welcome to our annual symposium, the presidency and historic preservation is the topic for this year. these are hosted by the white house historical association, and this year we have the honor of having our partners, the national trust for historic preservation. my name is stewart mclaurin, and i think i know most of you here in this room. and i have the privilege and honor of serving as the president of the white house historical association. well, it's been quite a while since we have had the opportunity to convene here on our campus. everyone has been largely virtual in this occasion, has been so the last two years. but it's a real honor to be able to be under this roof and in the fellowship of people caring about the same subject as you all do here today. i'd like to begin by recognizing two members of our board of directors who are here. tham kind of hickam is going to

be here today. i don't see her yet. and john barrett is here today. and we have a large number of our national council on white house history who are here today, and you'll be meeting them during the interaction you have in these sessions, as well as the lunch. and they are a fantastic group of people, as well as our board members. and it is they who put wind in our cells and make our work possible. and we are so grateful for the support that we have from our national council, from our board and from all of you. i'd like to also thank two people who really were the backbone of all of this. dr. colleen sugar and dr. matthew costello, who from start to now finish have made all of this possible. and i'm very grateful to have them as terrific colleagues. they are the leadership of our david m rubenstein national center for white house history, which is the scholarly academic center of our work, our education programs, our digital

library, our historians, of course, and so much of the important work that is outward facing in pushing wonderful content like this out, not only to a roomful of people, but to people watching across the country. i'd also like to thank more fully than just mentioning them as i did earlier, the national trust for historic preservation, for collaborating with us to carter house, this extraordinary historic building that you entered through this morning is actually owned by the national trust. and we are very honored, in fact, humbled and privileged to maintain this as a co steward with them of this amazing asset and property and we try to take very good care of it as if it's our own. we don't treat it like an airbnb or anything. so we do take very good care of it and respect it for its history and for our wonderful partnership with you, paul edmondson and katherine malone, france you'll be hearing from today are extraordinary leaders of that organization and and

terrific colleagues of ours here at the white house, historical association. well, our organizations actually have quite a bit in common, as you both know. it is our mission, our values, but also in our origins. many of you will know, know of or at least recall or by reputation. remember david finlay, who was the first director of the national gallery of art here in washington. quite a force. he was also the chairman of the commission on fine arts, and he served as the found and chair of the national trust for historic preservation as well as the white house historical association. and it was mr. finlay, along with first lady jacqueline kennedy, who were instrumental in saving his historic lafayette park. and if you do not know that story, we could have a whole symposium on that topic alone. so i encourage you to delve in

to that story. it is really an amazing feat, an accomplishment that we should all be grateful for. had it not been for them, we would walk out, the carter house would not be there and this this park would be fronted by what we call the new executive office building on the park. it would have been quite a different landscape here in presidents park. so we're very, very grateful for them. so we're all gathered here today to talk about the topic of historic preservation and this symposium today will explore the intertwining story of the presidency of the white house itself and historic preservation. as many of you know, one of the most famous acts of historic preservation actually took place on august 24, 1849. and as news of the american military defeat out in bladensburg, marilyn had reached the white house. first lady dolley madison

ordered that the gilbert stuart painting of george washington to be saved upon reflection. and this was a very wise decision as the british later advanced on the city of washington entered the white house and set fire to that historic building. as you all know well, for decades after that incident, mrs. madison's acts of preservation became legendary and actually a bit of law. but like anything else in history, it is not all that appears to the eye or to the ear. mrs. madison actually did order that the portrait be saved, but there was actually a group of people that were instrumental in making that happen. looks like the group of people that are instrumental in making things happen at our historic sites today, names like paul jennings, jean pierre ceasar, thomas mcgrath, jacob barker and robert robert to piestewa worked to remove the painting from the wall, transport it out of harm's

way and only much later when jennings, who was actually a formerly enslaved man, detailed the event in his memoir. and it was only then that these events were fully detailed and that these other figures, these other lesser known names in american history, lesser known than dolly madison, received their due. now, of course, mrs. madison continued to call it the little narrative of picture rescue, in which she starred as the leading actress. of course. well, certainly she does deserve credit for her foresight, but it was these enslaved and free workers, along with two strangers who contributed to saving the very first portrait that was acquired for the white house. and i believe, melissa, that this still is today the only item in the white house collection that was in the white house when the adams moved in in november of 1800, is that correct? which is melissa from the

curators office of the white house, my resident expert on all things with the white house collection and that is quite amazing that you can still go into the white house today and they're hanging on the east wall of the east room. is this gilbert stuart of george washington with that amazing story behind it. and that's the first work of art potential, lee, that the adams saw when they moved into the white house in november of 1800. well, for the association, our efforts here to tell a more comprehensive and inclusive history begin at the white house and extend outward into the president's neighborhood here to decatur house where we are today, in february of this year, we launched several educational elements related to this property architecture will renderings of historic slave quarters in a new 360 degree virtual tour and projected silhouettes of three individual people with individual important

stories. charlotte to play. james williams and nancy side facts. these individuals these real life living human being people with stories and families and names and histories actually lived and worked here at historic decatur house. they were enslaved by the occupants. now, we're not talking about stephen. this was indicator. this came later to our knowledge that the carters were not a slave holders, but this came later in the history of the house. but it was a very critical part of the fabric and the story of the house that we are charged with, with telling here at the association. so we are grateful to our friends at the national trust for supporting this project with a nice grant. and i hope you all have the opportunity to visit the slave quarters, which are just above the shop here on the north side of our campus. they'll be open at the end of the day, or if you want to sneak away at some time at the beginning of the end of lunch, they will be open and we'll have staff there for you to to see

that. but more broadly than the carter house, we've also invested over six years of research on the history of slavery in presidents park. as you know, lafayette park was the work zone essentially for the james hoban, the a slave workers, the free workers, the european artisans that came to actually build the white house. and then the thanks to our historians and the research that they have done, we are delving into now the story of those who were enslaved, saved or high paid as slaves by nine of our earliest american presidents and actually worked in the white house for those nine presidents, nine president, it's either own slaves and work for them in the white house or they hired slaves from slave owners to work in the white house. that's a important and compelling story. we're also delving into the descendants of those people. my dream is to find a young lady in saint louis who had no idea

that her great, great great grandfather there worked right out here in this park. we've done some specific things. many of you have walked by the park. and thanks to our dear friends at the national park service represented here today by john stanwick, we've been able to put wayside markers at the north end of the park that tell the story of mrs. kennedy saving the park and the historic preservation of this space of the history of protest in the park and the story of the enslaved people and others who built the park. thousands of people walk across this plot of land every day without a clue as to what happened beneath their feet in history. and what's inspirational to me about this is these men, these enslaved people who toiled and sweated and bled to build the greatest symbol of american freedom and democracy today. and that is the white house. they worked right out here in this beautiful park, and they never dreamed it was beyond their comprehension that 230

years later, we would be sitting in this room honoring their work and their legacy and telling their story. and that's our privilege, is the white house historical association, on behalf of the american people to tell these stories, to remember these people. it's not all the daily madison's. it's not all the current former next presidents of the united states. and first ladies. but it's the people who work the melissa and the curators office, the johns in the park service, the others who work in that house, and all levels to to save it, protect it, preserve it, to honor it, and to tell the stories with us of it's rich and abundant history. so that's what we're about here in our mission. that's what we're here about today with this symposium and i'm looking forward to the panels as much as i hope you are. and i want to thank you for joining us today. and it is now my privilege to

introduce to the man that i have referenced two or three times, the distinguished leader of the national trust for historic preservation, and a paul edmondson. paul. thank you, stuart. appreciate that. on behalf of the national trust for historic preservation, i'd also like to thank you all for being here and being here in person. it's just so wonderful to see so many people brave the current environment that we're into to show up for these for this particular symposium. and i also want to thank stuart and the carter house for really expressing our shared commitment to the stewardship of this particular place and its environment, that the the wonderful surroundings that we have that are just, as stuart described, it's just steeped with history and the

interpretation of this place. and we'll talk about that further and you'll hear much more about that. i also want to thank those of you in the audience who are working with these wonderful places with historic places all across the country, but particularly those who those places that relate to the presidency, which are obviously key in our our our our combined history. stuart talked about lafayette square. it certainly would look a lot different today without the advocacy and the political skills of our jackie kennedy and as stuart noted, our shared founder, david finlay, who really was the quiet force behind historic preservation in so many different ways. together, they've worked as stuart indicated, to defeat a plan that was actually approved by congress. it was it was first proposed in the eisenhower administration, i

believe, approved by congress. it looked like it was going to go through they used their influence. jackie, obviously had tremendous influence. the plan would have replaced the low scale structures around the square today with really monument style office buildings. it's hard to imagine today and as stuart described, the history of this place so many people involved and you know, that experience would not be with us today. instead of the alternative design by by architect jon karl warnock, he leaves us with the the environment that we have today with really a powerful demonstration of the federal government respecting historic resources not only for their own value, but in the as as context for a new construction. and we see that all around us today also is as a prelude, i

think, to the national preservation act, which was enacted just three years, three years later, when president kennedy addressed the meeting of the national trust for historic preservation in october of 1963. he specifically praised the efforts of david finley at the white house and at decatur house and the national trust's work across the country, as he said, quote, to maintain and keep alive a very lively sense of the past. the trust was chartered in 1949, and since then we've been honored to work with many presidents and many first ladies to preserve cultural resources across the country. we're going to hear a lot more about first ladies in particular in preservation. but i think it's really telling to note that in 1966, when president johnson sent the national staff preservation act to congress, he attached the handwritten note that simply said lady bird wants it.

so it's also his very fitting that we're gathered here at the end of national historic preservation month celebration that we we have annually. it actually began here with the dedication of preservation national preservation week by president nixon in 1973. and it's not really well known, but president and mrs. nixon were really great champions of historic preservation and i would encourage you for an interesting take on an event here at the carter house proclaiming that first national historic preservation week. my colleague catherine in france has written a an article in the new issue of white house history, which is the journal published by the white house historical association, in which details this particular event. catherine, by the way, started her career at the national trust right here as curator and deputy

director of the carter house. she's got it in her blood as she carries out the full programs of the national trust. we've been the national trust has been honored over the years to play a role in programs like save america's treasures, which is known to many of you, which was begun by hillary clinton during her husband's administration and preserve america, which was begun by our trustee emerita, laura bush during her husband's administration. and it's really it's fair to say that the first ladies have played an outsized role in the development of historic preservation as a field, which you're going to hear more about later in the program. among the many surpluses we collectively preserve and interpret presidential sites across the country are particularly important. and i want to thank our friends at the white house historical association for their important leadership in convening this community of places through events like this, and also the

the presidential site summit that took place earlier this year in in dallas. and i also want to thank stuart for his leadership and the leadership of the association for working with us and preserving, as you heard, telling the full history of places like this in particularly the history of slavery, the courageous resistance to it here in decatur house and in the neighborhood. so that surrounds this important place and in all of this work and in the panels that you'll experience today, i think you'll see the fundamental vision of david findley and mrs. kennedy reflected the idea that preservation is not about freezing places in amber, it's about stewarding them in ways that allow us to change. allow them to change while still honoring their legacies. by doing that, we we ensure that they remain relevant to our lives today, and they help us define our futures together.

so now we're going to move right into our first session, and it's my pleasure to introduce brandon robinson. brandon is an independent historian and attorney based in durham, north carolina. he also serves as president of the conservation trust for north carolina and as president elect of the durham county bar association. so please join me in welcoming brandon to the stage for a first session. good morning. thank you, everybody. thank you, paul, very much. before i begin, i have to say how grateful i am to this association for the historic expansion of its reach, not just within washington, d.c., but within the united states and globally. i think if you think back to the last time we had one of these symposia right here in person, followed by kevin, even jacqueline kennedy would have been shocked at just how far her

association has reached. people all over the world, regardless of whether they will ever have a chance to see the white house. since 2017, i've driven 4 hours from my home in durham, north carolina, to attend these events book lectures and many other events at the associate session. and i can tell you two things. first, i've never been disappointed in my expectations of what this group, the association, can deliver. and whenever i drive back to north carolina on i-95, thinking about all the interactions that i have with people who love history, the way you do and people who interact with the association and support it. day in and day out, i always feel more optimistic about america than i felt driving up from north carolina. so i'm grateful to all of you for being a part of that. i would i would now like to introduce our first panel. this will be the theme preserving presidential sites, moderating this panel will be catherine malone, france, the

chief preservation officer of the national trust for historic preservation, which you know, is not only a co-sponsor of today's event, but is also the landlord of the white house historical association and a frequent collaborator, as you might guess. prior to her current role at the national trust, miss malone, france was the organization's senior vice president for historic sites, overseeing at least 28 locations nationwide. under her leadership, the national trust created a fund dedicated to the support of historic gardens and landscapes. and she also helped steer successfully a. $21 million capital campaign. and i'm in the beginning of a capital campaign at my alma mater. so congratulations on that. she earned a bachelor's degree in history from wofford college and a master's degree in historic preservation from the college of environment and design at the university of georgia. as to our panelists for this

session, it includes sarah bon harper, the executive director of james monroe's highland and albemarle county, virginia, just beside thomas jefferson's monticello, dr. bonnie harper is a ph.d. trained anthropologist with a background also in the classics and has lately presided over the discovery and re-interred protection of the architectural and archaeological remains of our fifth president's main residence. she is a graduate of both unc-chapel hill and my backyard in north carolina, as well as the university of arizona. and she was also a panelist recently in march for the presidential site summit in dallas. also with us today is dawn hammer, the director, the director of the dwight eisenhower presidential library museum and boyhood home in abilene, kansas. she has served in that capacity. since 2016 and has spent much of her professional career overseeing the building and design of museums and historical

exhibits with a particular focus on the security and safety of museum holdings. ms.. hamit holds a master's degree and musicology and museum studies from the university of oklahoma, as well as a bachelor of arts degree in anthropology from louisiana state university and last but not least, we have michael atwood mason, who is the ceo of president lincoln's cottage at old soldier's home, where some of you were last night for our reception. dr. mason holds a ph.d. in folklore and has spent 20 years prior at the museum of natural history, where his last position was director of exhibitions. dr. mason also served as director of the smithsonian center for folklife and cultural heritage, overseeing cultural and educational programs and leading the smithsonian folklife festival. and the smithsonian folkways recordings. his work has gained accolades such as grammy award, as well as recognitions from the congress

and at least two foreign governments. at this time, please welcome our moderator and our panel. thank you very much. well, it is. thanks. very. my last look like an autograph. thank you so much, brandon. and thank you also to stuart mclaurin to colin show again and to matt costello for the partnership in this symposium and in so many other ways. we're so grateful for that. you know, i am really honored to moderate this panel today with three panelists to are such leaders in the work to steward presidential sites. no presidential sites are

important signifiers of how we are preserving and interpreting historic places. more broadly, presidential sites can also be, and especially under the leadership of people like these powerful demonstrated ones, not only of how we preserve historic places, but why it is so vitally important to preserve historic places thoughtfully in inclusively and expansively. now, at the national trust. we think of preservation as the ongoing and evolving stewardship of buildings and landscapes and object acts and stories and the communities as associated with historic places. there's a powerful alchemy of all of these elements interacting across time, but

root did in a place. and there is absolutely no way that we could or should hold a place in spaces in a particular time period. the force of this work is to powerful for that kind of sort of artificial limitation. now, this isn't the way that everybody thinks about preservation. it's not the way that people have always seen preservation. but i think this kind of dynamic framing of preservation is so important and so true at presidential sites like highland and presently eakins cottage and the eisenhower presidential library and many others that are represented here today. preservation really is the work of active inquiry and of critical thinking. preservation is about discovery and it's about creativity. it's also about striking that

balance between continue witi and change. and preservation is not about the past. preservation is about the better future that we're building together. so with that active definition of preservation, let's get started with our panel and these three brilliant panelists. so as we talk this morning, i wanted to again focus on that that dynamic kind of preservation. so i wonder if each of you could talk a little bit about how the preservation and interpretation of your site has changed in in recent years, acknowledging that material preservation and interpretive preservation are intertwined. i feel like we have to start with sarah vaughan harper, not just chronologically, but because of the dramatic change in some ways at highly end. sarah, thank you. of course. thanks. it's a real pleasure to be here

amid such good company. thanks. so i think we have slides cued up to put some visuals. yeah. so highland here in central virginia, as you can see. is in a rural patch, rolling hills in a landscape. and people who come to our site talk about its authey, i feeling of being of being able to understand and what it was like in the past. we got a little bit more authentic if you want to advance, please to the next slide. for years, in fact, as early as 1885, the interpretation of this historic site was that this be a remnant wing of jamesght to monroe's larger two wing main

house from 1799. you can seeds now attached a farmhouse the back of this building was from the. 1870s, and i arrived in 2012 and started asking some questions about how the stories were told and in fact what they were based on. so if you'd like to advance, please. next slide, please. anyway, i can. i can talk with or without. there you go. and so we began the investigation opens both architectural and archaeological and jamaica, a long and fabulous story, short and probably no less fabulous. i hope we found interesting architectural details. but but really, astonishingly, the foundations of a separate

standing, a separate building which stood nearby, which was the actual remnants of monroe's main home. from 1799, completely separate from that little building that had been long pegged as holding monroe's legacy. of course, the the way that the little building played into monroe's public image should not be forgotten here. and the little vernal keeler structure added to a really erroneous narrative of a man who was unsophisticated and uncultured, unworldly, unambitious that could hardly be further from the truth. but what we found was that the the main house had been entirely destroyed by fire. and here it was, standing separately with really robust archaeological remains. and waiting to be investigated. next slide, please. and so we fou not only enough of the footprint to interpret, but also really goodnce the fire that destroyed the

home. it w cattrophic fire and it was really significante still we think during monroe's lifetime, there were no written records of it. but it was such that the. the whole house was destroyed probably late in the year of 1829. and monroe was still alive at that point. so it's kind of startling that the very popular former president's former home he had sold by then and was destroyed and was not in any newspapers that we can still find. so next slide, please. and we found enough of it to justify with the insurance maps and to be able to talk about its dimensions and potentially even what it may have looked like, which was a building that was not a mansion, certainly, but it would ve been outace on duke of gloucester street in

williams burg. certainly riat a 40 year old just about toe governor of virginia. and so really inappropriate home and really working back into understanding monroe's legacy. and so we interpret it at the moment with the outline of its footprint on the ground surface. next slide, please. and so following along, you're saying, well, what does that mean for the small misidentified house that had been there for this whole well, fortunately, we were able to look into various sources of evidence. the first of them being architectural, of course,nd next slide and also documentary, an image here of the written from september1818, monroe writing to george hay and the new exhibits that we have really exploring that letter, the building was a guest house and was ordered built by monroe and based on this very letter we

are able to say that it was built by enslaved men. peter mallory and george williams, and we're able to follow that story through the documents. and so this is the new interpretation. next line, please, that we have in the standing guest house this the new exhibition is opened lastepmber with news stories as the two original rooms of the guest house are period rooms. this ot you see displaying as though a travel h just arrivewing the guest activities and talking about political professionals who would have been the guests of that guest house. next slide, please. and an adjacent room we are showing in preparion as though it is being readied for the arrival of the presidentnd his guests. so that we're putting front and center the work that occurred

there at that moment and also the work that occurred there throughout on the landscape, during the time even that the monroe's were not there. and, of course, enslaved men and women and children were there during and for for longer than the monroe family. so our our new interpretation, really, this has given us the opportune unity. we have one more slide to to really show more about a complete story. if you advance the next slide, please, and how to interpret the really rich historwenter through to the presidential story into what i consider a story of u.s. history about this property and. that history is just inherently inclusive. and so we talk about the the various work and also the community, the non-work aspects of of what this site meant.

so we've transformed, starting with the announcement in 2016 and moving into these new exhibitions that really explore a new understanding of the site and i think are a new era for highland. absolutely. sarah i always love hearing you tell that story. it's such a dramatic example full of the evolution of a historic site, but one rooted in in material culture and in evidence. thank you so much. michael, president lincoln's cottage always been on the leading edge of historic sites and continues to be under your leadership. how was president lincoln's cottage continuing to evolve and change? thank you. and thank you for the invitation to join all. it's my my first visit to this august's gathering, so i'm very happy to be here. have the next slide, please. the next one to. so for tse of you that don't know, president lincoln's coage is about four miles from here, almost smacin the middle of washington, d.c., on

the grounds of the armed forces rent home. this picture gives some sense of its historic feel, and it stil looks very much lis today. we've been working very hard on evolving the preservation of the building itself and the national trust led the restoration of the building, which was completed about 70 years ago. and so now we are involved in two separate things. we are having to replace many of the things that were restored 17 years ago. so we just completely restored our veranda, which some of you that stand on last night. but we are also exploring other aspects of the history of the building. so when the restoration original restoration took place, there a decision to keep things relatively plain. and so we're going back and different aspects and making them more historically accurate. for example, with support from the trust we were able to

completely renovate the renew the vestibule on the main entrance. the other side of the house from this picture. but that project really allowed us toe a space that reflects much what we think it would have beenwhen president lincoln was there, including the faux graining, which i have to say, as somebody who comes from a different world, the idea that you would actually pay extra to have faux graining rather than the actual wood seems very strange to my aesthetic. but that kind of work goes forward. we're also wrestling with some very basic preservation issues. there's water intrusion in our basement, a adjacent to that vestibule, which is making lead paint flake. and so we're addressing those kinds of things. and there was an unfortunate money saving strategy was crushed.

gravel. any of you who were at the house last night will have noticed that there divots everywhere. because if you walk on this crest gravel when you when it's wet, it sticks to your shoes and that creates divots everywhere in the cottage in a way that's just excruciating for those of us who are caring for it. so we're working to preserve the place in a very ongoing way. and of course, that's that's the mission. can i have your next slide, please? so we're also engaged in a transformational program. and as we try to, our work really has focused on our interpretive work, has really focused on two different aspects. one, building empathy and really engaging the spirit of the lincoln who for whom this was a family home. for those of you that don't know the cottage. lincoln spent about a quarter of his presidency there with his family. and so that work of playing

games, of telling jokes, of reading literature, all of those kinds of everyday things are part of what we do. and we are always aware of the fact that lincoln was making incredibly important decisions there about the war and ultimately about the emancipate and proclamation. and so those themes run throughout our programming. like many of us, the pandemic affected, our interpretive tools pretty dramatically. and we developed lincoln letters as one example of how we did outreach to take this idea of the kinds of everyday life that the lincoln's enjoyed at the cottage out to people. and we had almost a thousand people around the world asking for for this subscription game, which is super exciting. and kind of the next slide, please, as we continue this

work, we're also engaged with our lincoln ideas forum of going deep around one of the issues this year. we focused on grief as part our grief anchd loss exhibit programming connected to grief and child loss exhibit that we ha and one of our speakers was one of the artists who created this memorial for all of the people who died of covid. that humanistic approach to the life of these amazing people remains key to the way that we're interpreting the site. could i have the next slide? unfold with a robust mailingues list and social media channels. we've g this amazing, tiny team of people who created a q and a a podcere we answer actual questions and it's a

brilliant idea. it's just brilliant. i mean, these amazing people on the team, we take a question that we actually get from visitors and we go down the rabbit hole and we explore in every possible way. we've just finished our four season. totally encourage all of you to listen to it. it's it will take you to places that you would never imagine and it really embodies our desire to encourage people to stay curious. so that's that's where we are at this moment and gives a sense of the evolution that we're going through. thank you so much, michael dorn. take us take us to a 20th century president and talk a little bit, if you will, about how the eisenhower library has changed in recent years and during the pandemic. sure. thank you. thank you for having me here. i appreciate the time.

so at the eisenhower presidential library and museum in abilene, kansas we recognized. can you advance the slide, please? we recognize the need. oh, you missed one. i'm sorry. i missed. this. oh, no, please. there is a significant part of this work around the unfinished business of the american republic that we're focused on around social ste and our signature tour isery focused on animating the space with stories of the lincoln's life and leads visitors biologically through a process of lincoln's thinking and struggling with the decision to to write the emancipation proclamation. the lincoln ideas forum often addresses issues of social justice, although it didn't this year and our students opposing

slavery program brings together young people to address modern humaficking. modern slavery to which young people are particularly vulnerable. and so we're encouraging people to live out the brave ideas that lincoln embodied when he was at the cottage. thank very much. that was important. thank you. now, let's see if it comes up next. there he is. that's my guy. oh, so at the eisenhower presidential library, we recognized that it was time to redo our exhibits. our exhibits had previous been done in a holistic fashion. about 40 years ago. and in the 40 years it was done room by room or case by case or gallery by gallery, which of course leads to a disjointed story for our guests. so we recognize the need to do a holistic approach.

and then next slide, please. we also recoghat we needed to tell the story, reinterpret not have a personal connection to world war two or to the eisenhower administration or to the 1950s. so those were the two sort of concepts that we worked around as we moved forward with a holistic approach to redoing our exhibits. so i have some before and after shots. just to give you a little idea. next slide, please. this is our lobby. you can see it's a little crowded and a little dark. next slide. and here is our renovated new modern desk. you can tell that the museum was originally established as a military museum cae of the safe patch that's in there in the terrazzo. this museum was actually begun before for the gentleman became the president of the united states. so they were building this

military museum. and then they had to hurry up and add on to it for a presidential section that sort of led to a little difference in the exhibits as well. and the next slide, please. in this ve small is our d-day planning table in our original or these these exhibits from 40 years o. the space allotted for the d-day planning table was quite small and it only allowed for the two in pieces to be to be put there. so if you go to the next slide, we have our current exhibit space where we insist upon a bigger space for the d-day planng table. we now have all of the leaves in that. we have and ten of the 12 chairs. so to be able to to exhibit this in its full range has allowed us to really talk about the gentlemen who sat around that table and the agendas that they brought and the skills that they brought to planning the d-day

invasion. and the next slide, please. this is the presidential gallery. you can see there's a lot of words on the wal and it was sort of maze like in its build. so quite frankly, you got lost and i got lost in it all the time. it was a square, but i got lost a. so the next slide is our modern hibit space. you can see we've opened it up. mid-century modern feel to it. that's the style of the original building. mid-century modern. and in this space, we are abl to interpret the story using some more up to date scholars ship on the administration in this capacity and the next slide. we also really intended to use can make his own words within the exhibit space. we felt ke we hadnoh audio

and written words of theirs to use their wordso eir story. they could do a much better job of it than we could. so thi is the quote thate decided to use on the wall. when you leave ike's military career and enter into his presidential career. so i think that's all i had to say about what? all right. well, and, you know, you touched a little bit on this, don, when you talked about focusing on a new audience. right. but i'd love to hear from each of you as you've continued to make these change, is what have been the response is of your audiences, your existing audiences and your your new audiences. michael, i know you're doing a lot of work thinking about those new audiences as well and how change in the site connects to them. can we start with you? we can. if the slides or can.

so i want to be very clear is that our audiences are respond with it. an enormous array of. feelings, really. i mean so so we do have visitors who are incredibly anxious about having to be confronted with stories about the enslaved people who worked and the free people who worked with president lincoln at the site. there are people who come to the site and do not want to have to wrestle publicly with these things. and so a conversation on a tour makes them really bristle in some cases, some people just discomforted. some people enter a kind of reverie l searching, and many of them we invite to go on our lae tos, which them to walk the grounds and reflect

in arent way have there are almost no objects in our museum and 's important thing for those of you who haven't been there that surprises many people and it enrages a very small number of people. i mean, really, really enrages a small number of people. and then many people find the stories just absolutely delightful. we we pull people into their imaginations. the space allows them to project that this fairly on adorns space allows them to project their own ideas and imagination. so it's a kind of it becomes the kind of theater of the mind which works really well. and that leads to a certain kind of delight and excitement. i will say, just as an example, we recently hired a new director of advancement who some of you met last night in the studio, the the unsuccessful runner up

candidate came for her second interview and she'd never been to the cottage before. and she said that the tour was just so emotional. i mean, that that kind of response is quite common. and so we're really getting this really wonderful range. i tend to hear from the people who are horrified and the people who are excited. the folks in the middle. i don't i get to hear less from because i have the next slide please. one of the things that we've been doing in the last nine months since i came to the cottage is really trying to develop deep working relationships with the local community. again, those of you that don't know president lincoln's cottage, it sits on the grounds of the armed forces retirement. there is a six foot fence and top of that six foot fence. there's a three foot fence that was put up later. i'm happy. say there is no barbed wire anymore on that fence. but as you walk, as you drive into the gate, there's a sign

that says no trespassing u.s. property. so there's a lot of mixed messages and the armed forces retirement home is conceptually very open to the neighborhood and practically not very open to the neighborhood. so we've done an enormous amount of outreach over the years, and i've really been focusing on this in the last nine months as part national poetry month. we held a poetry slam from the local high school, roosevelt high school. this surprises me. but the largest club at roosevelt high school is the poetry club, and it's not as popular as sports. but after that, after sports clubs, it's the most popular. so we had 150 people on an evening, a poetry slam. and if we can run the video, i'll give you a sense of something. this is always a community pulling this thing together. the students have been working real hard. the cottage is this amazing

national monument and it belongs to everybody. we are so excited to fill this space with poetry. we're so happy that you're here and this is your cottage to.

so we have a much longer version of this that actually has the voices of the poets. i didn't want to take up too much of your time, but it's for us to have these folks from the neighborhood. they're their families. and in the middle, there was an intermission and the deejay put on the wobble and you saw people dancing. the wobble, the the kind of delight in the space. this basic connecting with our local community. we really are at the basic level of connecting them physically to the space. and so this is this is important work that we're doing. so my goal thank you. that was such a what a joyful, all beautiful event and connection, as you said, of

people and place. don, how about you? talk a little bit with us about how these wonderful changes been perceived by your lately. we have, as we were developing the exhibit content, we recognize that we really needed to to meet the needs of three of our audiences. one was for our educators, come bring their classes. and when we surveyed educators locally, they said that they had two main problems in the classroom dealing with world war two. one is explaining the length and breadth of the war. and two is explaining global. what does global war mean? how does that you know, that doesn't make any sense to to a seventh grader in abilene, kansas. so we developed a lot of programs and exhibit pieces components. this is our main film that we real iended to meet the needs of the of the teachers in,

those two ways. soouan see that this is a film. it is projected from the ceiling. there's a little time mark a the bottom ofheircle. that's you know, it starts in 1938 and there's a globe and it has embedded video and audio. so there it expands and contracts with the with the battles. and it's it's really a good way of explaining those two things. the feedback that we've gotten from this has been very, very positive. as a matter of fact, i watched a class stand around it. one day. and those of you who remember world war two history, the soviet union was actually on the axis side at the beginning of the war. and then something happened and they flipped. and so in the film, the soviet union starts red flips to blue, and there was a classroom standing around. and this one young man says, oh, i wonder what happened in russia? and i said, that's why that is

why we do what we do. and hopefully he had a conversation with his teacher or hopefully he figured it out later on in the exhibit. but that was the reason that we do these things. that moment of curiosity. another one of our audiences would be military personnel. we have a lot of military service members. there's a few military establishments nearby. so we have a lot of service members who come to to see eisenhower's museum. and what we did for them was we really integrated the eisenhower military story. his progression through through the military, through his military career. and we get a lot of feedback from them. what we tend to get from our military guests would be stories of their own service, which means to me that this is a safe place for them to share their military experience. and then the next slide to meet the needs of some of our younger

audiences, those who don't remember the fifties right. we tried. we tried diligently to explain sort of the the the overwhelming fear of the fifties, the soviet expansion and the nlear war. i mean, those are things that our younger audiences don't necessarily understand. and so the cold war was was a way for us to to explain this to some of our younger audiences. and another place, next slide would be in the civil rights and schoolregation projects that eisenhower worked on. and i saw sool school group standing around this map discussing school desegregat and this young woman said, this is my story. this is where i am. this is where i am represented in thimuum. and quite frankly, it's a very emotional moment for us that that she had that personal connection. and those those were the reasons

that we tried to reestablish and reinvigorate the exhibit space. wow, don. yeah. creating those kind personal connections, which i think you're all doing such an important part of preserving and such an important outcome. so, sara, again, back to your dramatic change and how it was perceived. yeah. so i think we have if you go to the next slide. one of the biggest most impactful responses to our discovery in the news that went wide was that we got approached by a member of the community who said, my last name is monroe, and i think i have a connection. my ancestors were enslaved there. and so that conversation began and through time then, via a mutual friend, i was introduced to another member of that extended family, and we slowly grew into a collaborative

relationship. and now we have a council of descendant advisors who work with us on questions of research and interpretation and direction of where we want to go and that that first spark came of the news of our change. and so in our research effort and in, in the themes and the tones, the word choices of how we interpret the history, the council works through and in in the moment, moment is probably the wrong word. the extent and time of racial reckoning that we're in. having a group of descendants whose ancestors were either enslaved at highland or worked there after the civil war to really confer and to create the way forward. what is the right path? what is the right what is a right way? of course, there are many right ways to interpret these difficult histories, but we have

allies who are working hard with us and having hard conversations. and so we see image of a research meeting and also a public event where a panel of descendants met with city school staff, teachers and other personnel all over the course of two days. this is, i think, was our last pre-covid in-person event. so march two, 2020, with the city school charlottesville city schools coming to say, how do we have these conversation and about slavery and its legacies today? that's the really important point of bringing it forward. so next slide, please. and in our developing of exhibitions, if we could advance the slide, please, we also have input on how we interpret. you know, i chose this one not because i the moment that we

hung jared harris on the zubair wallpaper. i had to sort of stand back and just take a minute, but also because on this particular panel, we had input from the council. we'd like you to do a little more on liberia and what it means and what it means for the long history of, in essence, segregation or inequality in our country. and so that's just one example of the input, how we implemented it in what we're presenting today and to go forward. one slide, please. we also are doing public archaeology. you know, the public as a whole has been receptive of our change, which is big. we had dendrochronology or tree ring dating to say, yes, look, this this standing guesthouse is from 18, 18, not 1799. and it's pretty solid of a

theorem that we've presented here. so we haven't had a lot of pushback on that front. but the the bigger and more abstract question is we're changing american history, we're changing presidential history. and i have found and my bias, of course, as an archaeologist, that archaeology is a great entry point. you know, a lot anybody in the room, you know, i might hear someone who said, you know, when i was nine, i wanted to be an archaeal just yummy to many of you grew out of it and i but you know, the public comes in and archaeology is in a sense a friendly way to say, look, we're asking new questions and we're getting new stories. and, you know, look over my shoulder while we excavate here. look at this find and look at this area outside the where an enslaved woman named hannah lived. she probably worked in that

space as a cook and lived there with her younger children. her three youngest sons came with her in 1799. so we're able to have those comments just because we're digging a hole right here. we can say we're digging here because we want to talk to you about and archaeology and its interactive nature of public archaeology is we find a really effective way to bring people along and we're asking new questions and we're getting new stories. so one slide, please. so, you know, there's always interest in what we've got, you know, just showing a picture of one of our very good friends and supporters and board members who is always interested, but even less interested in folks come along, say, you know, what have you got? what do you tell me what you're looking at in the screen? and so there's a very concrete and fixed point of engagement of these news stories. and so we have found that that is effective. next slide, please. we're also a part of the college of william and mary in

williamsburg. and this set of discoveries and this reinterpretation supported by the mellon foundation is a great way for students of all backgrounds to come in and say, you know, these places are alive and they're alive with new questions. they're alive with new stories. and so i'm actually showing both uva students who are local and william and mary students and community members and the community engaged course from 120 miles away on our home campus. and who are they're looking at all the ways that our site is rich in research and rich in new stories and really planting the seeds for future investigation and future change, really. so don't expect what we're doing now to be the same as next time we're here talking about it. well, i mean, it's such a powerful illustration of historic places, of primary source, right? you keep reading it, you keep

reading it, you keep studying, discovering new things. it's a such a powerful idea. so that's a lovely segue into a last question for me. and then i think we'll open it up to the audience. i'm looking around for time keepers, but i guess if we could end with just a quick thought from each of you on what's next? how does your site continue to evolved on? sure. so we have next slide, please. we have i boyhood home on our property. this is where i grew up. he was born in texas. i'm not taking anything away from denison. we know he was born in texas, but the family did move back to kansas when he was still a small boy and he grew up in this house. this is where the house was. it wasn't moved. our campus sort of grew up around it. next slide, please. this is when i came home and this is his family on the porch. it's reminisce of another photo that the family did when they

were all children. and it just shows the importance of the eisenhower family as a family unit. and their home. the next slide, please. this is of my favorite photographs because the little girl in the front chewing gum is a friend of mine. yeah she lives in she lives in abilene. she grew up in abilene. she loves this photograph because i gave her bubble gum. the so the eisenhower home was open to the public in 1947 after the mother passed away. so it has been open to the public for a long time and for those of you who own stick built structures, you know that sometimes they need some love. so it's time to give the eisenhower family home some love. next slide, please. so our next project is some renovation. you see that love? lovely contractors fencing around the building. it is currently closed to the public. we are currently undergoing in some renovation projects. we are working on the entire

envelope of the home. next slide, please. there we go. we're taking the paint off. it looks a site. so we are taking off all the paint led by led paint abatement. we are re restoring the wood that's rotten and needs to be replaced. we are replacing all of the roofs. we are re glazing the windows and we are addressing drainage to make sure that it's draining properly away from the structure. i'm really, really honored that the national archives and records administration has recognized that this is an important project and has allocated funds for it while the building is closed. we do have a film on our on our website. the next slide, please. this is really, really and i recommend that you take a look at it if you have a chance. it talks about the family living in this very small home and what the family unit did you know to

to prepare ike for his future. it's really quite lovely. and i and and next slide i didn't know if i had one more. so this is actually lee, our campus. we have 22 acres, the boyhood is to the bottom left under those trees you can't see it. the building on the left is the museum and the building. the right is here is presidential library and. then over here on the right that you can't see also is his burial place we the place of meditation here as well. so to me this is sort of an encapsulation of his life where he grew up he actually worked to have this museum established. he chose to have his presidential documents in a repository here. and he decided that he and family should be interred on our site. so we're really honored to preserve what he wanted this property. thank don. michael, what's next?

the plessy lakeside, please. oops. sorry, i did it back a whole. i was proud of beverly wilson. clearly. thanks. oh, i think that's fair. yes. it's great to you. right. all right yeah. so that's definitely so what's next is is reinterpreting the rest of our site partly due to covid. we did the interiors of the guest house first. now they're self-guided. people can go through without being in a small space. someone speaking the whole time. so our exteriors. next slide, please. and basement spaces and we will be able to reinterpret all of these in the same breath, just about right because this is really to a woven together site

narrative that comes from one vision, one set of new information, one set of collaborations. we don't we have that incredible opportunity, not patching on new interpretation, but really putting it through. so this is long overdue for our site and it's really exciting. and next slide, please. and of course, more research. there is plenty to do we will not get bored, will not run out of questions to ask. so archaeology is one part of it. our documentary is going on and so that's all moving forward. and next slide, please. and one of the most important things that i'm on right now is our conservation efforts through a series of conservation grants and programs, we have increased fencing. we have our tenant, our farm tenant has there another fenced out. our streams are protected. we've just completed a riparian

buffer program. we replanting and removing invasive species and putting in native plants and shrubs and why is that important here? why are we talking about this really the the legacies of the historic property of the system. we think as the architecture we think of social, we think of health, of of this sort of political. but they're also land. they're the 200 plus years of farming and, the impact that those have had. so conservation efforts in terms of the land itself and then education and hopefully inspiration about. conservation is a really part of what we're doing moving forward. yeah, well, and landscapes are always a powerful reminder that we can't hold places in spaces as yes, it's absolutely impossible to freeze them. if you've ever weeded a garden that's in, that's it.

so michael, what is next at the cottage next please. thanks so as we're thinking about the future of the physical aspects of preservation and we are engaging landscape more that was partly in response to covid wanting people out on the out of the cottage and out on the around the space. we know abraham lincoln visited the landscape there the day before he was assassinated. so it's not irrelevant to story of the lincoln's and those landscape tours have been incredibly popular even if they are somewhat limited, the home will only let our visitors go. so far, we're working hard to continue cyclical maintenance on the building and visitor center as well, and we are exploring the restoration of the grand building, which is a an enormous

and somewhat daunting task. it's 350,000 square feet. beaux arts, that is completely mothballed that sits adjacent to president lincoln's cottage, our visitor center. and we have a couple of board members absolutely think that there must a way for us to take this on. and if any of you would like to make it $50 million gift, you can see me at lunch where we're starting a technical assistance panel with the urban land institute to get really, really professional advice about what it would feasibility implications and those kinds of things. and the will make a decision after we have that. so that's exciting regardless of which way we end up going. next slide, please, as we think about programming and interpretation and we're really i have a deep love of poetry.

president lincoln had a deep love of poetry. so we really kind of engage that you can tell from our poetry slam. we also hosted a poetry dialogue program this year with d.c. humanities fellows talking about the unfinished work of the american republic from their perspectives. that was a very powerful program i understand that actually had covered that day. we're also beginning to interrupt the preservation of our interpretation of the site has not done that in an ongoing so we'll be developing those programs in the coming months and marketing them to people like you who like preservation as separate from presidents so we know that people enjoy that we've got a great series of stories to tell and people do respond to that. so we're also again with help from the trust and an anonymous

donor undertaking community cultural assets mapping in the neighborhood just outside of the the cottages of racine those the word in spanish campus i guess is a good word in english. so just outside there's this very diverse, wonderful old community, petworth. and we'll be doing 200 interviews over the course of several weeks, which allows us to train some local students in heritage work in allows us to get to know our neighbors a different way. we get to leave a brochure about who we are and what we do in every of those houses and we will learn a huge amount of who the creative people in that neighborhood are, what's going on, and we can reach out to them and then begin co-curator aiding programming that's serving the needs of the people who live within. walking distance of the cottage.

some of you will ask yourselves, why are you just starting petworth? as one of my board members, did, our intention is to do the whole area within a mile of the cottage, but we need to do it in phases. next slide, please. our digital engagement here. i had this conversation, i think with you last night is is really interesting. the director who aaron masked, who is just an amazing museum and built an incredible staff and an incredible interpretive, embraced digital minimalism very explicitly and the board has said very clearly that they want us to raise our profile and social media seems like a straightforward way of doing that. it is the place where conversation happens now, where people are talking to each other about real issues. and so we're beginning process

of exploring how to do that in a way that is consonant with the spirit of our other interpretive practices, which are based on storytelling, based on dialogue and based on on real human exchange and that's for those of you that spend any time on places like tac, i have a 13 year old social activist, my house, who's on tic tac. this is not a i mean, it makes twitter look kind and gentle. i mean, really, these people are these teenagers are just vicious with each other in this space. that is not the space that we want step into. and so figuring that out is an important, important next for us and then figuring out how to partner with educational platforms whether that's the learning lab at the smithsonian whether that's some other

platform. we've talked about a bunch of different things, but we'd really like to make sure that the story of the and the story of president lincoln's time at the cottage is is shared out. and then more slide, i believe. yes yes, i meant to change that picture. sorry. we are looking back at what happened at the site during the time of george washington, who actually commissioned to the house we know he commissioned the house in 1840, moved in in 1842. the 1850 census shows that were three enslaved people living and working in the house. there is a map that shows an overseers house and a later map that shows four square buildings in a straight line directly adjacent to it for finding that would be a little challenging. and it'll be right in the middle

of the armed forces retirement homes golf course. so whether they will let us dig it up is a big question. but we really want to understand what was happening in that time again in terms of we have some people who are incredibly excited about this and some of our board members have said they think this will bring home new audiences to the cottage and. i keep having other concerns now. you know, lincoln has to remain the focus. so finding that balance, i think, is going be interesting as. we move forward, we're scaling up students, opposing slavery and we're exploring the possibility developing an activist boot camp that would really bring in engage them in activism, give them the tools to take their own brave ideas out into the into the public square. we're hoping to do that with. the coalition of sites of

conscience. so that would be an international effort. again, those are emerging emergent processes that we haven't fully thought. but that's that's sort of where we're headed as our strategic process. that is also exciting from from all of you three places to watch best practices all all kinds of historic places to see the way that yours are evolving and changing. to have time for great. we have time for some quest ins from the audience. so hopefully we have some good ones. can you. but yes, i don't have it. so i think do we need a mike? great. thank you. thank you. sure. no problem. more of a comment. i've been to all three of your places and, most recently highland and the people that you have hired to tell the stories are all spectacular. the that you feel in the

building is because you could ruin it. you could ruin a story with someone, staff members kind of standoffish or rude, but all three places it's amazing that you're all three here. and i can tell you that it was just a warm, wonderful welcome that i felt in each place. thank. thank you. i'll share that. i'll share that with the team. absolutely so i think we have a question here. oh, i just michael, i okay. okay. my name is mary and i was at the grief that was at the cottage and i thought it was just such a lovely, insightful way to bring kind of what the lincolns went through as a family, that home to a modern day space. just wonderful speakers and i, i appreciated appreciated the discussion thank you thank you so much. the question i see we've got one. we'll come back with and i oh okay. i can hold if you want. okay. yeah, i guess for don, my question is how having a living

family members of president eisenhower living descendants who remember that time and remember him affects what you do. that's a great question. thank you and it's it it's also in the our as well as i that that woman remembers that particular moment although she didn't who she was who she got bubblegum from. so i'm going to i'm going to talk about the local community first because it's really wonderful to have them come to us and tell stories about they remember when the funeral train was in town or they remember when the president came for whatever, whatever event. so i'm i'd like to sort collect those stories because i think that they're really amazing. the family have different stories to tell, right? the the president eisenhower has four grandchildren. they are all different, active both the eisenhower presidential library and the eisenhower

foundation, which is our support arm. it is to have them as i've had two of them already, give educational programs this year and a third will sort of wrap up our year. so frankly, to be able to call them and ask for information, to have them stories and insight on different aspects of the presidential administration has been really amazing. and i'm honored that they're a part of the of of what we do. thank you. i think we have one over here. and my question is sort of a follow on to that actually you most of the sites the presidents were deceased or soon to be deceased and so you and while there is living family for for eisenhower and there is living family but much much more departure distant but we have a

lot of living presidents now and what's the challenge going forward in trying to establish these kinds sites and preservation when you have maybe a conflict between what the family would like, what the president would like to be remembered for, and what history and what we want to start questioning about presidents and, their sites. how do you do that from a your point of view? you wouldn't want to take the first shot at that. no. it seems to me that the eisenhower actually is a sort of study in how this can be complicated. not that it's a historic site, but a memorial where there was deep conflict for years and.

a certain aesthetic by many of the neighbors that i'm i used to work two blocks away and everybody that i who works down town thinks it's not a very attractive way to honor anybody. and so i think that that's a super and of course it went through all of the required reviews and was approved by the the fine arts commission and all that. but it i mean, it's a very complicated there's no question about that. and i think my own sense is that all of these things require enormous of very close kind of micro of political engagement, this person and that person, this faction, that faction pleasing that organization and that's the only way you get these things done. and i think in some ways, i a place like highland or like president cottage, it's easy,

right? because it in that it was a home it's directly connected and it takes effort and you've got to build that excitement. you got to raise the money. but it's it feels a little easier to me than than living folks. but in truth, we that no matter where we work, right where there are all of the different stakeholders that we have to build consensus with no matter what project we're doing, no matter no matter where are there are different stakeholders our projects. so it's it's the same but it's family. so we all do it. it's just and the more people in the present problem. exactly. more stakeholders. well and always always have faith the place. right and the power of that place, the power of that place to tell us the truth about ourselves. but also the power of that place to be a location for coming

together and talking about in the best interest of that place and how to carry its legacies forward. but the end of the day always count on the place i've just 2 minutes, so time for one last question. i think we have one right here. i don't know who can get to her first. i just wanted hear about the grant building. i never heard of it and i'm wondering what it is and what function it serves. and tell me a little more. so historically, the grant building was built in 1905 or 1906. i'm sorry, i can't remember, but it's a beaux arts building that was built as a mess hall residence and community center for the 3000 veterans who lived at the home at that time. it has if we were able to

renovate it and i use the past subjunctive intentionally if we were able to renovate it, it would be the second largest open in in interior public space in washington, d.c. the downstairs mess hall is and this is a very technical term. it's jay enormous. i mean, it is it's it's an astounding building as there are gang bathrooms there are. 25 foot square. rooms where people were living. it's fourth floor. it's got infill in the atrium. i mean, it's it's it would be a wild adventure and really interesting. but it was historically built as a residence hall. in fact, when you walk into the main area, there's a place where the governor of the of the home would come and announce the

building or there's a balcony that looks out over the the amassed troops and they announce dinner was ready to start. it's a very dramatic place and well and the grant building is maybe a good place to end on the idea of untapped potential. still an historical venue that around of that around and three people leading the effort to realize that potential all at historic places so thank you all for your incredible work and stewardship thank you also for being here today thank you very much yeah.

our next speaker is no stranger to the civil war community kent masterson. brown was