“Making Radical Repairs” Working Group Case Statement
Jessie MacLeod, George Washington’s Mount Vernon
In Lives Bound Together, Mount Vernon’s 2016 museum exhibition on slavery, we used several strategies to interpret the lives of enslaved people in the absence of surviving intact artifacts. Reframing decorative arts, using a more expansive definition of collections, and embracing conjectural representation provided opportunities to tell more inclusive narratives in a setting that has historically privileged the “great white man” story. The benefits of this approach were several: we presented more complex and accurate interpretation, and we repaired relationships with important stakeholders. By tying the effort to Mount Vernon’s mission— which includes the directive to “preserve, restore, and manage the estate of George Washington to the highest standards,” and to “educate visitors…about the life and legacies of George Washington”—we were able to make the case for the importance of inclusive narratives.
As the lead curator for the exhibition, Lives Bound Together, I encountered the familiar claim that “we just don’t have the objects” for a museum exhibit about slavery. Yet, when we asked slightly different questions—not “who owned this,” but “whose hands touched this?,” “who cleaned and polished this?,” and “whose labor created the wealth that purchased this?”— we found that nearly every object in our decorative arts collection was, in one or more ways, an artifact of slavery. A porcelain punch bowl can be a vessel to tell the story of Doll, the enslaved cook who likely prepared the sweet beverage, or Tom, a freedom-seeker whom Washington sold to Saint Kitts as punishment, netting 66 gallons of spirits in exchange. George Washington’s spyglass reflects his military career, but also the service of William Lee, the valet who managed the general’s military accoutrements. Interpreting the lives of these men and women doesn’t necessarily require new objects or resources, just creative ways of viewing existing collections.
Careful provenance research can also provide fodder for inclusive interpretation. Scrutiny of accession records revealed that two Windsor chairs in Mount Vernon’s collection actually descended in the families of formerly enslaved people. At some point, these Washington family heirlooms had become the property of those once considered property themselves. In Lives Bound Together, we could use these objects to discuss the closely-intertwined lives of enslaved and enslaver, in some cases spilling over into actual blood relations.
This approach provides exciting opportunities. Creative interpretation of decorative arts collections can repair decades of erasure by making enslaved people (and other marginalized groups) visible within historic house settings. This method also draws upon resources that nearly every institution already owns. Any site can think more broadly about whose stories their objects tell, and how those collections connect to larger themes like labor and inequality. Yet, this tactic also has limitations. When we use the Washingtons’ furnishings to discuss the lives of Doll and Tom, we still define the enslaved through their relationship with their enslavers. These were objects of their coerced labor, not their personal lives. Locating collections that communicate enslaved people’s experiences, choices, and tastes can prove more challenging.
If available, archaeology provides an opportunity to present material more closely tied to the enslaved. Mount Vernon is fortunate to have had an active archaeology program for more than three decades. One of its inaugural projects was an excavation of the “House for Families” slave quarter, which yielded more than 60,000 artifacts—everything from Chinese export porcelain tea cups and glass wine bottles to clay tobacco pipes and limestone marbles. Though it can require more handholding to help visitors understand the oddly-shaped fragments, archaeological artifacts can provide the powerful experience of relating to authentic material that many visitors seek. The knowledge that an enslaved child may have played with a marble provides an ineffable human connection, even if their specific identity remains unknown.
Oral history provides another way to access the experiences and perspectives of enslaved people. In Lives Bound Together, we filmed interviews with seven descendants. The full videos are housed in our archives, and excerpts appear in a 20-minute film at the end of the exhibition and on our website. These interviews formed part of a larger outreach effort to the descendant community during the exhibit development process. We met with them for individual and group meetings, invited them to focus groups, and included a descendant representative on our advisory committee. Sharing authority with this key stakeholder group revealed an important lesson: many African Americans (justifiably) experience profound distrust toward museums like Mount Vernon, and the onus is on the institution to re-establish that trust.
An important step toward repairing relationships with descendants, I realized, was to view ourselves as stewards of their family histories, in the same way Mount Vernon has historically been stewards of Washington objects. Donors and lenders of valuable artifacts obtain status within the museum world. Descendants of enslaved people offer us something just as precious—something preserved against all odds and shared despite years of rejection from institutions like Mount Vernon. When we view descendants’ narratives as a core part of our preservation mission, we fill gaps in our collection and infuse our interpretation with new voices. Of course, such projects require funding and institutional buy-in, so that relationships can be sustained beyond the tenures of specific staff who may have initiated the efforts.
While we could find objects and narratives that accessed their experiences, we found that the lack of images of enslaved people from the eighteenth century created a barrier that was difficult to overcome. While absence can be instructive—explaining why there are few portraits of enslaved people helps illuminate the conditions of slavery—in practice, imagery is one of the most powerful ways to connect with visitors. In Lives Bound Together, we grappled with how to represent individuals and create a human presence in the galleries without giving a false impression that we had access to historical representations. Our solution was to use nineteen conjectural life-sized silhouettes, informed by historical evidence, each representing one of the more than 550 people enslaved at Mount Vernon under George Washington. From a distance, the graphic treatment of the silhouettes resembles a shadow, and up close, a fingerprint or line engraving. These figures accomplished our goal of establishing direct connections between visitors and enslaved people, while also showing that their lives can never be fully recovered, in stark contrast to our rich and colorful portrait of George Washington’s life.
Though we did not use it in Lives Bound Together, contemporary art can also be an effective tool in visually representing enslaved people. Artist Titus Kaphar reimagines classical portraiture through provocative use of texture, layers, and dimension to explore power dynamics and exploitation. His work Billy Lee: Portrait in Tar shows a figure in a finely tailored silk suit, but Lee’s face is obscured by a thick layer of black tar, emphasizing his exclusion from historical narratives and modern consciousness. Acquiring pieces by sought-after contemporary artists like Kaphar is inaccessible for all but a few museums. But any site can consider how creative representations and thought-provoking juxtapositions might help visitors consider how museum collections are not neutral, but rather the products of inequality and white supremacy.
Mount Vernon’s collections reflect the priorities of those who built the institution over the last 160 years. But Lives Bound Together provides a useful case study for considering how museums can use existing resources, thoughtful outreach, and creative design to avoid replicating those power structures in an exhibition context.