The Donald W. Reynolds Museum and Education Center at Mt. Vernon, Mt. Vernon, VA

Exhibit and media concept design and development, research.

Exhibit studio: Christopher Chadbourne and Associates, Inc., Boston, MA.

Intended primarily as a post-tour experience, the Education Center provides an overview of the life and accomplishments of George Washington, a look at not just what he did, but the events and processes that formed this self-made American icon. Entrance to the Education Center was past a large-scale reverse-relief of Washington’s face, actually taking the visitors into “Washington’s head.”

Not just a retelling of the stories of Washington, but also an exploration into what made the inner man who he was, the visitors pass through a stylized forensic lab detailing the physical and anthropologic facts of the First President.

Inside the Center, visitors are presented with exhibit areas detailing the epochs in Washington’s life, the personal and public events that shaped him, and the national events he shaped.

The changing face of Washington is used throughout the exhibits to introduce different eras and events, such as Washington the surveyor taking a literal measure of the land in the American Colonies . . .

. . . To Washington the General leading the citizen armies in their rebellion against the English. In all cases, Washington is presented in sober, serious, historically-based real attitudes and settings without sinking into the sorts of overwrought hagiographic images often associated with the man. Exhibit figures sculpted by StudioEIS, Brooklyn, NY.

In an intimate theaters pace, visitors see a presentation on Washington’s role as wartime commander in the Revolutionary War. Not schooled directly as a military man, the show emphasized the long view he took of the war: it wasn’t so much that the Colonies needed to win all of the battles they fought so much as they needed to succeed with the ones that mattered.

Backed by 2-D images on a back screen, the presentation also used a large illuminated map at center with impressionistic show elements being projected on the map and around the space “4-D” theater style to enclose the audience in the story and the unfolding actions.

While a sober, direct telling of the astonishing facts of Washington’s life and the nation in its transformative years, the Education Center did not shy away from what 99% of the visitors really wanted to see: his wooden teeth. Of course, NOT wooden (and a lot scarier than imaginable), a set of his dentures were presented in a miniature exhibit space surrounded by historic images of the crafting of 18^th century false teeth. The dentures themselves (in a departure from how the sculptural images Washington the man is presented throughout) appear in a central, carefully spot-lit reliquary-like case.

Give the people what they want . . .