The Washington Family

AUDIO CLIP

Transcript:

By the 1850s, George Washington had come to occupy an almost sacred, mythic place in American culture. This engraving, created by John Sartain, is based on an original painting by Edward Savage. Prints like this promoted an idealized image of national unity, but they obscure the reality that Mount Vernon was a working plantation sustained by the labor of more than 300 enslaved people.

This recording features Jennifer Van Horn, a scholar of eighteenth and nineteenth-century art, visual, and material culture, and a Professor of Art History and History at the University of Delaware.

Listen to the full interview here: 

FULL INTERVIEW