Leslie Greene Bowman

Leslie Greene Bowman is President Emerita of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and operates the UNESCO World Heritage site, Monticello – the home of Thomas Jefferson. As president of the Foundation, she spearheaded the Foundation’s vision to bring history forward into national and global dialogue, propelling restoration, dialogue and programs that offer an honest, complicated and inclusive view of our past – common ground for all Americans. She earned her Bachelor of Philosophy in American history and art history at Miami University, and her Master of Arts in Early American Culture as a Winterthur Fellow at the University of Delaware. She has spent her entire career in museums, and served at the highest levels – Director of the Winterthur Museum, Assistant Director of Exhibitions and head Curator of Decorative Arts at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, accreditation commissioner for the American Alliance of Museums, and board member of the Association of Art Museum Directors. While in Los Angeles, she enjoyed academic appointments with both USC and UCLA, where she taught American decorative arts history. She is the author of American Arts & Crafts:  Virtue in Design, and co-author of American Rococo, 1750-1775: Elegance in Ornament, each amplifying scholarship on important eras in American art history. She is a trustee emerita of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a member of the Virginia Bar Association’s Committee of Special Issues of National and State Importance, a member of Virginia’s American Revolution 250 Commission, and a fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in London. She continues to serve on the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, on which she previously served under Presidents Obama, Clinton and Bush.