Two stone sculptures, weighing 65 tons each, stand on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC, outside the researchers’ entrance to the neoclassical building that houses the National Archives. One is called “Past”. It depicts an old man holding a closed book, gazing down streetward. An inscription on his plinth urges its readers to “study the past”, Confucius’s supposed prerequisite for divining the future. The other is called “Future”. It depicts a younger woman holding an open book, similarly gazeful, and her inscription insists that “what is past is prologue”, from Antonio’s speech in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
The National Archives devotes a quarter-million pounds of Indiana limestone, therefore, to convincing entrants and passers-by of two versions of the old notion that History Repeats Itself, and that the verb tense of the documents inside is not past, but present and future. One of these documents, displayed among the nation’s other “charters of freedom” in the rotunda, is an original parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence.
This weekend, July 4 2026, marks the 250th anniversary of the adoption of that declaration and the founding of the United States. It is impossible, particularly in Washington DC, to escape that fact. Donald Trump has lashed himself to this historical mast. The festivities have included a “national prayer event” on the National Mall and blood sport on the White House lawn. Trump has been trying to remake the city physically, sometimes literally in his own image.