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National Constitution Center, 525 Arch St., Philadelphia, PA 19106.
Permanent exhibition, opened July 4, 2003. Su-F 9:30-5, Sa 9:30-6, closed Thanksgiving and Christmas. Adults $6, children 4-12 $5, under 4 free, seniors, students, active military $5. Exhibition area 67,785 sq. ft. Ralph Appelbaum Associates and Janet Kamien, exhibition development and design; Freedom Rising (live dramatic performance), Donna Lawrence Productions; Hock Films and the History Channel, additional media; Hill International, Inc., project management; Joseph M. Torsella and Rand and Associates, exhibition labels; Electrosonics, Inc., and Malbie Associates, fabrication and installation; StudioEIS, Signers' Hall statutes.
Internet: general information, virtual tour, interactive Constitution, educational resources, "Viewpoints" (brief pieces by legal scholars and other site visitors), "Citizen Action" (guide to all elected officials, daily schedule of Congress) <http:// www.constitutioncenter.org> (Sept. 15, 2004).
The National Constitution Center, in Philadelphia, opened its doors to the public on July 4, 2003. That homage to the Declaration of Independence is the only intellectually incoherent-or superpatriotic-note that the center has struck yet. In the teeth of what must have been sore temptation to cave in to corporate funders, the center has disdained to mount a mindless celebration and clung instead to a more capacious vision. It is, already at its birth, one of the nation's greatest museums, and perhaps the most challenging of them all.
The National Constitution Center is housed in a handsome new building conceived by two of the country's finest designers, Henry Cobb and Ralph Appelbaum. It commands a vista over a great green lawn and a brick serpentine toward Independence Hall. It exhibits an astonishing array of artifacts, from the eighteenth-century items unearthed by archaeologists on the site to the inkwell with which Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to the tool bag with which a little band of burglars broke into Democratic party headquarters at the Watergate. But, unlike other great museums, the center is not really about objects at all.
The longtime president of the center calls it "a museum of ideas." But it is not quite about ideas, either. It is about something more subtle: the understandings we hold of ourselves and our society, which condition the civic activity that shapes the Constitution more than Congress or the courts do. It is about our public life and...