Upcoming Exhibitions
City of Charleston, South Carolina, looking across Cooper's River. Painted by G. Cooke; engraved by W.J. Bennett. Charleston South Carolina, c. 1838. New York: L.P. Clover. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
Northern Family, Southern Ties
Opening November 2025
Curators are researching the complex connections between northern and southern families, and the interstate movement of enslaved people unveiling a story stretching from the late eighteenth century through the Civil War. The exhibit demonstrates how regional differences were not always as cleanly drawn as they may have been portrayed.
Irish-born John Potter was a wealthy merchant in Charleston, South Carolina, responsible for importing both sundry goods as well as human cargo. His marriage to Catherine Fuller of that city proved a successful step to consolidating generational wealth. Their only daughter married Robert Field Stockton of Princeton, a seafaring Naval Lieutenant Commandant. How did their 1823 marriage impact the social, economic, political and physical landscape of New Jersey?
Through their Colerain, Argyle, and Tweedside plantations along the Savannah River, and a sugarcane plantation in Glynn County, the Potters and Stocktons enslaved hundreds of men, women, and children. Interstate movement of enslaved people between these southern plantations and northern homes occurred regularly. How might these people experienced different models of American slavery?
Learn how these two families straddled the growing divide of antebellum United States and the choices they made when the union was ultimately torn apart.
Funding for this exhibition has been provided, in part, by Liza and Schuyler Morehouse, Lisa and Michael Ullmann, Colleen Goggins, Helen R. Buck Foundation, and The George H. and Estelle M. Sands Foundation
Declaration of Independence, 1818. John Trumbull (1756–1843). Collection of the Architect of the Capitol.
Five Independent Souls: The Signers from New Jersey
Opening April 2026
Days before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams wrote to Samuel Chase, “Jersey has chosen five new Members all independent Souls, and instructed them to vote on the first of July for Independence.” This turning point forever linked these five New Jersey men to the birth of the United States. But who were these lesser-known founding fathers? What were their lives like, before, during, and after the Revolution?
Morven’s 2026 exhibit seeks to answer these questions, delving into the lives of Abraham Clark, John Hart, Francis Hopkinson, Richard Stockton, and John Witherspoon. This will be the first exhibition to examine this group of men, gathering paintings, furniture, objects, and manuscripts from collections across the country to reveal aspects of their lives. As all five were enslavers, the exhibition will also examine how the rhetoric of revolutionary America—freedom, equality, and liberty—was intertwined with the practice of slavery.
Morven’s curators have spent years securing loans for this landmark exhibit. Visitors can expect to see over one hundred objects on loan from The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Independence Hall, Museum of the American Revolution, the National Gallery of Art, Presbyterian Historical Society, the Princeton University Art Museum, the New York Public Library, Yale University Art Gallery, and numerous private collections.
Come to historic Princeton to experience America’s Semiquincentennial at the only extant home of a New Jersey signer open to the public.
Funding for this exhibition has been provided, in part, by Carol Hanson, Liza and Schuyler Morehouse and J. Richard and E. Barbara Pierce.