Exhibition Review

The title of the recent exhibition at the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, Massachusetts, "Paul Revere: Artisan and Patriot," promised to elevate Paul Revere's less famous side as an engraver and silversmith to an equal status with his public reputation as a revolutionary. The impressive exhibit of over one hundred pieces of silver and almost twenty engravings offered viewers the chance to see an unusually large amount of Revere's work and to assess changes in the style of late-eighteenth-century decorative arts. But exhibit planners missed several opportunities to explain the larger historical and social changes represented by Revere and his work to an audience surely captivated by Revere's public reputation and the beauty of his pieces.	1
The exhibit, which was housed in a small gallery alongside the museum's permanent exhibit of American decorative arts, announced that the large number of Revere works shown was made possible by a gift from the Paul Revere Life Insurance Company (a division of UnumProvident Corporation). The museum already owned one of the largest and best-known collections of Revere silver, including the outstanding 1773 "Paine service," but the works by Revere—engravings and fifty-six pieces of Revere silver—permanently donated by UnumProvident augmented the collection and provided the rare opportunity to judge the breadth and depth of Revere's work. These pieces, with engravings on loan from the American Antiquarian Society (and, in the exhibit's first two months, the portrait of Revere by John Singleton Copley from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), formed the basis for the recent exhibition. Much of the silver will probably continue to be seen at the museum on a regular basis.	2
The exhibit's introductory labels promised to lead the viewer through transitions in Paul Revere's work. Exhibit interpreters noted that the styles represented in Revere's silver and engraving embody the American transformation in taste from Queen Anne to rococo to neoclassical style between the 1760s and 1800s. Labels also told viewers that "Revere was a creative entrepreneur" whose career "spanned handcraftsmanship, commerce, and manufacturing."	3
The exhibit illustrated transitions in style and also explained Revere's work methods. The Paine silver service, the largest ever produced by Revere, shows the transition from rococo to neoclassical style, and labels explained how the pieces were raised from flat sheets and how Revere priced his work. Silver pitchers from 1804 and 1806 clearly display similarities to the English earthenware styles to which the labels directed viewers (even if those pieces were a bit hard to find because of the awkward lack of physical separation between the Revere exhibit and the permanent collection of other decorative objects). Examples of Revere's engraved prints charted his interest in several themes—politics, Masonry, religion, and education—and labels explained how they were made.	4
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