The man behind that sober image on the one dollar bill and how he became a revolutionary comes to life in Mount Vernon’s new, remade Education Center in nine new galleries and six immersive media spaces.
“George Washington was not born as a man with a powered wig,” quipped Anne Petri, the Mount Vernon Ladies Association regent, at the June 11 opening.
Officials unveiled the redesigned, 21,000-square-foot museum and exhibit, “George Washington: A Revolutionary Life,” in conjunction with the nation’s 250th anniversary on July 4. “There would be no America without George Washington. America was made in Virginia,” Carly Fiorina told the audience. A local, Fiorina is the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission’s honorary Chair.
Doug Bradburn, Mount Vernon’s president, said that the new center is more inclusive and complete than the previous one which opened in 2006, one year before the first iPhone came on the market, he noted. The museum immerses guests into the 18th century and tracks how Washington navigated through life with images, media projections, interactive simulations, portraits, documents and objects. Included among objects never before displayed are the swivel chair that Washington used as president and his wartime camp bed.
The theme stretches beyond who this man was and explores the forces that shaped him and the challenges he faced at this pivotal time.
Visitors learn that Washington lost his father at age 11 and did not have the educational and other opportunities typical of Virginia’s landed gentry. Nevertheless, he set out to make something of himself. At age 15, he copied the Rules of Civility. Visitors can study the surveying tools he used at age 17, like a compass and tripod, that produced almost 200 surveys.
Exhibits spotlight Washington’s love of farming, not just production, but the science behind it. He believed mules were stronger work animals than horses so he bred mules and had 60 by the end of his life versus 20 horses. He explored ways to enrich the soil.
Washington wrote that slavery was his “only unavoidable subject of regret.” In a digital vignette, guests can be a fly on the wall inside the living quarters of an enslaved family and feel within arms’ length of an enslaved woman mourning the death of her baby and planning to ask Washington if she can be a midwife on his plantation.
Objects from the enslaved people’s living quarters provide glimpses into their lives, a chamber pot, a shoe buckle, beads, horseshoes and clay marbles. Enslaved people were the forced-labor engine of the 8,000-acre plantation, by farming, housekeeping, making bricks and horseshoes, building buildings and working in the distillery, for example.
Leader of the Revolution and New Nation
Museum-goers can almost feel the bitter cold of the 1777-1778 Valley Forge war camp where the General looms astride his white horse, Blueskin, and snow steadily falls in the background. For tactile and auditory experiences, people can rub a sample of horsehide and touch a button to learn Army drum signals: three thumps signaled the water call.
Viewing the presidential inauguration exhibit, with Robert Livingston administering the oath and Washington swearing in on a Bible held by Samuel Otis, today’s visitors feel like they are there in 1789, among the excited celebrants on a New York street, looking up at the imposing balcony scene. A thread-by-thread replica of the wool suit coat Washington wore at the inauguration hints at the successful rebellion: The British called its color “London brown,” but colonists called it “Congress brown.”
Washington invented the presidency. “The Constitution was his job description,” one panel says. Eschewing royal traditions, he wrote, “I walk on untrodden ground.”
The Dentures
Washington’s dentures never fail to intrigue. When he was sworn in as President, he only had one tooth. A New York dentist, John Greenwood, made the dentures of lead and animal and human teeth in the 1790s. Docents explain that the dentures were uncomfortable, probably painful, and complicated talking. Washington may be clenching his teeth in many portraits because of the discomfort, they say.
Visitors can also learn about the Revolutionary War in the 4D theater and youngsters can go back to 18th century life in a hands-on room.
Among the June 11 guests were Fairfax County Supervisor Dan Storck, Virginia Senator Scott Surovell, Virginia Delegate Paul Krizek and Sheila B. Coates, founder and president of Black Women United for Action.
The reimagined museum is a $20 million investment in civic education and Mount Vernon’s “birthday gift to America,” say Mount Vernon officials.