In his 2024 book "The Declaration in Script and Print: A Visual History of America’s Founding Document", John Bidwell notes that Samuel F.B. Morse's 1822 painting of The House of Representatives (on display at the National Gallery of Art in DC) depicts the Binns copy of the Declaration of Independence that still hangs in the room (now Statuary Hall) in the US Capitol today. Let's say you had read Bidwell's book and were at the National Gallery of Art today (as we were) and were trying to locate the Declaration in the painting, but couldn't remember where the book said it was and couldn't find it when you looked. Could you just open up your phone, take a photo of the painting and ask Gemini to circle the Declaration for you in the painting and tell you more about it? It turns out the answer is a resounding yes. The results here offer yet another glimpse of the tremendous potential for museum use of AI – the ability for patrons to not only hold a Q&A with a complex artwork, but to help with the far more mundane tasks of helping them locate particular elements a curator has already identified as significant. Given that few patrons visit with the gallery's website or app open on their phone, but do increasingly have one of the major AI apps installed and ready on their phone, this kind of integration holds tremendous potential.
Today at the National Gallery of Art we stood in front of Morse's painting, took a quick photo with our phone and asked Gemini 3.8 Flash to show us where the Declaration is in the painting:
Where is the Declaration of Independence in this painting? Show me where it is and tell me about it and why it is there.
In just a few seconds, Gemini gave us back our photo with a large red square around the frame and a bright green circle highlighting the Declaration itself. It also gave us an extensive history of the Binns and of why Morse's painting chose to depict it in this way, in its actual real-life background position, rather than symbolically emphasizing it in some way. We then went further in an interactive Q&A about what the Binns is, why it was created, the history of Declaration copies and facsimiles and the like, along with the history of what is today Statuary Hall. All while standing in front of the painting and using Gemini's answers to better understanding the painting.
For reference, here is a zoomed up photo to show the level of detail captured in Morse's painting:
For reference, you can see the Binns engravings (the genuine on the right and a facsimile on the left) still hanging today flanking each other:
