FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - December 5, 2012
Media Contact: Lisa Stites, 434-984-7529

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA—The Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello today announced it will host a landmark conference Telling the History of Slavery: Scholarship, Museum Interpretation, and the Public, at the Robert H. Smith Center at Montalto, February 22-23, 2013.This two-day event will feature panel discussions exploring recent innovations in slavery research and its impact on scholarship and public interpretation. 

Bringing together leading experts from across academia, museums, and documentary filmmaking, Telling the History of Slavery will include four panels, each with four presenters and a commentator, a plenary address by noted slavery historian Philip Morgan of Johns Hopkins University , and demonstrations of new research databases, analysis tools, and examples of digital history projects. The conference will provide opportunities for dialogue among presenters and attendees on the new opportunities and challenges that scholars, curators, educators, family historians, and the general public now face with recent advances in slavery research.

Telling the History of Slavery: Scholarship, Museum Interpretation, and the Public conference sessions will be held at Monticello’s Robert H. Smith Center at Montalto. Registration is $135 for the two-day conference.

The Study and Interpretation of Slavery at Monticello

Monticello is considered one of the best documented, best preserved, and best studied plantations in North America. It is home to a staff of curators, researchers, scholars, historians and archaeologists.

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello recently collaborated with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMMAHC) to present the exhibition Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty. The exhibition explores slavery and enslaved people in America through the lens of Jefferson’s Monticello plantation. The exhibition was on view at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington D.C., from January to October 2012, and was recently featured on CBS Sunday Morning.

Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty is now a traveling exhibition, which will be at the Atlanta History Center in Atlanta, Georgia, February 1, through July 7, 2013. The exhibition will then move to the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis, Missouri, late summer 2013 through January 2014.

In addition to the exhibition at the NMAAHC gallery in Washington, D.C., Monticello recently launched a new outdoor exhibition, Landscape of Slavery: Mulberry Row at Monticello, a multi-year, multi-faceted project that brings to life the stories of the scores of people—enslaved and free—who lived and worked on Jefferson’s 5,000 acre plantation. The outdoor exhibition features mini-exhibitions at key sites, computer animations and a website.

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About Monticello

Thomas Jefferson Foundation was incorporated in 1923 to preserve Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson in Charlottesville, Virginia. Monticello is now recognized as a National Historic Landmark and a United Nations World Heritage Site. As a private, nonprofit organization, the Foundation receives no regular federal or state budget support for its twofold mission of preservation and education.  About 440,000 people visit Monticello each year. For information, visit www.monticello.org.