Join our Teen Council for a Reception and Curators’ Talk. Free & Open to the public 

About the Exhibition:

“Give me your tired, your poor…”

Those words from “The New Colossus,” the 1883 poem by Emma Lazarus, were later installed at the base of the Statue of Liberty. In it, Lazarus reimagined the statue not as a symbol of conquest, but as a beacon of welcome: a promise to those “yearning to breathe free.”

Nearly 150 years later, eleven high school students from Maryland’s Mid-Shore region consider that promise.

The New Colossus is the culminating exhibition of the Academy Art Museum’s 2026 Teen Council program. Meeting weekly from January through May, Teen Council members study the Museum’s permanent collection and collaboratively shape an exhibition that asks urgent, enduring questions: Who belongs? Who is represented? What does freedom look like now?

Timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the exhibition will explore identity, belonging, inheritance, and hope. The students will select artworks, design the gallery layout, and write original labels that combine art historical insight with personal reflection.

Their exhibition will not attempt to resolve the tension between aspiration and reality. Instead, it will create space for dialogue, disagreement, and possibility.

On view June 2 – August 9, 2026, The New Colossus will present a view of Museum’s permanent collection through the eyes of the next generation, and encourage us to consider the nation we are still building.

Made possible by a grant from the Montague Family.

Image: Beth Van Hoesen (1926 – 2010), Checks, Etching and printer’s inks on paper 1962-1963, 2012.025.09