Framing the West at Monticello
"I am in fact preparing a kind of Indian hall."
--Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis
In
an ongoing effort to place Monticello within the larger universe,
Jefferson established a museum in his double-story Entrance Hall,
complete with maps of the world, European paintings and sculptures,
and examples of items from the New World. With the arrival of
several boxes and barrels sent back by Lewis and Clark from their
journey, Jefferson greatly expanded the representation of North
America in this museum with a dramatic display of Native American
objects and animal skins, horns, and bones. Unfortunately, the
fate of Jefferson’s collection of Native American objects
after his death remains a mystery. For the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial,
Monticello turned this mystery into an opportunity to work with
contemporary Native American artists who are preserving traditional
art forms. The recreated Indian Hall demonstrates that the Native
American art forms encountered by Lewis and Clark and appreciated
by Jefferson are still alive today.
- "Tokens of Friendship" describes how Lewis and Clark received objects from the Native American Indians they encountered and contrasts that with their more systematic collection of natural history specimens.
- From the Trail to Monticello follows the shipment of objects and natural specimens that Lewis shipped to Jefferson in April 1805, just before setting out from Ft. Mandan.
- The Indian Hall shows how Jefferson sought to demonstrate, visually, how the culture and geography of North America related to the rest of the world.
- Whereabouts of Most of Jefferson's Collection follows the trail of the lost collection that Jefferson displayed at Monticello until his death.
- Recreating the Indian Hall: The Monticello-Peabody Native Arts Project describes how the Thomas Jefferson Foundation and the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University collaborated to commission practicing Native American artists to create new objects based on documentary evidence and Lewis and Clark materials in the Peabody's collection.