The name George Washington, for many Americans, evokes only one image of the first president: the silver-haired statesman staring stoically from the dollar bill.
At Mount Vernon, that portrait is just one ingredient of the first president. With a set of exhibits that opened Friday, the sprawling museum on the site of Washington’s estate has set out to show a more complete Washington.
Thousands of visitors took in Washington as entertainer, as family man, as slave-owner, as botanist, as outdoorsman, as entrepreneur — all of which stand alongside the classic concepts of him as soldier and president.
“Hopefully, people come away with a better understanding of him as a whole person,” Assistant Curator Gretchen Goodell said.
The more than two dozen new galleries and theaters represent more than a decade of planning and $110 million in fundraising, according to museum officials. The expansion is split largely between two major components: the Ford Orientation Center, which features theaters showing an 18-minute adventure film that touches on key moments in Washington’s history, and the Donald W. Reynolds Museum and Education Center, which showcases an exhaustive collection artifacts from Washington’s life and times.
After the fanfare of opening ceremonies on Friday that included historical re-enactors and a speech from historian David McCullough, a thick and steady stream of visitors filled the new halls. They lingered in exhibits that ranged from the mundane — an original weather vane — to the flashy — a collection of three life-sized wax figures of Washington at different ages.
The museum isn’t completely a deification of Washington, and some of the exhibits take a warts-and-all approach to history. One case is devoted to his inconsistent, conflicted views on slavery, including a detailed inventory of his over 300 slaves and an advertisement he bought in a newspaper telling of his escaped slave “Marcus.”
“He absolutely was a slave-holder,” said John Rudder, a curator for books and manuscripts, who noted Washington’s moral struggle over the practice later in life.
