Photography courtesy of the Missouri History Museum and Mount Vernon Ladies' Association
The Washington of the dollar bill—with his wooly hair and bulging mouth—has become so mythic he pops up more on Halloween than on Independence Day. That numismatic portrait is based on Gilbert Stuart’s 1798 portrait in oil, currently on view as part of “Discover the Real George Washington: New Views From Mount Vernon,” a multimedia exhibit on view at the Missouri History Museum (Lindell Boulevard and DeBaliviere Avenue, Forest Park, 314-746-4599, mohistory.org, through January 27). That painting, however, is by no means the centerpiece of this show. In fact, the aim is to push aside that iconic image in order to uncover George Washington, human being. Three life-size wax figures depicting Washington at 19, 45, and 57, built by a team of forensic anthropologists, artists, curators, and spatial modelers, give you the uncanny feeling of being in his presence. And 100 artifacts from Mount Vernon, from the surveying tools he used as a teenager to his blocky, poorly fitted dentures (made from bone, not wood) help you understand his day-to-day life. You can sit in a reproduction of his pew at Pohick Church, read his thoughts on religion (he was a very tolerant Episcopalian), and watch short videos produced by The History Channel that both dissect his genius as a military leader and unflinchingly look at his cowardice in dealing with slavery. You’ll walk out feeling like you know Washington a whole lot better. And you’ll walk out feeling like you understand America a lot better, too. We spoke with Hannah Freece, on staff at Mount Vernon, about the ins and outs of the exhibit.
So St. Louis is the second-to-last stop for the show, before it goes to Las Vegas in late winter. What’s the reaction been so far?
Our goal with this exhibition was to share the story of George Washington and his life with people who maybe can’t come out to Mount Vernon, in Virginia, especially schoolchildren. So we’ve had a wonderful response from school groups, or families coming on their own.
So what was the genesis of the show? It’s a little different than what St. Louis has seen before, because it has this forensic piece to it.
The idea was to have the curators who work here at Mount Vernon work with historians, and clothing historians, and forensic anthropologists too. The goal was to imagine what Washington looked like in his younger years, but he wasn’t famous so we don’t have a lot of portraits or depictive records. My understanding of the process was they studied the portraits and sculptures that we know were taken from life, and then digitally scanned the three-dimensional objects, like the life mask that was taken from the Jean-Antoine Houdon bust of Washington. We took a lot of measurements of the clothing we know he wore, and the dentures, and put all that data together. Then, of course, we had to do some age regression estimates, because for instance that life mask was taken in 1785. So that again is showing him later in life, as an adult, so we needed to peel back the years to create the earlier figures.
They’re very realistic. They kind of make the hair on your neck stand up a little bit…
[Laughing.] Well, hopefully not too much!
No, no, I mean that in a really positive way—they just have a real presence to them. Which is important, because, like the first panel in the exhibit notes, he’s become this iconic figure like Santa Claus or Elvis, and people don’t relate to him like he was a flesh-and-blood person.
Yes, I think so. And yeah, that was the point, we might see his face every day on the dollar bill, but we don’t think about that person as a living, breathing human being who had successes and failures, and strengths and weaknesses. So much of what we try to do as historians is try to remove a sense of the inevitable in history. George Washington didn’t know how things were going to turn out in terms of the founding of the country, and the revolution, and all of that. It was, I think, making those figures so lifelike, that helps the visitor imagine what it was like to be in his shoes when he didn’t know, as a 19-year-old, what his life would hold And what some of those formative experiences might have been.
The figures themselves were created for the Donald W. Reynolds Museum and Education, which opened at Mount Vernon in 2006. And that was the first time we really had gallery space…we’ve always had the mansion, and the historic landscaping, which is really wonderful, but it didn’t provide a place to talk about Washington’s experience in the war and during the presidency, since those things didn’t happen at Mount Vernon. So having galleries has allowed us to do that, and to do things that are more family-oriented. But it was the success with the figures in the education center that lead Mount Vernon to take the exhibition on the road.
This exhibit seemed to do a really good job of handling the sensitive topic of Washington’s owning slaves, and that he wasn’t exactly heroic on that count, even if he was more forward-thinking on the issue compared to other people of that era.
The goal was to present that information in the most straightforward and honest manner possible. There’s the video where we have curators, and historians, as well as some of the descendants of Washington’s slaves speaking about how they view his legacy in that area. It’s obviously a complicated subject that’s still hard to talk about today. I hope people can get a balanced from there.
So have you had people who have seen the show in other cities, and then decided to make a trip to Mount Vernon?
I don’t know; I have heard, anecdotally, people recalling coming to visit Mount Vernon as a child, or earlier in their life during a vacation, who have enjoyed seeing some of the objects in our collection and ideas that we talk about, but in their hometowns. We have about 100 objects in the exhibit, which includes the figures, which are not historical artifacts, but they are anchors of the exhibit. A lot of the things duplicate what we have on view here all the time, so they’ll come back to Mount Vernon and be rotated in. And then a lot of the artifacts will come back and be on view. Our full set of Washington’s dentures is in the traveling exhibit, so what we have on view at Mount Vernon right now is a different set that we have on loan that’s just a lower denture. So when the exhibit ends we will get the full set back on view.
So if people do decide to make a trip to Mount Vernon, anything to pass along to them before they visit?
Even if you’ve been before, it’s worth another visit, because we’ve expanded the number of things you can do. You can visit the mansion, which is in a constant process of re-interpretation and re-installation to reflect different seasonal changes. But we also have the pioneer farm, the re-created treading barn, the grist mill, the distillery…you can learn a lot not just about George Washington, but about farming in the 18th century and the way plantations worked. There is also the museum and education center, and we have all kinds of things on view that cover the breadth of Washington’s life and career.
And what about enticing people who might be waffling about whether or not to make time to see the exhibit at the museum?
I think when you walk through, you will think about Washington in ways you haven’t before, if you’re used to just seeing it on the dollar bill and you don’t think much more about it. It really does look at him as a living, breathing human being and also just being an election year, there are so many debates about the role of government, and the role of president, that are very familiar to us today. So many of the things we take for granted about the way our political system works were established during Washington’s period, and because of Washington’s leadership. So it’s particularly resonant right now. It’s one of those things that’s very challenging to judge by contemporary standards, but one thing I do think is interesting is he was very concerned about party politics towards the end of his presidency and political career. He was concerned that such a divisive political climate could tear this very fragile association of states apart. When I was in St Louis installing the show in October, leading up to the election, I was just imagining what he would make of the tone of politics today. It’s interesting also to look back on his earlier experiences, before the presidency, to get a sense of where he was coming from, just as we look at political candidates today, and what shapes them.
Finally, do you have a favorite part of the show?
I think that would be the part where we talk about presidential entertaining and dining. It’s right near the swearing-in figure, the last figure in the exhibit. And it’s interesting for a couple of reasons. You have these fine wares that are decorative and beautiful, but there is a lot more going on behind it. It was important to him that as a new nation, and as its first president, he and Martha Washington entertain with a certain level of refinement and sophistication so they could be seen as culturally equal to their peers in Europe, and not be seen as these colonials with a lesser education—and he was primarily self-educated—and less sophisticated. He tried to buy, after a certain point, American and French goods rather than English goods. Whereas most colonists in the 18th century would have bought their luxury goods, like ceramics, glass, and silver, from England. As political relations evolved as they did during the revolutionary period, he tried to buy American where he could. But America did not have a very strong manufacturing presence in those early years, so you would still need to import things from Europe. But it’s a great example of how you can look at something and think, “Oh, that’s pretty.” But there’s really a lot going on behind it, politically and socially, and you can learn a lot from the time period from it.
