There are two stories about an exhibit at the Peoria Riverfront Museum (PRM), which honors America’s history from before Europeans arrived through the Civil Rights era. One is how a museum in central Illinois got renowned American history filmmaker Ken Burns to be a guest curator – his first time doing so anywhere. The other is the variety of original documents and people it features.
Zac Zetterberg, a PRM curator who worked on the exhibition from its conception, explains the first story. Seth Kaller, “who is arguably the leading documents dealer in the country,” approached the museum about “bringing his collection of the greatest American documents in a show he conceived of years ago called ‘The Promise of Liberty.’” But the PRM wanted someone to help them tell the show’s story.
PRM developed a relationship with Burns when it hosted an exhibition of his historic American quilts collection in 2022 and published a book about it. So, staff asked him to help “make sure we do this properly, and Ken said yes,” Zetterberg says. “I was surprised just because he was rolling out his American Revolution (documentary) series and he was on the move, literally every day, but also not surprised.”
Burns served as an offsite adviser. “We had an initial checklist of objects (for the exhibition) and asked him, ‘What stories are we missing?’” says Zetterberg. Burns told them not to focus solely on America’s founders.
“He emphasized focusing on ordinary people,” says Megan Nguyen, an Art Bridges Fellow at PRM who worked on the exhibition. “That was the big thing for us, to include less-heralded documents by lesser-known figures in history that also really contributed to the early American democratic process.”
“This is not merely a collection of dates, wars, or papers behind glass,” Burns says in a museum press release. “America is a promise – laid out in ideas – and in the work that still lies ahead of us. I’m proud to have been part of this extraordinary, one-of-a-kind exhibition telling the story of us.” (Italics are original to the quote.)
Because of Burns, Zetterberg says the exhibition includes artifacts and stories about people like Phillis Wheatley, a formerly enslaved woman from the 1700s whose Poems was the first book published by an African American writer. One of her pieces hailed George Washington as a leader and “positioned Wheatley as a moral voice linking the Revolution’s principles to the freedom of all people,” according to PRM spokeswoman Melody Konrad.
“The Promise of Liberty” features more than 250 artifacts – documents, photos, artwork and audio recordings – related to well-known figures from American history: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman, and the like. The bulk are original and many of the documents are written by these luminaries.
They tell our history through European settlement, the Revolution, our government’s creation, westward expansion, the Civil War, and so on through the Civil Rights era, where visitors hear a recording of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
Standout artifacts include a 1776 broadside (poster) of the Declaration of Independence, “which was the way official news about it was spread,” Zetterberg says. Others are a tintype photo of Abraham Lincoln taken in Peoria around 1858 and later used in his first presidential campaign, original 13th, 14th, and 15th Constitutional Amendments signed by William Seward, and a 1780 letter from George Washington asking a Virginia politician for money and help.
Visitor favorites, according to PRM staff, are a facsimile of the engrossed Declaration of Independence that John Quincy Adams had printed in 1833 – the document popularly known as the official Declaration, and a tomahawk owned by the early 1800s explorer Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Two junior high school girls visiting recently were taken by other items. “I really, really like seeing the old newspaper clippings and documents, I think it’s really nice to see the history of the beginning of our country, especially when they were fighting for women’s votes,” says 13-year-old Abbie of Peoria, who declined to give her last name.
Her friend, 12-year-old Kiana, exclaimed, “This is amazing,” as she walked through the WWII and Civil Rights displays. “I said that because of seeing all the posters about the colored men going into war and how they were joining the military and stuff like that. And seeing how the women had to fight for their rights and how colored men just got their voting rights. It moved me.”
“The Promise of Liberty” is on display at the Peoria Riverfront Museum through Jan. 3, 2027.
Tara McClellan McAndrew is a freelance writer in Springfield who enjoys writing about history.
This article appears in Summerguide 2026.
