Gilder Lehrman Gallery Opens at Mount Vernon

NEW YORK, NY (NOVEMBER 7, 2006) – In a grand opening ceremony on October 27th, George Washington’s Mount Vernon opened a $60 million complex (including an orientation center and a state-of-the-art museum and education center) which includes the Gilder Lehrman Gallery. Also known as the Book and Manuscript Gallery, the Gilder Lehrman Gallery will focus on Washington’s insatiable hunger for knowledge, his keen curiosity, and his life-long desire to better understand the world around him, as shown through manuscripts, maps, prints, and books. These rare and important objects from Mount Vernon and the Gilder Lehrman Collection address broad topics such as America’s founding documents, slavery, and Washington’s last will and testament. In a series of rotating exhibits, the Gilder Lehrman Collection’s rare Washington manuscripts, more than 400 in all, will be shown to the public.

Gilder Lehrman Gallery

The opening of the gallery represents the first time materials from the Gilder Lehrman Collection will be on continuous display anywhere in the world.

The gallery will display items including a letter Washington wrote to Governor William Livingston of New Jersey, a letter Washington received from the Marquis de Lafayette before the battle at Yorktown, Washington’s Farewell Address, and a printing of the United States Constitution (pictured below).

“Mount Vernon has always collected manuscripts relating to George Washington’s private life, but our collection of documents focusing on his public life leaves a lot to be desired,” said Jim Rees, Mount Vernon’s Executive Director. “Fortunately, that’s the great strength of the Gilder Lehrman Collection – it’s a remarkable testimony to Washington’s leadership in the military and in government, and it also includes some remarkable manuscripts related to 18th-century slavery. In my mind, this is a match made in heaven.”

The gallery is the latest chapter in an ongoing partnership between the Gilder Lehrman Institute and Mount Vernon. The two organizations, as well as Washington College in Maryland, partner in awarding the George Washington Book Prize each year to the author of the best book on Washington or the Founding Era. The Institute and Mount Vernon have also collaborated on two teacher seminars about Washington held at Mount Vernon and attended by more than sixty teachers from across the country.

For more information on Mount Vernon, visit http://www.mountvernon.org/

GLC03585, Constitution. Printed Dunlap & Claypoole edition inscribed by Benjamin Franklin to Jonathan Williams, 17 September 1787.

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