Library Center to host free Alexander Hamilton exhibit

“Hamilton” on Broadway is fetching $350-plus for show tickets, but you can see the real Hamilton for free from Aug. 8-Sept. 4 at the Library Center.

It’s a multi-panel exhibit, “Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America.” There’s no hip-hop soundtrack or dancing chorus, but plenty of surprising and inspiring insights into the man.

Scholars agree that Hamilton’s vision in the Founding period shaped the America we live in, 200 years after his death. The exhibit reveals the man who guided the financial, political, social, journalistic, foreign policy and legal systems of the young country. His ideas on racial equality and economic diversity were so far ahead of their time that it took the nation decades to catch up with them.

The exhibit uses reproductions from the Gilder Lehrman Collection and the Library of the New York Historical Society.

Among the uninitiated, Hamilton is better known for the duel that claimed his life in 1804. In a nod to his unfortunate end — and our great fortune in hosting the exhibit — the Mudhouse at the Library Center has created a special drink that month.

It’s a mocha latte with caramel, orange syrup and two shots of espresso — “Hamilton’s Duel.”