Mayflower 400: Legend and Legacy
The Box, Plymouth

Mayflower 400: Legend & Legacy is an epic journey of survival, imagination and 400 years of America. Our exhibition has been created in partnership with the Wampanoag Advisory Committee to Plymouth 400 in Massachusetts, and with the help of over 100 museums, libraries and archives across the UK, US and The Netherlands.

Many objects have travelled to Plymouth for the first time, or are returning to the city for the first time in 400 years. Native American items from the National Museum of the American Indian and the Harvard Peabody collection present 12,000 years of indigenous history, while the Second Peirce Patent from Pilgrim Hall Museum is the oldest existing state document of New England.

Mayflower 400: Legend & Legacy explores early English attempts to colonise America and acknowledges conflict with Native America and the impact of colonisation on the indigenous population. It looks at the context the sailing of the Mayflower in 1620, the lives of the passengers, and considers the cultural, demographic and personal legacies of the story. A partnership with the New England Historical Genealogical Society has also enabled us to present the images of 1,000 Mayflower descendants of today.

The exhibition also includes a new Wampanoag work, created specifically for this show by the artist Nosapocket/Ramona Peters. Her traditional pot is Plymouth’s first ever artistic commission to a Wampanoag artist and we are honoured to welcome it into the permanent collections of The Box.

The Mayflower connects people across land, sea and time. For 400 years its impact has been personal, political and powerful. Plymouth played its part in the Mayflower story in 1620. In commemorating it, we are part of its living legacy.