Domestic Life and the Plantation Community at Jefferson's Monticello

FAIN: GM-50314-04

Monticello (Charlottesville, VA 22902-0316)
Susan R. Stein (Project Director: February 2004 to March 2012)

Implementation of an introductory exhibition and interpretations of the dependencies at Monticello, emphasizing plantation work and the interactions of Jefferson's family with African Americans on the plantation.

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF) seeks to provide a more comprehensive understanding of Jefferson and Monticello by focusing attention on life and work at Jefferson's plantation. This three-year interdisciplinary project will create a permanent exhibition through its restoration and interpretation of eleven of sixteen rooms for living and working located beneath the main house and in flanking wings. Visitors to Monticello will learn more about Jefferson, his family, and individual workers (mainly enslaved people), and their interaction. This project will reveal the nature of plantation life and aspects of the institution of slavery, as they existed at Monticello as well as in the broader historical context of Jefferson's era.