Monticello Cabinet: Independence Day Events

 

Thursday, July 3, 2025

Private Reception and Special Preview of The American Revolution

Piedmont Virginia Community College
501 College Dr., Charlottesville, VA 22902
Business Casual Attire

You may attend the evening reception in conjunction with one of the following program offerings.
Please select one during registration.

3:00 p.m. - 4:15 p.m. | Afternoon Program in the V. Earl Dickinson Theater at PVCC

4:30 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.| Private Reception at The Bolick Center at PVCC

7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. | Evening Program in the V. Earl Dickinson Theater at PVCC

Join Monticello and VPM off the mountain for a special program with award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns and his co-director Sarah Botstein. Guests will enjoy a sneak peek of the forthcoming The American Revolution series, premiering on PBS on November 16. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Burns, Botstein, Vincent Brown, Professor at Harvard University, Jane Kamensky, President of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, and Jamelle Bouie from the New York Times as moderator.

Don't miss this opportunity to go behind the scenes with one of America's most renowned filmmakers, who has been telling the stories of our nation's founding for over 40 years.

Parking is available at Piedmont Virginia Community College (501 College Dr., Charlottesville, VA 22902).

Space is limited. This invitation is for Monticello Cabinet participants and is non-transferable. If you have additional guests who are interesting in attending the program, general admission tickets will be available for purchase starting Monday, May 12 at 9:00 a.m.

Friday, July 4 – Independence Day Celebration and Naturalization Ceremony

9:00 a.m.
Ceremony

West Lawn, Monticello
Casual Attire

Celebrate July 4th at Monticello, the home of the author of the Declaration of Independence! For over 60 years on July 4th, Monticello's West Lawn has transformed into an outdoor courtroom, where dozens of new citizens take the Oath of Citizenship to become Americans.

Join Monticello as we mark the 249th anniversary of the country with award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns as our keynote speaker. This one-of-a-kind event is free and features a morning filled with family activities, patriotic music, festive food options, and community partners showcasing their work.

Onsite parking is available at the David M. Rubenstein Visitor Center (931 Thomas Jefferson Parkway, Charlottesville, Virginia). Shuttles will transport guests from the visitor center to the mountaintop. We will have reserved seating for donors in the front section during the ceremony.

While we have no formal room blocks for this program, we have included our recommended hotels below.

Boar's Head Resort
200 Ednam Dr, Charlottesville, VA 22903 | Reservations 844.611.8066
Approximately 15-minute drive to Monticello
BoarsHeadResort.com

The Clifton Inn
1296 Clifton Inn Drive, Charlottesville, Virginia 22911 | Reservations 434.971.1800
Approximately 10-minute drive to Monticello
The-Clifton.com

Downtown Charlottesville

Omni Charlottesville Hotel
212 Ridge McIntire Road, Charlottesville, Virginia 22903 | Reservations 434.971.5500
Approximately 12-minute drive to Monticello
OmniHotels.com/Hotels/Charlottesville

The Draftsman Hotel
1106 W. Main Street, Charlottesville, Virginia 22903 | Reservations 434.984.8000
Approximately 10-minute drive to Monticello
TheDraftsmanHotel.com

Sarah Botstein

Sarah Botstein has produced some of the most popular and acclaimed documentaries on PBS. She is currently producing and co-directing The American Revolution along with Ken Burns and David Schmidt. Her previous work includes Jazz, The War, Prohibition, The Vietnam War, College Behind Bars, and Hemingway. The U.S. and the Holocaust marked Botstein's debut as a co-director.

Botstein works closely with PBS LearningMedia to develop educational materials as part of the Ken Burns Classroom, and she was an original contributor to Ken Burns's UNUM.

In addition to The American Revolution, Botstein is working on a three-part series about Lyndon B. Johnson and the Great Society.

Jamelle Bouie

Jamelle Bouie is a columnist for the New York Times Opinion section.

 

 

 

Dr. Vincent Brown

Dr. Vincent Brown is the Charles Warren Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He has published two prize-winning books about the history of slavery: The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (2008) and Tacky’s Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War (2020). The author of numerous articles and reviews in scholarly journals, he is also Principal Investigator and Curator for the animated thematic map Slave Revolt in Jamaica, 1760-1761: A Cartographic Narrative (2013); he was Producer and Director of Research for the award-winning television documentary Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness (2009), broadcast nationally on the PBS series Independent Lens; he was the executive producer and host for The Bigger Picture (2022), co-produced with WNET for PBS Digital Studios; and he was executive producer, writer, and host for How Do You Remember the Days of Slavery? (2024). He is co-founder of Timestamp Media, which explores the history that connects people and places across the world.

Ken Burns

Ken Burns has been making documentary films for almost fifty years. Since the Academy Award nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, Ken has gone on to direct and produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made, including The Civil War; Baseball; Jazz; The War; The National Parks: America’s Best Idea; Prohibition; The Roosevelts: An Intimate History; The Vietnam War; Country Music; The U.S. and the Holocaust; The American Buffalo; and, most recently, Leonardo da Vinci.

Future film projects include The American Revolution, Emancipation to Exodus, and LBJ & the Great Society, among others.

Ken’s films have been honored with dozens of major awards, including seventeen Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards and two Oscar nominations. In September of 2008, at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards, Ken was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In November of 2022, Ken was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame.

Dr. Jane Kamensky

Dr. Jane Kamensky is President and CEO of Monticello/The Thomas Jefferson Foundation. A leading historian of early America and the United States, she earned her BA (1985) and PhD (1993) in history from Yale University. For thirty years, she worked as a professor and higher education leader, most recently as Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University and Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

Kamensky is the author or editor of numerous books, including A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley (2016), which won four major prizes and was a finalist for several others; and the authoritative Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution, co-edited with the late Edward G. Gray. Her most recent book, Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. A former Commissioner of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and past Trustee of the Museum of the American Revolution, Kamensky serves as a member of the National Advisory Council of More Perfect, and as one of the principal investigators on the NEH/ Department of Education-funded initiative, Educating for American Democracy, among many other public history roles. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the NEH, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others, and she is an elected fellow of the American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the Society of American Historians.

The favor of your reply is requested by May 30.

Please respond by using our online form.

Contact: Events Department at 434-984-9821
or events@monticello.org