Becoming American: Philadelphia's Story | Film Screening and Q&A

Arthur Ross Gallery is hosting a screening of Becoming American: Philadelphia's Story on Sunday, December 6, from 2 PM to 4 PM. The film is followed by a Q&A with its host and executive producer, Oliver St. Clair Franklin. The Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania is co-sponsoring the event.

Becoming American looks at Philadelphia's history as the nation's early capital—a center of political debate, cultural exchange, and social change. It focuses on the diverse individuals and communities whose experiences complicate and enrich the traditional narratives of American independence and nationhood. The film is presented in connection with the gallery's exhibition At Liberty: Life in the City of Brotherly Love During the Early Republic, which runs from August 28 to December 13, 2026. That show explores how visual culture shaped conceptions of Philadelphia and its residents around the nation's founding, including its first international celebrity, Benjamin Franklin.

At Liberty draws on more than 40 works on loan from institutions like the Penn Art Collection, Pennsylvania Hospital, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Winterthur, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's curated by Dr. Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw with support from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art and the Philadelphia Cultural Fund. The screening and Q&A fall toward the end of the exhibition's run, so you can see the show and the film in the same window.

The screening is free and open to the public, and it runs from 2 PM to 4 PM at the Arthur Ross Gallery, part of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.