Those saved buildings have played a big role in how we view American history. The decision to tear down the house elicited such public outcry that it led to a major movement across New England to preserve other pre–Revolutionary War buildings. The Hancock Mansion is an ideal vehicle through which to frame those kinds of questions. Rather, the curators have taken items from one prominent house and used them as a vehicle to ask some big and thorny questions: how do the objects we preserve shape our sense of the past? Whose story is being told in the objects we choose to preserve? Whose stories are left behind? And how does selective preservation shape our sense of who we are as a nation? But this isn’t your ordinary display of decorative arts. Titled Through the Keyhole, the show includes items related to the Hancock Mansion, home to Founding Father John Hancock, and his wife, Dolly, which was located on Beacon Hill and torn down in 1863. What stories are locked behind a single door? And whom do they belong to? Those questions form the heart of a wonderful exhibit now on view at the Old State House.
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