In 1804, Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led the U. S. Army "Corps of Discovery" from St. Louis up the Missouri River into the vast, newly acquired Louisiana Territory. Following instructions from President Thomas Jefferson, their aim was to become the first Americans to traverse North America to the Pacific via an imagined water route. Along the way, they were to map the continent's interior, collect plant, mineral, and animal specimens for science, and, most significantly, develop relationships with diverse tribes of American Indians.
In 2004, the Missouri Historical Society will mark the bicentennial of Lewis and Clark's transcontinental journey of exploration with the opening of Lewis and Clark: The National Bicentennial Exhibition. The exceptional new exhibition, organized by the Missouri Historical Society, will open at the Missouri History Museum in Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri in January 14, 2004 and will be on view through September 6, 2004. The exhibition will then launch a national tour. Lewis and Clark: The National Bicentennial Exhibition is presented in St. Louis through the generous support of Emerson. Additional support provided by the U.S. Congress through the National Park Service, the State of Missouri through the Missouri Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commission, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
To announce the national bicentennial exhibition, President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush have invited the Missouri Historical Society to display a portrait of Meriwether Lewis at the White House. The chalk and charcoal portrait, done by Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Mémin (1770-1852), shows the profile of a 29 year-old Lewis wearing a high-collared coat, notched collar and white shirt. At the time Lewis sat for this portrait, he was serving as President Thomas Jefferson's secretary. According to Lewis family tradition, Lewis sat for the portrait in 1803 and sent it to his mother prior to setting off on the transcontinental expedition. The Lewis family donated the portrait to the Missouri Historical Society in 1936. The recently conserved portrait will be unveiled on July 3, 2002. The date marks the 200th anniversary of the day President Thomas Jefferson received official word that the Louisiana Purchase treaty had been signed. The portrait of Lewis will remain at the White House until it returns to the Missouri Historical Society in preparation for the opening of Lewis and Clark: The National Bicentennial Exhibition.
Lewis and Clark: The National Bicentennial Exhibition will feature hundreds of superb artifacts, including rare and priceless objects and documents that have not been seen in one place since the Corp of Discovery returned to St. Louis in 1806. More than 600 artifacts will illustrate cultural encounters along the journey of Lewis and Clark. Period objects and art will represent the equipment the explorers utilized, the land they trekked, and the Native American tribes they encountered. The core of the exhibition will be formed by artifacts, artwork, and documents entrusted to the Missouri Historical Society by the Clark and Lewis families.
The Missouri Historical Society's collections will be augmented by objects from other institutions with significant Lewis and Clark and ethnographic materials, including the American Philosophical Society, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, the Smithsonian Institution, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscripts Library, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the Oregon Historical Society.
Lewis and Clark: The National Bicentennial Exhibition visitors will have a once in a lifetime opportunity to view national treasures such as the letter of credit from Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis (dated 4 July 1803). Other artifacts on display will include plant specimens, the only surviving American Indian artifacts presented to Lewis and Clark, the only known surviving zoological specimen, a woodpecker, and the captains' personal items, such as scientific equipment and Clark's handwritten, illustrated, elkskin-bound field journal, which provides a glimpse into a lost America few of us can imagine.
Overall, Lewis and Clark: The National Bicentennial Exhibition follows the journey of the Corps of Discovery through the human geography of western North America. Theirs was an exploration of new cultural and mental landscapes as well as new lands. Beyond St. Louis, they were in an Indian world of age-old trade networks, achievements in art and oral literature, and an intricately exploited environment. As men of the Jeffersonian Enlightenment, the captains saw the West through preconceptions formed by their European cultural heritage. The native societies they met imagined America very differently. The exhibition will compare the assumptions of Lewis and Clark and the Indian peoples they were among on such topics as politics and diplomacy, gender, geography, animals, landscape, clothing, language, trade and property, healing and health, and plants. These cultural contrasts reveal how the expedition overcame barriers to communication-or failed to overcome them.
Lewis and Clark: The National Bicentennial Exhibition will be the culmination of more than five years of intensive research and development by the Missouri Historical Society. Under the leadership of Missouri Historical Society president Robert R. Archibald, the exhibition planning is being guided by an advisory board of scholars and Native American representatives, including James P. Ronda, Jeanne Eder, Gary Moulton, Richard White, and George Horse Capture. In addition, the Missouri Historical Society has sought out Native American perspectives by traveling to visit representatives of each of the major tribes covered in the exhibition.