Enfilade

From Mount Vernon:

On the Eve of Independence: Art and Architecture in the British Empire
Online and in-person, The Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon, 31 May — 2 June 2024

In 1774, on the eve of the American Revolution, George Washington began a major expansion of his home, a building whose foundations dated to the 1730s. It was a project that he maintained throughout the war and that he continued after his triumphant return to Mount Vernon. Inspired by the work that began 250 years ago, the 2024 Mount Vernon Symposium will explore the art and architecture of the British Atlantic in the long-eighteenth century, surveying the connections between and comparisons of British and American practices in the years preceding and surrounding the American Revolution.

Speaker biographies and abstracts are available here»

f r i d a y ,  3 1  m a y

1.00  Welcome and Introductions

1.15  Afternoon Talks
• Cosmopolitan and Local in Colonial Boston: Copley’s House — Jeffrey Klee
• Britain Over the Blue Ridge: Architectural Impressions on Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley — A. Nicholas Powers
• Between a Handsome Finish and Sorrowful Discouragement: Black Craftsmen and the Making of American Architecture — Tiffany Momon
• Reimagining Hemsley’s Cloverfields — Willie Graham
• George Washington’s Mount Vernon: From Revolution to Revitalization — Susan Schoelwer and Thomas Reinhart

6.30  Reception, Mansion East Lawn / Mansion Open House

7.15  Dinner, Ford Orientation Center

s a t u r d a y ,  1  j u n e

9.00  Welcome and Introductions

9.15  Morning Talks
• Free versus Will: Craftspeople in Early Maryland — Brittany Luberda
• Sleuthing Out a Portrait: From Mount Vernon to the British Island of Dominica — Dorinda Evans
• Drawing the Lines of Revolution: Pastel Portraits, Boycotts, and American Independence — Megan Baker
• Disasters in the Eighteenth-Century North Atlantic: Art, Gardens, and Novel — Joseph Litts

12.15  Lunch, Founders’ Terrace

1.45  Afternoon Talks
• The Endless Round: The London Town House, Politics and Society in the 1770s — Jeremy Musson
• Enlightened Eclecticism: The Grand Design of the 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland — Adriano Aymonino
• The Transatlantic Design Network: Thomas Jefferson, John Soane, and Agents of Architectural Exchange — Danielle Willkens

5.45  Reception, Mount Vernon Wharf

7.00  Dinner, Mount Vernon Wharf

s u n d a y ,  2  j u n e

9.30  Morning Talks
• The Irish War of Independence and Burning the Big House, 1920–21 — Terence Dooley
• Tory, Whig, Empire: The Implications of Classical Style in the Early Modern British Empire — Sarah Hutcheson
• Public Architecture and Imperial Reform on the Eve of the Revolution: Governing the British Atlantic after the Treaty of Paris — Christian Koot
• Educating the Next Generation in Historic Trades and Preservation — Markus Damwerth, Christina Butler, Joseph Zemp, and Steve Fancsali