In 2026 our country will turn 250 years old. To mark this milestone, the MFA is embarking on a monumental project: we are reimagining and reinstalling our galleries for 18th-century Art of the Americas. Standing front and center in this new display will be Paul Revere’s Sons of Liberty Bowl.

Often described as a national treasure equal in significance to the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution, the Sons of Liberty Bowl is a true icon of the MFA’s collection. Crafted in 1768 by the silversmith and midnight rider Paul Revere, the bowl celebrates the defiant Sons of Liberty, Bostonians who vocally opposed British rule, and chastises the British authorities—or, as Revere’s wonderful engraved inscription puts it, the “insolent Menaces of Villains in Power”—who levied taxes on the colonies without their consent. The bowl embodies Bostonians’ raw and unbridled spirit of resistance and the convictions that led to war for independence.

Like many objects now in our collection, Revere’s silver icon has led a richly textured life. To fully understand the piece and its importance, we must think about two moments in its history. First, the day it was hammered into form and engraved in Revere’s shop amid the protest and tumult of 1768. Second—and this may sound surprising—the winter of 1949.

What does the year 1949, in the aftermath of World War II, when America was entering a decade of prosperity, have to do with a silver punch bowl from the 18th century? This is the year Revere’s piece entered MFA’s collection. It’s a remarkable story: the bowl descended through the family of William Mackay, one of the Sons of Liberty it celebrates. In 1902 ownership shifted, and the bowl fell into the hands of Marian Lincoln Perry, great-great-granddaughter of John Marston, another one of the Sons of Liberty.

After Mrs. Perry’s death in 1935, the enterprising New York art dealer Israel Sack set out to place the bowl in an institution. He received offers from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but felt strongly that “the bowl should belong to the city that gave it birth” and offered it to the MFA. “It was made in Boston for men of Boston and by a famous silversmith of Boston,” he said. “It belongs in Boston.”

Edwin J. Hipkiss, then the MFA’s curator of Decorative Arts, was quick to act. He realized the bowl spoke of the past—but also of his own time, when the United States had endured a more recent fight for freedom in World War II. In Hipkiss’s words, the piece “expresses the hopes and achievements of dauntless Americans of 180 years ago and commemorates the ideals of American life still in force today.”

Prominent Bostonians rallied to help Hipkiss raise funds to acquire the bowl for the Museum. “Acting independently for the Museum of Fine Arts,” they initiated the Revere Sons of Liberty Bowl Fund. Their rousing, all-caps fundraising letter is still in our curatorial files: “THE BOWL IS A SYMBOL OF OUR FREEDOM because it commemorates the very first unified stand for liberty in the country.” City fathers and MFA patrons quickly stepped up, with the help of funds from an unlikely source.

This is the best part of the story. Leafing through our files, I came upon the Boston Public School Superintendent’s Circular #103, dated November 30, 1948. “To the principals of Schools and districts,” the letter begins:

The School committee invites the school children of Boston to make a voluntary contribution … to keep permanently in our city this priceless relic made in Boston by a famous silversmith of Boston in tribute to sterling patriots of Boston.

When was collection day? December 7, 1948, the seventh anniversary of Pearl Harbor—a day of infamy brightened by this symbol of freedom. Thousands of school children participated in the effort and, a few weeks later, in the opening weeks of 1949, the Sons of Liberty Bowl was acquired and made its debut at the Museum.

Next year, as our country commemorates another momentous occasion, Revere’s Sons of Liberty Bowl will welcome the next generations of Boston students to the MFA on behalf of their generous predecessors!