and 800 year old garments, through to modern interpretations and satires of the document, to tell a revealing story of how Magna Carta has become a global symbol of freedom.