Let’s hear it for our curators!

In Washington DC museum curatorship is a cottage industry. I can think of no other American city where it is not uncommon to count among your friends and acquaintances, a curator – or at least someone in the museum profession. Being a museum curator in Washington DC certainly comes with its rewards, not always registering in your base net worth, but certainly the opportunity to work with significant national treasures and build a network of world class contacts. I am not only talking about the folks who care for objects in the nation’s attic at the Smithsonian or priceless works of art at the National Gallery! The small art museums and specialty museums in Washington are equally world class and have equally qualified curators. The Phillips Collection, the Kreeger and the Textile Museum rank among the top cultural offerings in this Capital City. There is also an outrageous abundance of historic house museums in our area, from Mount Vernon to the Frederick Douglas House or the home of Red Cross founder, Clara Barton. In fact, the Historic House Consortium lists over 33 historic sites just in and around the beltway. dchousemuseums.org

With soaring gas prices we should all take a look around our own community and revisit one these many sites right in our own back yard. Indeed, you will find that the curators of these sites are really first rate, just like the kind you see on the PBS hit, The History Detectives. When they are not appearing on television, they are researching and finding new information to share with us as visitors. They are always incorporating their new research and improving on the way our historic sites are presented. If the last time you visited Decatur House or Tudor Place was on your fourth grade field trip, you really should pay them a return visit. Both of these institutions are working on restoration projects that will bring us even closer to the actual presentation of everyday life in the city! Dumbarton House is celebrating 75 years of being open as a museum with a special exhibition and showing off a marvelous interior restoration and re-interpretation of daily life in Georgetown’s past. It is not all about colonial life either. I know first hand that Jim Abbott, the curator of the Woodrow Wilson House has been very busy recapturing the spirit of Washington in the “roaring twenties” when a former president and first lady resided just north of Dupont Circle on Embassy Row. With very little effort and less than a tank of gas you can be transported back to the 1930’s with a visit to Franklin Roosevelt’s utopian town of old Greenbelt, Maryland or visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s modern dream home of the 1940’s at Pope-Leighey House, which just happens to be on the grounds of Woodlawn, an 1805 Virginia plantation house that was a gift from George Washington to his step-daughter in Fairfax County. Curators are also busy preparing the Lincoln Cottage at the Soldiers Home to welcome visitors early next year.

Our historic sites and museums welcome visitors from around the world. We just have to remember that they are also there for us as well! Who knows, your neighbor may just be the curator.

Frank J. Aucella
Executive Director
Woodrow Wilson House