Three exhibitions this Semiquincentennial season are highlighting local connections to the country’s founding 250 years ago.

As covered last week, “Newtown: An American Town” is on view within the Mary Hawley Gallery and adjacent annex room on the third floor of C.H. Booth Library until further notice. A collaborative exhibit between the library and Newtown Historical Society, the exhibition “explores the intersection of local and national history using the words of The Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address” as its guide. Curators used those documents to illustrate how the histories of Newtown and Connecticut reflect the country’s founding ideals.

Newtown Municipal Center is also hosting collaborative presentations this summer. The largest, on view weekdays until August 28 — having been extended from its original planned closing this week — is “Newtown in 1776. Celebrating the Nation’s 250th Anniversary.”

Filling a large section of the walls within the building’s main corridor, the exhibition presents small snippets of what it was like to live in Newtown in 1776 through photographs and a collection of posters with QR codes that connect with Newtown Historical Society’s website.

When entering from the building’s southern entrance (near the Office of the First Selectman), the first images encountered are seven photographs by Chane Cullens showing Newtown homes built before 1776. The collection within the exhibition is called “A Window into Our Past,” according to an exhibition tag.

Labels with each photo note the age and location of each private residence: 42 High Rock Road, constructed circa 1750; 124 Huntingtown Road, also circa 1750; 2 Old Mill, circa 1742; 25 Zoar Road, circa 1734; 34 Gelding Hill Road, circa 1725; 47 Great Ring Road, circa 1715; and Newtown’s oldest home still in use, 8 Eden Hill Road, constructed circa 1690.

NCAC Chair Laura Lerman has created a collection of posters that hang among Cullens’s photos. The posters highlight the population of Newtown in 1776, the food the colonists ate, and a quick history of the Whigs versus the Tories in Newtown during the war.

The posters also include QR codes which, when scanned, expand upon the information presented. One code calls up a recipe for apple pan dowdy; another connects to a recording of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” The former is a favorite recipe from the era and the latter was a song sung by the troops fighting the British during the Revolutionary War (and the Connecticut state song since 1978).

The collection’s final poster notes that, unlike surrounding towns, Newtown was known for supporting the Tories, loyalists to the Crown.

Visitors who want to know more about Newtown’s history can scan the QR code on that final poster, which will take them to the website of Newtown Historical Society.

Cullens and six additional Flagpole Photographers Camera Club members contributed 107 photos of Newtown, filling the largest section of the exhibit. Many familiar scenes including schools and other buildings, landscapes, and even historic signs have been contributed by Robyn Abrams, Rhonda Cullens, Nicole Deckler-Lawler, Aiden Lawler, Peter Lawler, and Sandy Schill.

Most of the photographs are original, some have been digitally altered, and an entire collection of 11 images celebrates the classic view from Castle Hill that overlooks Newtown’s Main Street flagpole. Photographers captured multiple seasons and different times of day, including one night-time shot with a nearly full moon.

Most of the images are available for purchase.

Lerman told The Newtown Bee she was very happy with the effort that went into the presentation.

“It took three art organizations to produce this exhibit — Newtown Historical Society, Flagpole Phtotographers, and the Newtown Cultural Arts Commission. As always, working together makes our art better,” she said July 24.

‘History & Current Quilting’

A second exhibition, “History & Current Quilting — With The Quilt Shop by Lois” is also being presented by the cultural arts commission this month and next. The secondary exhibition is in the display case at the Municipal Art Gallery. It has also been extended to August 28.

The display explains quilting in 1776, covering the difference between pieced quilts and medallion quilts; defines whole cloth quilts and how quilters protested British imports through their creation; and introduces Linsey-Woolsey fabric and how its use was also a dig at the British.

The case includes two quilted runners and basic instruction on the three steps in quilting. It also holds a painting of a rooster and explanatory text covering why the farmyard animal has come to be a symbol of Newtown.

Both exhibits can be viewed weekdays between 8 am and 4:30 pm, and weeknights when Town boards or commissions are meeting within the building.

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Managing Editor Shannon Hicks can be reached at shannon@thebee.com.