Blog / 2026 / On Steamboats and STEAM Education

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

This is one of the ONEs I painted for 52 Weeks of Firsts, which is a celebration of Philadelphia, honoring all the ways the city has been first in the nation. This ONE represents the first steamboat for passengers and freight in the United States, and I’ll be hanging out with it tomorrow from 11 to 1 at the Independence Seaport Museum and handing out stickers of the Statue of Liberty, because she, like the steamboat, is a delightful product of STEAM. No, not steam as in the steamboat, but STEAM as in the acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics.

Quick recap: STEAM-focused education used to be called STEM—or STEAM without the art. But that’s a deceptive kind of rebranding because the difference between STEM and STEAM is more than the additional focus on writing, theater, music, and visual art that some of the less imaginative among us complain only dilute STEM curricula.

No, the difference between STEM and STEAM is best understood by what it looks like in the classroom. STEM lessons emphasize critical thinking through deductive reasoning and problem-solving. STEAM lessons get students working together and innovating along the way.

The A in STEAM is a reminder that we humans have never accomplished much of anything as individuals. It’s when we work with others that things get interesting.

That’s true in my world where my art is in constant conversation with my community. And that was true for the Statue of Liberty, which was built by a whole lot of people working together. It started with Édouard de Laboulaye, a legal scholar, public servant, poet, and anti-slavery activist who came up with the idea of the statue as a gift for the US at the end of the American Civil War. Then it was de Laboulaye’s friend, the artist Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, who designed Lady Liberty, and it was the engineer Gustave Eiffel whose metal framework made the colossus possible.

Come celebrate STEAM, steamboats, and stickers with me tomorrow at the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia between 11 and 1! There will be steamboat engine talks and fun in the Seaport Boat Shop, all kinds of delightfully STEAM-tastic stuff to do!