Ruki Neuhold-Ravikumar
Visitors to Woodlawn Mansion and the Pope-Leighey House can “have a true conversation about the human capacity for change,” says Ruki Neuhold-Ravikumar, the property’s new executive director who started on Jan. 26. Asked to identify the challenges in managing this historic property in southeastern Fairfax County, she quips, “They are opportunities.”
Newhold-Ravikumar came to this new post from Iowa State University where she was the designer-in-residence. She also previously served as the Smithsonian Institution’s first Undersecretary for Education, helping the 19 museums’ education staff work with interpreters, schools, scholars and visitors. Earlier, she was the president of the Kansas City Art Institute.
The 126-acre Woodlawn complex, a former plantation, became the first historic site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1949.
Many Stories
Woodlawn mansion and the mid-20th-century Pope-Leighey House, designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, inspired her to explore how to tell the story of the two very different homes from two very different eras. George Washington carved out 2,000 acres from his Mount Vernon estate and built the Woodlawn mansion in 1805 for his step-granddaughter, Eleanor “Nelly” Custis, and her husband, Lawrence Lewis, all members of the gentry class of the time.
Woodlawn represents “a level of opulence” while the Pope-Leighey House represents “what people could afford” in the mid-20th century, says Neuhold-Ravikumar. “Together they show the arc of human experience, what we need and want over time,” she explains. “The floor plans alone can show how the role of women has changed over time, for example.”
A Wright Fan
She is especially intrigued by Wright’s work and for many years has visited one Wright-designed home every year. The Pope-Leighey House is an example of the architect’s 100 or so Usonian houses built between 1936 and 1959, designed to be efficient, functional and affordable for middle-income people. To build it, then owners Lauren and Charlotte Pope envisioned spending $5,500, equal to about $86,000 today, but ended up paying $7,000.
The Quakers at Woodlawn
Another story Neuhold-Ravikumar is eager to tell is the Quaker experience at Woodlawn. In 1846, a group of the Religious Society of Friends bought 2,000 acres of the Woodlawn tract to create a farming community of free African Americans and white settlers, “a free labor colony,” to demonstrate that farms could succeed without enslaving people, an alternative to Virginia’s plantation culture. The Lewises had enslaved around 100 people of African descent; George and Martha Washington, over 300. Unlike enslaved people then, these African Americans were allowed to own property.
Woodlawn can help people understand the country’s evolution, Neuhold-Ravikumar believes, for example, how enslaved people in the 19th century gained their freedom and moved to a path of sustainability.
Neuhold-Ravikumar came to the United States from India to study graphic design at Iowa State where she earned a master of fine arts degree in graphic design. She received a bachelor’s in fine arts from Stella Maris College in India. She teaches online design classes for the Maryland Institute College of Art and for Iowa State.
Why should people care about saving historic places? “They are tools for democracy,” she says. “Each place tells a unique story. We must look to the past to inform the future.”
Forthcoming Events
* March 1 to 31, 63rd Annual Needlework Show, with over 600 entries; daily except Tuesdays
* June, America’s 250th Anniversary Exhibit, the Quakers at Woodlawn
* Starting in April, Coffee and Conversation, every third Saturday, discussions with experts like John Garrison Marks, author of “Thy Will Be Done.”
Information
https://www.woodlawnpopeleighey.org/