History in the Spotlight: Silence Dogood’s Lighting Projects Move to Civic Conversation

Boston has never been shy about speaking its mind, and a new initiative from Silence Dogood aims to keep that tradition alive. Through large-scale light projections on historic buildings, the Silence Dogood Project is literally illuminating powerful historic quotes and ideas, using the city—and many of our Boston Landmarks—as a canvas for presenting today’s most pressing social and political questions.

Silence Dogood’s newest initiative, Precedented Times, takes the project’s work a step further. Supported by a Promises of the Revolution grant from Mass Humanities, the initiative will pair powerful projected quotes with in-person public conversations, aiming to bring people together to talk, learn, and reflect in some of Boston’s most meaningful public places.

What Is “Precedented Times”?

Over the past year, Silence Dogood has staged more than 20 light projections across Boston, casting historic words and ideas onto landmark historic buildings (including Faneuil Hall, Old South Meetinghouse, the Old Corner Bookstore, and the Bunker Hill Monument among others) that once witnessed or hosted debate, protest, and change. The projections are designed to stop people in their tracks and remind them that many of today’s struggles around liberty, equity, and democracy have deep roots, and some of those roots lead right back to Boston.

This new phase expands that work by adding a civic dialogue component. The project will host a series of town hall–style gatherings at historic sites long associated with Boston’s civic life. Each event will feature historians and civil-liberties voices who can help frame contemporary issues through a historical lens. At the close of each gathering, ideas and reflections shared by the audience will be projected—literally—onto nearby historic buildings, turning collective conversation into public art.

Who Is Silence Dogood—Now and Then?

The name Silence Dogood dates to 1722, when a teenage Benjamin Franklin adopted the pseudonym to publish witty, pointed essays in a Boston newspaper. Writing as a fictional widow, Franklin critiqued social circumstances and questioned authority with humor and insight. Though he was eventually uncovered, the idea endured: that anonymous and unexpected voices can play a powerful role in prompting public discourse.

Today’s Silence Dogood carries that spirit forward. The project is led by artist and historian Diane Dwyer, who has been expertly carrying out these projection installations over the last year —often from the back of her truck—across Boston. Her work blends public history, art, and civic engagement, using light and place to pull historic ideas directly into the present.

Dwyer also serves as a consultant to the City of Boston Office of Historic Preservation, and the Boston Commemorations Commission, where she is helping to shape a city-wide historic marker program for Boston. Across both efforts, her message is the same: elevate the role of history in life today and treat commemoration as an active, participatory public practice.

In a city built on argument, assembly, and ideas, this initiative brings history out of the textbooks and back into public life.

As Boston and the nation approach the 250th anniversary of American independence, Precedented Times reminds us that democracy has always been a work in progress. By projecting historic words onto our city’s historic walls, and inviting today’s residents of Boston to add their own, Silence Dogood encourages people not just to admire the past, but to see it as a drama that continues to unfold.

Learn More and Participate!

Visit Silence Dogood’s website or follow them on social media to stay up to date on upcoming public conversations and projection events.

This article was prepared by Katherine Kottaridis, Director of the Office of Historic Preservation