Washington Winter Show 2019

May 31–June 2, 2019 Mount Vernon Symposium “Fashionable above two thousand years” Classical Art and Architecture of the Founding Era mountvernon.org/mvsymposium Men and women of America’s founding era inhabited a world heavily influenced by ancient Rome andGreece. Classical references permeated everything from government and education to drama and literature. In art and architecture, advocates of the classical tradition aimed “to fix theTaste”of the fledging nation on a noble and enduring simplicity, “fashionable above two thousand years.” George Washington himself embraced this spirit, introducing neoclassical ornament in the New Room at Mount Vernon and setting the president’s table with allegorical figures representing the arts and sciences. Join leading curators, historians, and art and architectural historians as they examine a wide variety of Greco-Roman styles, influences, references, and forms that early Americans admired and celebrated. La Peinture (Painting) , Angoulême porcelain, Paris, France, ca. 1789. This recently rediscovered biscuit porcelain figure is one of 12 classically attired figures of the arts and sciences sent to George Washington by Gouverneur Morris in 1790. Courtesy of Stephen L. Zabriskie of Aurora, NY