Journal Home Page     Contents Page     Brimfield FleaMarkets.Com     Brimfield Country Store     Subscribe

April 2002
Issue
by Sophie Hart

COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG, the nation's largest living history museum, currently is celebrating 75 years of the restoration of the 18th-century capital of colonial Virginia. Renowned for its picturesque 173-acre Historic Area with its 88 original 18th-century structures and hundreds of houses, shops, public buildings and outbuildings that have been reconstructed on their original foundations. What is less well known about Colonial Williamsburg is that it also operates five world-class museums whose magnificent collections display some of the very best examples of America's decorative arts, material culture and archaeological discoveries. The museums of Colonial Williamsburg, which include the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, Carter's Grove, the Winthrop Rockefeller Archaeology Museum and Bassett Hall, are a surprising treat for travelers who have come in search of America's history and find themselves surrounded by the nation's historic treasures as well.

In addition to the museums, Colonial Williamsburg also is home to the DeWitt Wallace Collections and Conservation Building, the largest collections preservation complex south of Washington, D.C. Opened in 1997, the 70,000 square foot facility unites Colonial Williamsburg's curators, conservators and reserve collections all under one roof. When not on public display, the foundation's 60,000 art objects and antiques are housed on-site in state-of-the-art, climate-controlled storage, under the watchful eye of a staff of nearly two dozen curators and conservators. The conservation department, charged with the care and preservation of the collections, features approximately 17,000 square feet of workspace that is used for object analysis and treatment laboratories.

Located adjacent to Colonial Williamsburg's Historic Area, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum is the nation's leading center for the research, preservation and exhibition of American folk art. Opened in 1957, it was built in memory of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller by her husband, John D. Rockefeller Jr., and houses Mrs. Rockefeller's collection of 424 works. Portions of this core collection have been on display at Colonial Williamsburg since 1935, when it first was opened to the public at the Ludwell-Paradise House on Williamsburg's historic main thoroughfare, Duke of Gloucester Street. Over the years, the museum's holdings have been enhanced by the addition of objects of furniture, paintings, carvings, textiles and decorative wares. In 1992, the museum reopened following a renovation and expansion, conceived and executed by Kevin Roche and John Dinkaloo Associates, that doubled the facility's size.

Today, the folk art museum houses more than 3,000 folk art objects made in America during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries and embracing most categories of American folk art, including paintings and sculptures by well-known folk artists. Among them are 16 painted works by 19th-century folk artist Edward Hicks, the largest number owned by any single institution, 15 portraits spanning the career of Ammi Phillips, 24 paintings by Mattie Lou O'Kelley, drawings by Lewis Miller and multiple works by Erastus Salisbury Field, Joseph Hidley, Charles Peale Polk and William Schimmel. The museum also is home to one of America's most treasured folk art portraits, Baby in Red Chair.

The museum's permanent collections and changing exhibitions including the popular annual holiday show of toys and dollhouses each Christmas season  attract an annual visitation of approximately 200,000. Exhibitions are displayed in the museum's 18 galleries with a total of 10,500 square feet of exhibition space. The current roster of exhibitions on display (see sidebar), which includes coverlets, panoramic wood carvings, a tin foil altar and a selection of carved animals, is indicative of the remarkably wide range of folk art media and helps to explain the ongoing allure of this popular venue.

The DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, which opened to the public in 1985, is a contemporary bi-level museum displaying more than 10,000 rare objects from Colonial Williamsburg's collections of 17th-, 18th- and early 19th-century English and American antiques. Its holdings of decorative arts include the world's largest collection of Virginia furniture; one of the largest collections of Southern, British and American furniture; and the largest collection of English pottery outside England. Masterworks and period pieces acquired for Colonial Williamsburg's Historic Area exhibition buildings bolster the museum's holdings in furniture, metals, ceramics, glass, paintings, prints, maps and textiles.

To preserve the 18th-century appearance of the grounds, Colonial Williamsburg built the Wallace Museum partially underground and 65 feet behind the reconstructed Public Hospital of 1773 where hospital and museum stand on the southwestern edge of the Historic Area. Designed by Kevin Roche whose major design projects have included the Dulles International Airport terminal outside Washington, D.C., the Oakland Museum in California and additions to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City the Wallace Museum's façade is hidden from view behind a brick wall 12 feet high, 464 feet long and 900 feet wide, a device that not only cleverly shields the building but also closely resembles the walls that encircled the hospital grounds during the 18th century. Visitors can enter the Wallace Museum through the Public Hospital lobby and proceed to the lower level where they will discover a total of 11 galleries and 27,500 square feet of exhibition space complemented by a 240-seat auditorium, two gardens and a café.

Exhibition space at the Wallace Museum includes galleries devoted to individual decorative arts media: ceramics, silver, metals and scientific instruments, textiles, prints and, of course, masterworks. Current changing exhibitions include a little something for everyone from Scottish maps, 18th-century curtains and bedding to perspective prints, Southern portrait paintings and early mezzotints (see sidebar). One of the most popular recent displays from the Wallace Museum, “Furniture of the American South,” will travel for the next two years around the country beginning in March 2002 with a four-month stay at the Atlanta History Center, and continuing on to the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, N.C., the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh, N.C., and the Cheekwood Museum of Art in Nashville, Tenn.

Major supporters of the Wallace Museum have included the late DeWitt and Lila Acheson Wallace, co-founders of the Reader's Digest Association, who provided gifts totaling $14 million toward the total $17 million cost of the museum/hospital project. The DeWitt Wallace Fund for Colonial Williamsburg provides continuing support for the annual operating costs of the museum.

Just down the road from Colonial Williamsburg's Historic Area is Carter's Grove, a James River plantation that encompasses within its 750 acres a view of nearly 400 years of Virginia history. The site includes two Colonial Williamsburg museum facilities: the Carter's Grove mansion and the Winthrop Rockefeller Archaeology Museum.

The elegant mansion at Carter's Grove sits on an 80-foot bluff overlooking the James River eight miles east of Williamsburg. A masterpiece of Georgian design, it was built in the 1750s by Virginia planter Carter Burwell, grandson of one of the colony's most prominent and wealthy landowners Robert “King” Carter, and restored in the popular Colonial Revival style in the 1930s by retired Pennsylvania industrialist Archibald McCrea and his wife, Mollie, a Virginia native. Architectural historians have cited the elaborate interior carving of the entry of the mansion as some of the most refined in colonial Virginia.

In 1964, the Rockefeller-supported Sealantic Fund purchased Carter's Grove and transferred the property to Colonial Williamsburg in 1969. After the discovery of archaeological evidence of a 1619 settlement in front of the mansion, and in light of massive alterations to the house during the McCreas' time, Colonial Williamsburg decided to present the house as a Colonial Revival home of the 20th-century elite.

Since 1989, a reconstructed slave quarter near the Carter's Grove mansion has provided visitors a view of the lives of 18th-century slaves and middle-class Virginians who worked on the estate. Archaeological studies of the early 1970s revealed underground storage pits and circular fence postholes, both commonly found in Africa. Re-constructed using 18th-century techniques and tools, the slave quarter is composed of a corncrib and three dwellings that would have housed 24 slaves. Throughout the day, costumed interpreters provide introductions to the site and perform such everyday 18th-century chores as sewing, gardening and cooking.

In 1979, Colonial Williamsburg archaeologists uncovered the skeleton of a 40-year-old woman at Carter's Grove. The woman and 48 other English settlers were killed March 22, 1622, when Native Americans launched a coordinated attack on Wolstenholme Towne, the administrative center for a settlement called Martin's Hundred, and 33 additional English plantations. The settlement is remembered through a partial reconstruction of Wolstenholme Towne as it looked in 1619 between the mansion and the river. It includes a palisade fort, several homes and a large barn. Strategically placed barrels contain recorded messages by retired Colonial Williamsburg archaeologist Ivor Noël Hume, steering visitors through a self-guided tour.

Completing the story of Wolstenholme Towne, the Winthrop Rockefeller Archaeology Museum is a permanent exhibition of early 17th-century and Native American artifacts excavated from the Wolstenholme Towne site. Designed by Kevin Roche and constructed underground beside the original town site, the museum opened to the public in 1991. The museum's permanent exhibition, “Discovering Martin's Hundred,” transports visitors back to the 17th century through its unparalleled display of artifacts uncovered at Wolstenholme Towne, including the only examples of closed armor helmets in North America.

Bassett Hall, a two-story, 18th-century frame house on 585 acres (including woodlands) near the colonial Capitol, was the Williamsburg home of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr. Built between 1753 and 1766 by Colonel Philip Johnson, Bassett Hall was purchased circa 1800 by Burwell Bassett, Martha Washington's nephew. The home's name comes from his ownership, which continued until 1839. The home originally consisted of a two-story north wing portion to which a one-and-one-half story wing was added in 1782. The “new” wing was raised to two stories in the late 19th century and expanded by the addition of an attached south wing in the l930s.

The Bassett Hall property also includes a teahouse and three original outbuildings: a smokehouse, kitchen and dairy, all of which was bequeathed to Colonial Williamsburg in 1979 by the Rockefeller family. Currently, the house is undergoing extensive renovation, funded by a generous gift of $2.7 million from George and Abby O'Neill, granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller Jr., as part of Colonial Williamsburg's 75th Anniversary. When completed, its interior decor will be much the same as it was when the Rockefellers lived there during the mid-1930s and oversaw the restoration of the Historic Area.

Drawing upon their unique experiences and interests, the Rockefellers brought many of Bassett Hall's furnishings from their other residences. The main house was decorated with 125 pieces of folk art including weather vanes, chalkware and American pottery pieces that Abby Aldrich Rockefeller was among the first to collect. Chosen largely for comfort, the objects enhanced the informal ambiance of the room settings and highlighted Mrs. Rockefeller's remarkable ability to successfully mix folk and informal art with more formal objects and furnishings of a variety of historic periods.

It was under Bassett Hall's 300-year-old “Great Oak” that John D. Rockefeller Jr. and the Reverend W.A.R. Goodwin met in the late 1920s to plan the restoration of Williamsburg. After moving into Bassett Hall in 1936, the Rockefellers entertained dignitaries and members of the Williamsburg community in the eclectically decorated house and expansive gardens.

Bassett Hall currently is closed for renovations and will reopen in December 2002.

Sophie Hart is a public relations manager at Colonial Williamsburg.

Photos courtesy of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

Admission for a one-day, one-museum ticket at Colonial Williamsburg is $8 for adults and $4 for children ages 6-17. Admission for a one-year museum ticket good at all the museums is $18 for adults and $9 for children ages 6-17. Museum admission also is included in general admission to Colonial Williamsburg, which includes all exhibition buildings and museums, gardens, daytime programming, parking and shuttle service to and around the Historic Area. For more information about the museums at Colonial Williamsburg, call toll-free (800) HISTORY or visit the Colonial Williamsburg Web site at www.colonialwilliamsburg.org