Elizabeth Chew

interviewed by Helen Hills and Alice E. Sanger

Abstract

In 2022 a major controversy erupted at the home of the 4th President of the United States, James Madison’s Montpelier in Virginia, USA, about the place and role of Descendants of the enslaved in major historic plantation sites in the United States. The controversy, which focused on the sharing of power and authority equally between Descendant Communities and governing boards of museums and historic sites, led to the scandalous sacking of senior staff (later reinstated). Here Elizabeth Chew, Senior Director of Museum Programs and Chief Curator of James Madison’s Montpelier, reflects on the experience of the events with Helen Hills and Alice Sanger in July 2023.

Keywords: Enslaved, Descendants, Montpelier, James Madison, plantation houses, curation

Full text: OAJ ISSUE 11 FINAL_Article_1

DOI: 10.5456/issn.2050-3679/2024s01

Biographical notes 

Elizabeth Chew is, since January 2024, the CEO of South Carolina Historical Society in Charleston. She was formerly (2015–23) Vice President for Museum Programs and Chief Curator of James Madison’s Montpelier in Orange, Virginia. At Montpelier, she oversaw the Curatorial, Education, Archaeology, Preservation, and Research departments and the Robert H. Smith Center for the Constitution. An art historian, she holds a BA from Yale, an MA from the Courtauld Institute of the University of London and a PhD (supervised by Helen Hills) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has worked at museums and historic sites since 1985. As curator at Monticello for thirteen years, she researched and implemented projects to interpret women, domestic work, and slavery. She curated the exhibition “‘To Try All Things’: Monticello as Experiment” in the David M. Rubenstein Visitor Center and was co-curator, with Rex Ellis of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, of the exhibition Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty, which was on view in Washington and traveled to Atlanta, St., Louis, and Philadelphia. At Montpelier, she led projects to complete the furnishing of the Madison house and to return slavery to the plantation landscape, including the exhibition The Mere Distinction of Colour, winner of six national awards. She has taught art history and museum studies at the University of Virginia, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, James Madison University, Wake Forest University, Davidson College, and Johns Hopkins University and published and lectured widely on ways that art and architectural patronage relate to gender, race, and family politics.