Thelen: [Feedback] Now why does it doing that, is it because the mics are too close to each other? That seemed to be… Franz
Thelen: So you will use it? Charles
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Thelen: So you will use it? Charles: Absolutely. The Wall Street Journal for a while was doing very interesting reviews. Phil Kenecut here does write interesting reviews. I have not seen his byline so much lately. He wrote a very nice one of the train station at Montpelier. The Washington Times actually has done some very good reviews in the past I do not know they are doing now, they are not a newspaper I read. We have had some good reviews out of Newsweek and things like that. They are reviews for the project. If they are cognizant at all about the design, they are very good. You started to ask about academic reviews. Thelen: That is another category. Charles: I have not looked at the reviews we have had or even the one for We the People, I ought to relook at it. The academic reviews in general that I read tend to focus more on the content then how it is delivered. Thelen: That is interesting. Charles: And so they are less likely to focus on what we are doing. At least that is my perception, I have not even - I do not even know what we have done that has been reviewed lately in an academic context. Even Curator Magazine, and the DIA is partially responsible for this, they did a whole issue on the reinstallation of the Detroit Institute of Art, but did not focus at all on the design. The ideas, the big idea and that kind of stuff. It is nice if somebody thinks what we did is good, but it is not like it is going to make it or break us like a New York show review or a review of an actor or something. But we do have Paul, at the Washington Post. They have a lot to learn. Thelen: So does the Washington Post have a lot to learn. That is interesting. So it is not really a central… Charles: It is central to the client, let me put it that way. Thelen: So how would that matter? So if you had good reviews… Charles: Good reviews would make the client feel. Thelen: Would make the client want to hire you again? Charles: Sure. Monticello, it was, as we were actually working on it, I remember a discussion where Susan Stein said, “I wonder what Ed Rothstein is going to think of that?” It is very important for the client to get good reviews. So that would put us in a good light as key players. Staples: But we have only had one bad review. Thelen: And you can trace additional business to the client feeling happy about everything? Charles: I do not, I mean I think it would be more likely… Staples: I think the Montpelier review was in fact what helped us the next level. Charles: I am not sure I would say that. I think that they were internally extremely pleased even without the review and that Tom and we worked very well together. Thelen: Is that the feature I read in a Washington paper? Charles: Yes, Washington Post, could be. A half page or so. Thelen:It talked about how you had framed, segregated. I did read it. Charles: I could look for it, if it was in the Post it was Phil piece. We were not mentioned, but it was a lot of it about the guts of Montpelier doing it at all. A few segregated sites surviving. Thelen: I mean that was risky was not it? For you guys to say we are going to feature segregation. Charles: Not for me. For Montpelier, I had heard through actually through an AV group that we know that had heard about the job and thought it was going to be a much bigger job and Salvi had actually tried to pitch them. Salvi actually told me about it. Then I met Lynne Hastings at a conference and we were on the same panel and I asked a little bit about it. And she said, “we cannot afford you.” I said, “yes you can because I want to do it.” I think its important little, well I did not say little to her, but I think it is an important project. So we agreed on price to do it and we did it. I think a negative review would probably be much more harmful in terms of repeat business, but either you get a good one or a bad one and we have essentially gotten good ones. Staples: Or none. Thelen: That is good. I know how rarely they review any museum exhibits. Charles: So that whole review thing. Who was it from Indiana who was heading up the reviews? Thelen: It depends. There are different teams on different times. Charles: There was a guy we met who I know was at Indiana that I liked a lot. Thelen: When was this? Charles: Back when you first started doing this, so early eighties, late eighties. I will have to look it up on a list. Thelen: The way we did it, the Journal of American History had what we called contributing editors and so they managed that. Charles: So who… Thelen: Who were the contributing editors who managed reviews, you are asking me, I only appointed them. Charles: I will have to look it up. Thelen: I will think of this. Charles: Who then asked me periodically to let him know when shows were up. Thelen: Could it have been Edmund? Charles: No. because he’s (inaudible) I do not know who it was. I did for a while have a list of to give people. Thelen: Tom Sharlif. That’s who it was. Charles: Tom I liked a lot. Thelen: The first one. He’s terrific. Charles: For a while I had a list of what journals, if a client had a list of besides the WVanishington Post and the New York Times who should I be sending information to about the show? I had a list of your journal and other ones, try to get the word out. Thelen: This has been great. I am sorry for all that confusion. Charles: Do you have enough memory left for tomorrow? Do you want me to download that just in case? Thelen: We can download it. Charles: But I will not take it off. Thelen: But we will not know. End of Track One. Thelen: Start, start. Natural. We were talking about historical empathy. Whether, in what ways Barbara feels she might have put people, you might have imagined putting people in the shoes of the past, like Sally Hemings. I remember at an earlier time you talked about looking up what Jefferson had said about her at dinner parties. Charles: Well he says almost nothing about her. Thelen: Well that is what I meant. Charles: He says virtually nothing. I do not think, to the extent of literally reenacting and so on, we have never been involved in that. Trying to [pause] it is a very interesting question because if we have tried to use empathy it would be more in, I think, the choices of stories, who do you try to talk about. Thelen: And why? Charles: And why. Maybe an example is, and it was, you know, a group decision, I cannot say it was so much mine. Is that your coffee? Staples: It is. Charles: Would you bring me one? Do you mind? Staples: Now you know what a Mexican standoff is like. Charles: At Crossroads, Monticello of course has the great man Thomas Jefferson there. One of the three areas that, as we worked with them since the late 1999, we were first asked to look at a visitor experience and think about it. [background noise] One of the three key areas is the plantation and the people of the plantation and how to convey that these are individuals, these are individuals with choices and who they are, not just monolithic slaves. [excessive background noise] And certainly at Monticello you have interesting collection of people. Thelen: You do. Charles: And quite well defined, increasingly written about of course by Annette Gordon-Reed in particular. Sally is the one everybody gets interested in. but Sally is part of a huge family, the Betty Hemings family, let us call it that. In the new visitors center one of the things we decided to do, and when I am staying we here, it is very much Susan Stein, Elizabeth Chu, Justin Seriphin when we are working on dependencies. Thelen: Who are these people exactly? Charles: Susan Stein is the senior curator at Monticello and vice president for Museum Programs. Elizabeth Chu is curator. Justin Setiphin is Associate Curator, I think is his title now. And the fourth person would be Krista Destada, who has, is working now on Mulberry Row, on an assignment and worked on the visitors’ center. Thelen: I am sorry I distracted you. Charles; But that is important, I think. At the visitors’ center in the exhibit To Try All Things, Elizabeth Chu was the curator of that project and it is the idea that Monticello is an experiment. It is actually called Monticello’s Experiment to ‘Try all Things’ is a Jefferson quote. In that one, we wanted to get across the slave community and Jefferson’s relationship to it. Within the exhibit we have fourteen or fifteen different people that we have done little bios on, probably about two thirds of them are slaves and others are a granddaughter and a couple of other people visitors and friends and so on. There when we had a picture and only in a few cases we did, we included a picture. When we had a signature of somebody like say John Hemings who is literate we used his signature to make the point… Thelen: That he is literate. Charles: That he is literate. Isaac they have a picture of, so we have a picture of him. We used quotes when we could or quotes about people when we could not. The first choice was always be from their own words rather than Jefferson’s words, if we had that choice or somebody other than Jefferson commenting, if at all possible. And within that exhibit there are two family trees, one is the Jefferson white family or as I think now the descendants say, the family of the daughters of Martha and then the two daughters, Martha and Maria. And the other is a family tree of Betty Hemings, of Betty Hemings and her descendants were eighty enslaved people at Monticello over the years. Betty and the ones who were alive at the time were inherited when Jefferson’s father-in-law, John Wales dies, and they come to the plantation. And I guess one or two of them, Betty Brown, Betty Hemings oldest daughter, actually comes with Jefferson’s wife. Sally is one of the fifteen people that we talk about in that exhibit. There is very little documentary record about her. In another part of the exhibit we do have some of the cartoons, one very vicious one of Jefferson and Sally illustrated… Thelen: At the time. Charles: 1801. I would have to find it, but it is not very nice. To me, as much as, we have a lot of archaeological pieces. What was actually very interesting in the archaeology was a household like Betty Hemings’ household has finer china than the white free workman’s household and china that is not from the main house. There is no overlap with the idea that pieces as they were chipped were handed down and went to the slave families. The slaves are buying their own china for themselves. Thelen: Let me ask you the question that always interests me. Would Jefferson say he was in love with Sally? How do we standing now, deal with the possibility that there could be love between a plantation owner and a slave? Or between a slave owner and a slave? And if that question is hard, if you want to change the question do it. Charles: I think Annette Gordon-Reed says there is no reason to be doing that. I do not want to be putting words in her mouth. Sally is a half-sister of Jefferson’s wife. Thelen: Okay, I think we are going to Mr. Freud here. Charles: She was reportedly very beautiful, she is certainly legally a slave, although after Jefferson dies she is neither sold nor officially manumitted. To have been given her freedom officially I think had issues about having to leave the community and so on, could well have. Although some of the men did not, so I do not quite understand that. So Sally is allowed by Martha, the daughter, to live out her life in Charlottesville on her own, well with family in Charlottesville. Thelen: Did she ever reflect later? Obviously she well might have, but we do not know. Charles: Not that is documented. I do not believe that the writings - I have not, it is either Estis or Madison, one of the sons writes about the relationship. I do not believe that I have ever read about the quality of the relationship. Thelen: That is what I guess I am asking. So you, as a designer of an exhibit, would you raise that possibility at all? Would you invite the visitor to think about whether or not, or in what ways this might have been a love? Charles: I think that is going…I think if it was in an exhibit, maybe in an exhibit about relationships of masters and slaves because I do not think I would necessarily do it at Monticello. I think there is just too little evidence and it would be taking speculation in ways. There are many examples, obviously, of relationships of masters and slaves and I even read recently of a novel that a woman has written and is based on something she read about a resort near what is now Wilburforce Ohio, where masters and their slave mistresses went to this resort even though it is in free country, but it was away from where they lived. They all knew what was going on. In that case, is it that much different than a paid mistress of another decade? What we did go further, I think, Monticello of course, given who is the owner of this house originally and so on, has walked carefully, but I think very honestly and forthrightly in trying to deal with this whole issue of paternity and relationships. So it was a big step in To Try All Things to just put this all out there. And say, “here are two family trees and Jefferson’s on both of them.” And in an exhibit it is very hard to say probably, possibility. Thelen: I was wondering about that. Charles: When you have to draw family trees, he is either - he is there or he is not there. And you can either do a dotted line or a hard line, and we did do some of that. We did dotted lines for particularly the relationships when it was not one hundred percent certain who the father was but the relationship for Jefferson on both, a hard line was used. The text is, in effect, most historians today and based on historical documentation, DNA et cetera believe that Jefferson was the father of either four or six children with Sally Hemings, so it is pretty straight forward. The next exhibit was after the visitors’ center opened there is a new small exhibit called Crossroads. We have always talked about over the years, as we have worked on the dependencies which are the areas underneath the main house. There is the kitchen and the washroom and the privy and different things. The way that the house is laid out, everybody is crossing at this center area there. The kitchen you have to bring the food to get up and the wine has to come this way and the wash has to come down. Not only that, if you, if Madison came he would be dropped off at the east door. His slave horseman would bring the carriage around or his horse if they had ridden around put them in the stable underneath and certainly would have come in and talked with the slaves who were all working in the crossroads. This had to be both a place where it is a crossroad for the Monticello based slaves, but where all the outside news and so on is coming in. We had the opportunity after the visitors center was done to do a small exhibit in this area. It had an old archaeology exhibit they took it out and so on. There for the first time we talked about specific people and we had illustrations drawn of specific people for whom we have no photographs, no portraits. One is Martha the daughter for whom we do have a portrait, but the other five are slaves, including Burwell who was the maitre’d and the senior slave in the house who controlled keys. We had Aunt Pricilla Hemings who was John Hemings wife. We had Betty Brown, the oldest daughter of Betty Hemings. We had Isaac, a young boy who was about ten. We had picked a date, probably 1909 when Jefferson is back from the White House. Isaac works for Burwell carrying water, wood et cetera. And we have Harriet Hemings. Harriet is Jefferson’s daughter. Harriet, and I am blanking on her brother’s name, but the two older children who survived that are Jefferson and Sally Hemings’ children were in a sense given their freedom. They were given money and they were sent North. As hard as everybody has worked to try and figure out what happened to them, there is no evidence about what happened to them. There is a presumption particularly for Harriet, but maybe both of them that they passed into the white world. So we had drawings done, we decided the age, what they are going to look like, what clothes they are going to look like. We used archaeology pieces that may or may not have belonged to these people. For Isaac he is carrying a bucket of water and we have a bale handle. Let me go get the pictures. [far away] Bob are you joining us?
There were discussions of how slaves were described in this period, whether you are bright or mulatto. There were discussions also that John Hemings as Sally Hemings’ brother would have been quite light skinned and it would have been unlikely that Pricilla, his wife, would have been too dark. These were all part of the discussions in trying to decide how to illustrate these people. This was a major step for Monticello to illustrate people that they did not have physical descriptions… Thelen: They must have been ambivalent about that. Charles: No they initiated it. Thelen: They said we want to do mock ups. Charles: We have been talking, we have been working on the dependencies with Monticello since ’99 when we did this visitor study. Over the years we have talked about how do we get people in here. It is like baby steps. Finally this seemed the right time to do this area. Thelen: Hang on, you said visitor study, what was that? Charles: We did a study for Monticello, we were hired in 1999, I think we completed it in 2000, maybe March of 2001. It was to look at what the visitor experience should be at Monticello. They were beginning to plan for a visitors’ center. They did some exit interviews primarily with visitors to say, “why did you come here, what were you expecting, what were you hoping to do.” They found out that people were not staying. People felt they were not getting as much of an experience that they wanted. They did also other interviews with people who some of them had been to Monticello, some had not been, where they found out that people were willing to pay considerably more if they got a better and longer experience. There was certainly a feeling as one person put it, “it is a little hard to talk about liberty when you are looking over Jefferson’s bed.” Thelen: That is a good way to put it. Charles: How do you get this broader story across? So in the process of that study, working very closely with Susan Stein and others, but primarily Susan on the content part, that was also based on earlier work they had been doing internally. The goal was to come up with three main themes. The question is whether I have got them here or I am going to paraphrase them. Basically, one theme was about Jefferson and the ideas and ideals that he gave to the nation, certainly in drafting the Declaration of Independence and so on that have expanded, the Freedom of Religion Act in Virginia, that had expanded and influenced people around the world. The second is about Monticello particularly the physical Monticello that is a world heritage site and the only home in America that is a world heritage site. Dealing with the whole architecture and significance of that house. The third is about the plantation and the community of the plantation, the whole people of Monticello, the families of Monticello. The plantation and that this was an economic entity and how does that all work. Thelen: Did Jefferson think of them as the family? Charles: He - in 1776, there is a little list where he on one hand is listing on the left who were getting beds and blankets. Betty Hemings gets a bed and who gets blankets and so on, but on the right of the list is - he entitles it the souls in my family. He lists the free souls and the slave souls. Thelen: The souls in my family, singular. Charles: In my family. Thelen: So if you were thinking of presenting the families of Monticello and you have him calling it the family, how, I see a difference there. How to present that to visitors? Charles: We did not interpret it. We label it. We have an area [pause]. Thelen: It is on, I could stop it. It is a very good question, I would think. Directory: 2012 2012 -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? 2012 -> Annual InStructional unit plan 2012 -> University of Hawai‘i Maui College dental assisting program review october 21, 2013 2012 -> Committee on the rights of the child the rights of all children in the context of international migration 2012 -> Background on the Haitian Earthquake 2012 -> The Collected Wisdom of Science Olympiad Coaches 2012 -> Federal Communications Commission fcc 12-81 Before the Federal Communications Commission 2012 -> Aa and na members Dying from Tobacco 2012 -> [Baby Crying] 01: 04 [Ching Download 0.61 Mb. Share with your friends:
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