The United States marks its semiquincentennial in 2026—250 years since the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. To coincide with the anniversary, the USC Libraries will stage a new exhibition and host a slate of public programs that look back at how the spirit of the nation’s Bicentennial in 1976 intersected with social movements in and around Los Angeles.
The exhibition and programs are part of the LA2026 collaboration led by the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute (EMSI) with several L.A.-area cultural institutions. The initiative is designed to bring Angelenos and humanities scholars into conversation about how the history of 1776 has been understood, contested, and reimagined from the perspective of California and the American West.
LA2026 is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and is led by EMSI director Peter Mancall and director of programs, Dr. Amy Braden, both of the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. It brings together partner institutions across the region—including the Autry Museum of the American West, The Huntington, La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and the USC Libraries—for a coordinated series of exhibitions and public conversations tied to the 250th anniversary.
At USC, programming will be centered in Doheny Memorial Library, where a new exhibition, provisionally titled USC, Los Angeles, and the 1976 Bicentennial, is slated to open in late March 2026.
Drawing from the USC Libraries’ Special Collections, the USC University Archives and ONE Archives, the exhibition will explore how communities in Los Angeles engaged the Bicentennial at a moment when many Angelenos were also asserting pride in identities that had long been marginalized in civic life.
“Focusing on what was happening on campus makes sense because in the 1970s there was so much underway—the beginnings of ethnic studies programs, and different communities at USC calling for greater recognition of their presence and their histories,” said Suzanne Noruschat, Southern California studies specialist at the USC Libraries. “But we’re also looking beyond campus. USC isn’t a silo. These stories are part of larger movements in Los Angeles, and larger calls for recognition of particular communities in the city and its history, and in the nation’s history as it played out here.”
In four sections, the exhibition will trace how those calls for recognition took shape across the decade—through student organizing, coalition building, cultural expression, and public-facing celebrations that made visibility itself a political act. One section will examine the rise of Chicano/a student activism in Los Angeles and at USC, including the founding of El Centro Chicano in 1972 and a Bicentennial-themed mural created for the space. Another will look at the Bicentennial-era Gay Pride movement in Los Angeles, including the 1976 parade theme “We Were There,” alongside the early history of USC’s Gay Student Union and its library. Yet another section will consider Bicentennial-era programming that foregrounded Black achievement from 1492 to 1976, including an exhibit organized by a committee chaired by Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, a USC alumna who represented California in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1973 to 1979. Finally, a fourth section will highlight other Bicentennial commemorations on and near the USC campus, offering a wider view of how civic rituals, campus life, and community history overlapped in 1976.
In addition to the exhibition, EMSI will host three LA2026 public humanities discussions at the USC Libraries beginning in April 2026. These events will connect directly to the exhibition’s first three sections. Specific dates and program details will be announced soon.
Across LA2026’s partner institutions, the Autry’s Life, Liberty, and Los Angeles and the Huntington’s This Land Is … will likewise examine how founding-era ideals have been interpreted—and challenged—through the distinct histories of the West. Together, the regionwide initiative aims to spark public dialogue about national identity, belonging, democracy and the relationship between regional and national narratives.
USC’s LA2026 work is being developed by a campus team led by Noruschat and Braden, and including Laura Dominguez, NEH postdoctoral scholar and research associate at the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute; Andrew Hernandez, a doctoral student in history at USC Dornsife; Mel James, a master’s student in heritage conservation at the USC School of Architecture; Liam Rafaty, a master’s student in public health at the Keck School of Medicine of USC; and Sophia Soll, an undergraduate student majoring in art history at USC Dornsife. Tyson Gaskill and Anne-Marie Maxwell of the USC Libraries are also providing curatorial support.
Separately, USC will also host a major founding-era documents exhibition at the USC Fisher Museum of Art this spring. From April 17 to May 3, 2026, the museum will present the National Archives’ Freedom Plane National Tour: Documents That Forged a Nation, featuring rare historical documents including William Stone’s 1823 engraved copy of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Association (1774), the Treaty of Paris (1783), and a draft of the U.S. Constitution (1787). The exhibition will be free and open to the public during regular museum hours.