The USC marching band played on the tarmac of the Van Nuys airport as a plane carrying original founding documents of the United States touched down in Los Angeles on Monday morning.
USC is the third stop on the Freedom Plane’s national tour of eight U.S. cities. The Treaty of Paris, an 1823 engraving of the Declaration of Independence and a draft of the U.S. Constitution are among the nine documents that will be on display in the USC Fisher Museum of Art from April 17 until May 3, according to a university press release.
USC is the only university chosen to host the “National Archives’ Freedom Plane National Tour: Documents that Forged a Nation” exhibit, and also the plane’s only stop in California. The exhibit will be free and open to the public.
“These documents also provide the USC community with an opportunity to reflect upon what liberty and Freedom mean today,” President Beong-Soo Kim told Annenberg Media at Van Nuys Airport. “As much as we may agree or disagree on certain topics, we should all come together, and can all come together around these shared principles that are still so important.”
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Andrew Guzman also attended the event, along with CEO of the National Archives Foundation Patrick Madden, Boeing Vice President of State and Local Government Operations Bill McSherry and the Boeing flight crew traveling with the documents.
Kim said he expects the exhibit will attract as many as 20,000 visitors to campus during its run. With the L.A. Times Festival of Books taking place on campus this weekend, Kim said he hopes there will be some overlap between festival attendees and exhibit visitors.
Kim emphasized the value of seeing the documents in person and encouraged students and visitors to attend.
“By studying history, we can learn so much about not just our shared beliefs and values, but also that history provides such a valuable window into understanding our present,” Kim said.
The U.S. National Archives and the non-profit the National Archives Foundation are hosting the exhibition tour to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America’s founding. According to the organization’s website, the tour is inspired by the Freedom Trains of 1947 and 1975, which transported national artifact exhibits across the U.S.
The Freedom Plane has already visited Kansas City, Missouri and Atlanta, Georgia. Following its visit to California, the tour also plans to visit Denver; Houston; Dearborn, Michigan; Miami; and Seattle, according to the exhibit’s website.
Madden said he wanted to recreate the spirit of the Freedom Train’s tour and give Americans a chance to engage with the founding documents. It was decided a train was not ideal for transporting the documents, he said, so organizers opted for a plane instead.
The plane’s designer, Matt Bardocz, said the iconography of a waving American flag on the craft symbolizes a nation that is always in motion.
Madden said Los Angeles was selected in part to expand the exhibit beyond the East Coast. He said USC was an obvious choice as a host.
“When you think of L.A., you think of USC,” he said.
Madden said he hopes the exhibition will connect younger generations to America’s history.
“There was disagreement, but they actually came together,” Madden said of the nation’s founders. “They compromised, and so that’s what our nation was founded on, and these documents represent that. We want the younger generation to connect with that and see that this is very real. These aren’t just things that are on the internet.”