Science Museum exhibition to explore how science shaped the founding of the United States
The Science Museum will open a new exhibition later this year examining how science, technology and knowledge shaped the creation of the United States during the eighteenth century. Becoming America: How Science Shaped a Nation opens in South Kensington on 23rd October 2026 and runs until 25th April 2027.
The free exhibition will bring together over 100 objects exploring how Indigenous nations, enslaved and free people of African descent, British colonists, and early American political leaders used scientific knowledge, agriculture, mapping and technology during a period of major political change in North America.
The exhibition focuses on the decades between the 1760s and the first US presidency in the 1790s, tracing how ideas, tools and scientific discoveries influenced the land, economy and identity of the emerging nation. Among the objects on display will be early maps, surveying instruments, agricultural tools, paintings, and Indigenous technologies.
Visitors will also see one of the earliest maps charting the Gulf Stream, created through work led by Benjamin Franklin and his cousin Timothy Folger after they investigated why Atlantic crossings took different lengths of time depending on direction. The exhibition includes surveying equipment associated with the Mason-Dixon Line, a boundary that later became closely connected with the political and cultural divide between the northern and southern United States.
A significant part of the exhibition examines Indigenous technologies and African diasporic knowledge that shaped everyday life across North America. Visitors will see a traditionally crafted mishoon canoe made using fire-based carving techniques associated with Mashpee Wampanoag makers. The exhibition also explores Indigenous land management methods, including controlled burning used to shape ecosystems and encourage plant growth.
Objects connected to the transatlantic slave trade will examine how agricultural and medicinal knowledge travelled across the Atlantic. Among them are okra seeds collected in Barbados in 1688, representing a plant that became part of African diasporic cooking and medicine in America and the Caribbean.
George Washington and King George III both appear throughout the exhibition through their shared interest in agricultural innovation. Documents and farming plans show how crop rotation and mechanised farming methods were introduced and adapted on estates in Britain and America during the same period.
The exhibition will also feature a painting depicting the excavation of a mastodon skeleton by artist and scientist Charles Willson Peale. The excavation later became associated with growing national pride in the early United States and helped popularise scientific collecting in the young republic.
The exhibition arrives after growing public interest in American independence, including a 1776 report displayed in Greenwich. The Science Museum has also continued expanding its public programme through large-scale cultural events including the annual Great Exhibition Road Festival in South Kensington.
Becoming America: How Science Shaped a Nation opens at the Science Museum on 23 October 2026 with free ticketed entry.
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