The exhibit “Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World” at the Ann Arbor District Library is a text and illustration study of this celebrated American "founding father"'s multifaceted achievements.

The six-panel display at the AADL’s lower-level meeting room and third-floor art gallery—originally mounted in 2006 to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Franklin’s birth and subsequently doing a national tour—is intricate in both its narrative scope and visual record.

Franklin poses perhaps the most challenging image of all the early patriots. He best matches the average American’s professed distrust of professional politicians—and this pose served him well. His work as a scientist, statesman, inventor, diplomat, humorist, philanthropist, publisher, and entrepreneur is easily the widest span of activity of all the early American heroes. Only Thomas Jefferson comes close to matching his many-sided achievements.

Unlike Washington—who claimed to disdain politics, but always managed to be available when such opportunity knocked; or Jefferson, who repeatedly said he wished to return to his beloved Monticello, but subsequently carved out a political career that set the young republic into full motion—Franklin avoided the appearance of partisanship through his service to the young country as a reliable sage.

This remarkable personal ability to be fully invested in public affairs, yet always seemingly serving on the periphery, has endeared him to his countrymen.

Add his many discoveries that advanced scientific knowledge; as well his career as a journalist whose fearless championing of freedom led him to counsel the rather bold concept of the Bill of Rights after the U.S. Constitution’s initial ratification, and “Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World” serves his reputation well.

As the display’s gallery statement tells us, the traveling exhibit looks at many aspects of Franklin’s life and work, showing him “in the context of the 18th century and as a product of his times—a brilliant and rather unconventional man of his times, rather than the grandfatherly figure with whom we are familiar.”

This unconventionality makes this display stand out from the hagiography one might expect from such conventional sources.

The 1,000-square-foot exhibit consists of the following photo-panel sections—“Character Matters: 1706-1723”; “B. Franklin, Printer: 1723-1748; “Civic Visions: 1731 - 1751”; “Useful Knowledge: 1747 - 1785”; “World Stage: 1744 - 1787” and “Seeing Franklin: 1787-Today.”

They show us Franklin in his many guises: from the Boston of his youth through the Philadelphia years when Franklin made his fortune as the city’s premier printer to his service as a diplomat to the fledgling American colonies in the court of France’s King Louis XVI and his participation in the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

Yet which of these Franklins is the Benjamin Franklin?

As the display illustrates, this is not an easy question to answer. The images of Franklin we’re given in the exhibit feature portraits illustrating the same prominent forehead with long hair artlessly flowing, but there’s also the iconic Franklin who serves the period in which he’s represented.

Thus, Benjamin West’s 1816 oil on slate painting, “Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky,” is like many of West’s best works: heroic in an exalted manner that’s now anachronistic. This Franklin is depicted seated comfortably in a flowing robe during his legendary experiment in the conduction of electricity.

The painting is overblown (literally and figuratively) in his epic style of historicizing (check out West’s famed “Death of General Wolfe” in the University of Michigan’s Clement Library’s lobby for his most famed historic depiction). My guess is Franklin would have had a hearty chuckle if he had seen it—although, admittedly, the mythologizing suits him well.

Yet there’s little doubt that he likely would have appreciated George Peter Alexander Healy’s 1847 oil “Franklin Urging the Claims of the American Colonies before Louis XVI.” Healy, one of America’s famed 19th century political portraitists, painted eminent politicians like John Calhoun, Henry Clay, William Seward, and Daniel Webster, as well as all the presidents from John Quincy Adams through Ulysses S. Grant.

Let’s just say he does Franklin right: the American common man standing as an equal at the court of the nobility of France’s Ancien Regime.— Wearing the deliberately drab wardrobe of the fashionable republican of that time; Healy’s proud Franklin stands for the best of America’s promise, steely resolve, and determination. It’s a civics lesson well worth remembering al these years later.

“Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World” is organized by the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary committee of Philadelphia; the American Library Association Public Programs Office; and the National Endowment for the Humanities. It will continue through July 8 at the Ann Arbor District Library, 343 S. Fifth Ave. Exhibit hours are 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday; 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday-Friday; 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday; and noon-6 p.m. Sunday. For information, call 734-327-4200.