Presented on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the exhibition reconsiders the origins of the American experiment through the lens of William Penn’s vision and design for Philadelphia. Through geometry, symbolic systems, maps, and spatial structures, Matsushita explores the relationship among order, liberty, and coexistence.

At the center of the exhibition is Philadelphia itself, Penn’s “Holy Experiment,” a city founded on freedom of conscience, coexistence, and self-governance. The exhibition examines how the city’s original grid plan, organized around five public squares, reflects broader symbolic structures found across philosophy, cosmology, and civic organization.

Drawing from No Cross, No Crown, written during Penn’s imprisonment for his Quaker convictions, Matsushita considers the idea that freedom requires discipline, responsibility, and self-mastery. In this context, geometry functions not only as design but as symbolic language expressing the balance between the individual and society. Echoing the unfinished pyramid of the Great Seal of the United States, the exhibition proposes that America remains an ongoing experiment shaped by balancing individual freedom with civic responsibility. Matsushita refers to this evolving condition as “Hermerica”, a term combining Hermetic philosophy and America to describe the nation as a continuing process of transformation, symbolic imagination, and collective becoming.