Elizabeth V. Chew: This visitor center facility opened in 2009 and it has radically improved our ability both orient our visitors to just explain to them why Jefferson is important and so, why they're here, and to engage and educate.

This exhibition is really one of four that's in the building. This is the largest one, it's the one that is intended to put the house, which is the one piece of Monticello that mostly everybody sees, in the context of Monticello writ large, Monticello as a 5,000-acre working plantation.

If you look up at this light pencil drawing on the banner here, you can see the view that the young Jefferson would have seen from Shadwell, looking over across the Rivanna River, the little low mountain in the front here is Monticello. The high mountain behind Monticello is the mountain that Jefferson called Mountalto, and he bought—he bought what he could see from his mountain of that mountain in the 1770s. And so, as a boy, the little mountain just drew him and he had a dream of living there as an adult when he was a teenager. And that would have been the least practical place you could ever live. In a time when the river was a major means of transportation, where getting around was difficult at any time, where water was a constant problem and need, to live on a mountain made no sense. He really elevated ideals over being practical, over practicality.

The central section in the middle of the room here goes through and gives examples of Jefferson's just complete and total dedication to doing what he would call gathering, recording, and sharing and disseminating this idea of useful knowledge, whether it was related to science, to farming, to government, to transportation, to what you could and couldn't grow somewhere. He was interested in really every point of knowledge on the human spectrum. And nothing—there was almost nothing that was too small for his attention.

We have several really fun kind of interactive elements in the exhibition, and this one uses Jefferson's travels, both in North America and in Europe, and it shows people what, when Jefferson was traveling, what he was doing, and he said it himself, that he was gathering ideas that would be useful—'useful'—back in this country. So what we do is follow his travels—and I'm looking at southern France right here—and we talk about everywhere he went, what he was looking at.

So here we are: viticulture or wine-growing in the Burgundy region of France, or ancient architecture in Orange, France. He was also completely obsessed with the idea of people in this country growing olives. He thought that olive oil was going to be the new revolution and that the rice planters in Southern Carolina should stop growing rice and grow olive trees. And he really worked hard to convince them of that. Really, he's so interested in these little details of things that he thinks are going to help him come back here, share the ideas, and even put them to use himself.

So, this is a fun way, and, all as you all know way better than I do, young people love this kind of thing.

Elizabeth V. Chew: So I've talked about how the center is about his dedication to all this gathering and sharing and disseminating. This short wall here is dedicated to a horizontal look across the social spectrum at Monticello. Because we obviously know that Jefferson and his elite family in their 'big house,' they're the tip of the pyramid here, but obviously everything that happens that makes his household run, that makes his cash crops grow, is done by the labor of enslaved people.

So we also look across the spectrum of the enslaved community at people working in the fields versus enslaved people who work in the house or in the [?] industries, and we compare those also to hired white people. There were some hired white workers here who did things like, well, build a house, for one thing, or serve as blacksmiths or certain kinds of carpenters. They also trained enslaved people to do these kinds of jobs.

We've learned an amazing amount about the lives of enslaved people all over the plantation. So, what we know is that enslaved people owned material goods. We tend to have a notion of slavery, I think, or at least I used to, as being very fixed and abstract and this big box of awfulness and yes, it is that. But you can also come to understand it in a much more textured way where you see—we know a great deal about the names and activities and lives of the individual people who lived here in slavery and what happened to their descendants. And that combination of Jefferson's record keeping, archaeology, other kinds of written records, and then genealogy and oral history that we've been doing here for 40 years.

So we know that people who worked in the fields owned the same kinds of really fashionable tablewares that slaves who worked in the house and lived up on the mountain owned and that, in many cases, are the same kinds of things being used in the big house. Slaves had several different ways of making money. Jefferson preferred to give cash incentives to slaves rather than use harsh physical punishment, so some skilled slaves received cash money. Slaves also kept poultry yards and gardens on their own time and sold the products of those, both to the big house and sometimes in markets in towns. Slaves were paid by Jefferson for doing particularly onerous jobs like cleaning out the sewers underneath the privies, and slaves were given tips by visitors quite routinely. So with the money that people here in slavery owned, we know that they went into town on Sundays and shopped in stores. Scholars have studied shopkeepers' ledger books and found that there are records of slaves coming in and buying things.

So what we see here, I think, is examples of how enslaved people survived in a system that denied them their basic humanity. We see how people figured out ways to just get through it. And we see families over generations here whose descendants go on actually to be very involved in all kinds of work towards emancipation and later civil rights.

Elizabeth V. Chew: On the wall here behind you, we break down Monticello into four areas. We look at gardens, agriculture, plantation industries, and the house. And my interest here was making it all on the same plane. Often we tend to privilege the house over everything else. I think Jefferson saw it as being all of a piece.

So we look at how he puts what he considers to be this useful knowledge to work, in all aspects of his operations here, whether it's what he grew in the garden, his attempts to grow grapes to make wine, his intense interest in the technology of agriculture. For example, he himself invented a kind of plow moldboard. People think of him as being an inventor. He was mostly a creative adapter because of all these things he learned about, wrote down, and then later used here at Monticello. The one thing that he ever truly invented was a plow moldboard. And we have a recreation plow right here that shows this curved—it's the curvy wood part that sort of turns over the soil once it's cut by the metal blade. So he had witnessed people plowing in France that he thought were really inefficient, and he has this geometric idea for the shape of a moldboard that will do a better job with less resistance in turning over the ground. So he has this plow made here at Monticello and he writes to all of his people all over the world to tell them about it. Even though he won several awards for it, it was never really widely adopted.

The Garden Book is really a bravura demonstration of his record keeping interests. Let's see. We have a little facsimile of it right here, and it's really hard to see, but he basically—he started it as a young man still living at Shadwell. After his retirement here in 1809, he really does it every single year in earnest, where he writes down, keeps a chart where he writes down everything he plants and when, when it sprouts, how it does, and then eventually 'when it comes to table,' which means when they get to eat it in the house, and when it goes to seed. And he does this every year for over 20 years. He doesn't care if something doesn't do well, he just tries something else. His interest is really in what will grow well in this particular climate here in Albemarle County, Virginia. He wants to know what he can grow here that will be useful. So things like benne or sesame, he grows that. These hot peppers a friend in Texas sends him. There are a number of examples of things that people send him that he tries to grow. He really really really wants to grow wine grapes, but he never can. He would actually love the fact that wine is such a big deal now in Virginia.

So even though he has this amazingly gorgeous, 1,000-foot-long garden, we know for a fact that this garden was not primarily meant to furnish the table. We know that because from the beginning to the end of Jefferson's life at Monticello, we have record books kept by the women of his family, the white women of his family, recording purchases of large quantities of garden produce from slaves, and this is one of them right here. So Jefferson's garden was mostly a laboratory and an experiment. If something came to the table, that was great, but they were not relying on it. They had this very good backup plan that they had to use almost every week.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Tell me more about yourselves and what, when you woke up this morning or heard about this trip two weeks ago, you wanted to take away from it.

Teacher 1: Well, I teach fifth grade, so it's mostly U.S. geography, that's the emphasis for our course, so—

Teacher 2: Westward expansion?

Teacher 1: Yes, that's really—

Jacqueline Langholtz: Okay, so Lewis and Clark's why you're here? Great, okay.

Teacher 1: Especially the scientific discoveries and we're putting more of a science emphasis on the flora and fauna of different areas, too. So what their findings were and also what they found—yeah, I think it'll be very helpful.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Wonderful. Great.

Teacher 2: Is there information on the relationship with Jefferson or his time period with the Native Americans, because that's one of the things that we try to do as we move from region to region is that Native American element of that region.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Yeah. Yeah. So the question was the relationship that Jefferson specifically had with Virginia Indians?

Teacher 2: And his contemporaries.

Jacqueline Langholtz: And his contemporaries. Okay. Jefferson's own and only self-published book, his own book, Notes on the State of Virginia, would probably be a good resource and that's a primary resource there. That's a field that I think people are really just beginning to explore and learn more about, and I think you'll hear some different opinions about, what did that really honestly look like, and I think you'll see a lot more scholarship about that coming out, I hope so.

Teacher: Do you think that it was typical what Jefferson had here, was that a typical economy for a plantation in the South?

Elizabeth V. Chew: No. You mean the slaves—

Teacher: What you found in the—

Elizabeth V. Chew: Oh, yes, I do. Yes, I do, actually. I think Jefferson was unusual in what he said he wanted here was to use things like work incentives and not harsh punishment, that keeping families together made people more productive because they were happier. That was not typical.

Teacher: Right.

Elizabeth V. Chew: Yeah. But I think that the slaves raising gardens and chickens, perfect, totally normal. Slaves owning goods across the South, completely typical.

Teacher: Wow.

Elizabeth V. Chew: It's probably the thing that most people don't know about slavery, that is most surprising to them. That is absolutely the case. In the very very deep South, like Louisiana, and maybe even Alabama, it's less so, but in the Mid-Atlantic, the Carolinas, it's completely the way it is.

Teacher: And these are very high-quality goods that they had, then, would that have been typical as well, that they had—

Elizabeth V. Chew: It's what was available. You know, they're on the spectrum of things you could have. They're not at the very top. Jefferson has some Sevres porcelain from Paris, but he has this stuff also.

Teacher: Wow.

Elizabeth V. Chew: So it's sort of like your everyday china, as opposed to your grandmother's fancy china, but it's absolutely the same thing that any of the other

Teacher: And where would that have come from, from Europe as well?

Elizabeth V. Chew: Stores in the area. These would have still been English by this time, but they would have been available, widely available in stores in every town in the U.S.

Teacher: So, typical. Like Pfaltzgraff kind of.

Elizabeth V. Chew: Yeah, he could have gone to Charlottesville on Sundays and bought them. Merchants stayed open on Sundays so the slaves could come, actually. And they bought things like tablewares and then clothing, things like buckles and buttons and hooks for clothing that they would make themselves and fabric. Jefferson gave slaves basic food, two sets of clothing a year, blankets, and then cook pots when they got married, but people had a lot more than that, that they acquired through their own incredible ingenuity and entrepreneurship basically.

Teacher: That's interesting.

Elizabeth V. Chew: It took a lot, it took so much effort and ability to survive laboring like that.

Teacher: Is there any evidence that slaves worked with Jefferson intensely on his inventions and machinery?

Elizabeth V. Chew: Oh, yeah. That's such a good question.

Jacqueline Langholtz: What was the question?

Elizabeth V. Chew: Whether slaves worked with him. Slaves definitely made the plow. I think, he lived in this cerebral region of his brain that he never, hardly ever went out of. I think he just saw—he drew all these geometric models of how he derived it. I think he kind of felt it in the abstract and then he had slaves—made it, build it, and then try to use it. But they probably were not involved in the design decisions.

Teacher: Right. Because that would have taken a lot of skill to craft.

Elizabeth V. Chew: No kidding.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Well, I get these same feelings about what you see in the house, or even the Campeachy chairs, even the friezes. So Jefferson is—he's the one traveling, he's the one reading, and then he's saying oh, I want this in my house. And then you have John Hemmings and James Dinsmore. But John Hemmings, who has not traveled, who hasn't read about these—

Elizabeth V. Chew: Who wasn't educated.

Jacqueline Langholtz: Right, who wasn't educated, making 3D versions, bringing Jefferson's physical ideas to life. It's just incredible to me.

Teacher: Wow.

Briana Zavadil White: So, within the education department what we do is we use the portrait as a springboard into a conversation about history and biography, because the Portrait Gallery considers itself to be a biography, history, and art museum. So the art, the portrait, is always our focus, yet we're using that to get into a much deeper conversation.

The activity that we like to do is called a puzzle activity. You will need to share, and some of you will get your own. All right, this is what I would like you to do. In your pairs, or individually—depending on if you have a pair or you're working individually—just look at your puzzle piece, and try to identify what it is that you see. You're not trying to put the puzzle together yet, because we will get to that point; don't share with another group what it is that you have, just identify what it is that you're looking at. Okay? And then we'll go through in just a second.

[One group converses]

Speaker 1: [Unintelligible]

Speaker 2: It makes him seem really easy and relaxed.

Speaker 1: And interested in what he's saying. The other person over there, it's like he's not party to that conversation.

Speaker 2: Right, like he's focused on something else over here.

Speaker 1: Doesn't that look like he's looking at—maybe the city—

Briana Zavadil White: Just identify to the group what it is that you saw, but not showing anybody else your puzzle piece. Okay? Okay?

Speaker 1: Levers, wheels, some type of transportation tool? Lots of wood, and lots of levels—platforms—made of wood.

Speaker 2: We had a rug, a couple shoes—with feet and pant legs. And a map, or sketch of a building unrolled on the floor.

Speaker 3: I had what looks to be a blueprint sitting on an end table with a red rug on the floor.

Speaker 4: We have a meeting; there are many men involved. Two men are having an aside—one is turned to the other listening. There's something strange on the table, a metallic device, it looks like it's got tape through it; so we were wondering if it’s a telegraph receiver or something.

Briana Zavadil White: What do we know for certain about this portrait?

Speaker 5: That it's a formal affair.

Speaker 6: The signing of the Declaration of Independence or something?

Speaker 7: There's no women.

Briana Zavadil White: So it's a meeting, there's no women, it’s a formal affair, the signing of perhaps the Declaration.

Speaker 8: They look like prominent, powerful men; they have authoritative dress.

Briana Zavadil White: Okay, so their clothing is telling us that—again, this idea of formality—but also that they are prominent gentlemen.

Speaker 9: Movers and shakers.

Briana Zavadil White: We talked about the rug, there's some red drapery, right? And the marble pillars.

Speaker 10: There's the Franklin portrait.

Briana Zavadil White: There's the Franklin portrait.

Speaker 10: Which would mean that it's not the Declaration of Independence signing, but maybe it's inventors or industrialists.

Speaker 11: Maybe the period of Enlightenment, invention, science.

Briana Zavadil White: And you had said mid-19th century. Why did you say that?

Speaker 12: The clothing.

Speaker 13: No powdered wigs.

Speaker 12: The dark black coats that seemed to have been popular around that time.

Briana Zavadil White: Okay, okay. What do you want to do with it?

Speaker 13: Put it together?

Briana Zavadil White: Why don't we do it right there, in that open space?

[Attendees assemble puzzle]

Briana Zavadil White: What's the big "so what?" of a puzzle activity?

Speaker 14: If you did it with a class, they'd be questioning where things go, where things are placed, what's the significance of observing.

Briana Zavadil White: Okay, so observation [and] visual thinking. What else?

Speaker 15: Spatial awareness of where something's located within something larger.

Briana Zavadil White: Okay, and making inferences. Anything else?

Speaker 16: Working collaboratively.

Briana Zavadil White: The puzzle activity works really well when you choose a portrait that has a lot going on in it, like this piece does. It allows the opportunity to get into the individual pieces, because no one piece doesn't have a lot going on. Even the piece in the corner that sort of looks like a lot of just dark space, I mean, it's still an important piece of the puzzle.

Briana Zavadil White: What do all of these men have in common? Speaker 1: They've got to be inventors. Speaker 2: They're trying to make a decision. Briana Zavadil White: They have to be inventors, they're trying to make a decision. What visually in this portrait is leading you to believe "inventors" and, again, this idea of a meeting and trying to make a decision about something? Speaker 3: Blueprints, models. Speaker 4: Different things, like the gun could be a Colt; just all the different little contraptions, definitely the blueprints, and Franklin again, I think that's— Speaker 5: He's symbolic. Speaker 6: You've got the gentleman pointing at whatever it is, and it looks like the three of them together in the center are pointing at it. They may agree on something and the guy turning across the table to talk to the gentleman behind him…maybe there's two different ideas about what's going on. Speaker 7: I'm wondering though about the men on the left. The lighting is on them so they're significant somehow, but they seem on the fringe of what's going on. So I'm wondering why are they there and what impact do they have? Speaker 8: Or are they just the investors. Briana Zavadil White: Okay, okay. So this is interesting right? You're thinking that perhaps some of these individuals are investors. So again I guess the question would be, what do they allhave in common? Speaker 9: They don't look happy. Briana Zavadil White: Okay. Speaker 10: Well, they're all white males. Briana Zavadil White: What does that tell us? Speaker 10: They are leaders of some industry, because white, and they probably are property owners because they're making a decision and at this timeframe you had to own property to have any kind of power or authority. Briana Zavadil White: What does it say that Ben Franklin is in this portrait, but as a portrait within the portrait? Not physically among them. Speaker 11: It's past his time, but he's influenced the thinking or whatever is going on. Speaker 12: He's pretty much the "Great Inventor." He represents the spirit of inventing. Briana Zavadil White: Okay, so, it's past his time—which is starting to help us date this portrait a little bit; we know we're past 1795. He is above them, again as the Father of Science and Invention—the patron saint. Okay. What else? Speaker 13: This guy in the center is probably one of the lead authority figures in this group because his body is facing toward us, and his body scale is a little larger, seemingly, than some of the other ones—just the width of him. Briana Zavadil White: He's spread out, right? The way that the artist has positioned him we actually see his whole body, not profile. All inventors, right? So, we've got Franklin as the Father of Science and Invention watching over all of these men, okay? One of the reasons why we know that they're all inventors is because—this is when it all fits so nicely together for you as educators—because these men are placed in this portrait with their inventions, with models of their inventions. You've got the Colt Revolver; you've got McCormick's mechanical reaper; you have Goodyear's rubber soled shoes right here. I have had so many conversations—I was just having a conversation this morning with two of the Portrait Gallery's historians, and for the life of us, we just don't know what this is! This is the telegraph. We think that this is a model for a printing press. This is a sewing machine. And the carpet loom. And one of the reasons that we know that we're smack dab in the Civil War for this portrait is the facial hair. Think about it, Abraham Lincoln—with the facial hair—I mean, we're very much in that style. So, you've all been very curious about the individuals, and the lighting, and the way that they're faced, so here's my question to all of you: You are the preeminent inventors of the era; are you all going to have time to come together and have time to sit for your portrait to be painted? Group: No. Briana Zavadil White: No, absolutely not. So what the artist, Christian Schussele, has done in this portrait—just like he did with Washington Irving and his friends at Sunnyside right there—is he sketched them individually from life, so the connection between the artist and the sitter, and then brought them together in his imagination. Okay? So this is why we've got a little bit of strange lighting right here. It's also why most of these men don't necessarily seem to be looking at each other. I mean, they're looking in the same general direction, but it's not as if it's a straight-on conversation.

Speaker 1: It's like a memoir. Like it's telling about his history, not just that moment in time. Speaker 2: Somebody made it to show honor or respect to him. Was he president at the time? When was it painted, like right then or after? Briana Zavadil White: So even though we're seeing "Grant, 1863," the question is: Is this 1863 or not? Is it later? Speaker 3: I think it's later. Briana Zavadil White: It is later, it's 1865. Alright? So when you know that this is Grant at Vicksburg and it's 1865, what does that tell us? Speaker 4: Well, I mean, he was a failure. He was considered a failure in so many different ways. And looking at him, you know, Vicksburg was a big deal; it effectively split the South in two. So it was a big deal. You look at this and Hey, look, I am a— Speaker 5: But I think he looks sad. I don't think he looks like "I am—"; I think he looks sad. Speaker 4: He brought—he pulled himself back up. Speaker 6: The frame is black, and I find that odd—I don't think I've ever seen a frame at all like that. I mean, black is usually mourning. Speaker 7: Black and gold. Briana Zavadil White: My sense is that it's probably meant to contrast with the gold. We've got the acorns referencing oak leaves, and oak leaves are a symbol of strength, right? So it could be it's meant for the battles and for the acorns to stand out. Speaker 8: It's like somebody wants us to know that he's not a guy who just sits around and signs things, he is a man of action and taking charge of whatever. It's all done and now he's in the midst of this mess, not sitting in a tent waiting to hear how it turned out. Speaker 9: And I think his face—I do, I just see this poignancy in his eyes like glory has pain. That's that look in his eye. Speaker 10: The frame and his positioning in the picture makes it seem like he's trying to promote an agenda. Briana Zavadil White: I don’t necessarily know if the portrait was created for him. What I can tell you though is that the artist who created it, Ole Peter Hansen Balling—he was a Norwegian, I believe—he also created the portrait of John Brown that you took a look at out there. He also created Grant and His Generals, I saw some of you looking at it; it's that huge 10 by 16 portrait. This was an artist who did portraits on the side of the Union, right, and so he was commemorating. Especially with that portrait of Brown, that painting was created in 1872, long after Brown had been hung. In a way, I guess the question is: Are these portraits acting as propaganda? Speaker 11: With an agenda? Briana Zavadil White: Maybe a little bit. Right? Right?

Speaker 1: He's leaning forward like he's engaged, he's not passive. Briana Zavadil White: Okay, what else? Speaker 1: Because, you know, sitting is a passive act. Speaker 2: Also, even though he's in a suit, it's ruffled and it has the wrinkles in it. So that whole, common man, rail-splitter platform that he won the election with. Speaker 1: Even the cuff of his pants is caught up in his boot. Speaker 2: And that jacket being so crumpled in his chair. Speaker 1: His boots look a little worn, they don't look new. Speaker 3: There's a neat line that I thought of when I read—when I saw this picture; he said—they were talking to his law partner—"he had a slow but tenacious quality of his mind," [he] noted that Lincoln's "intellect worked not quickly nor brilliantly, but exhaustively. He not only went to the root of the question, but dug up the root, separated and analyzed every fiber of the root before he would come to a decision." Briana Zavadil White: I wonder what could you do—how could you make the connection with your students between that quote and this portrait. What could you have them do? Speaker 2: Pose it in a way that would represent them. Speaker 1: Make cartoon balloons of what he's thinking at that moment in time, because that would go with that thought process. Speaker 3: Yeah, he's certainly not thinking about what to eat for lunch. Speaker 4: I don't know, I think—some of the things that I read, like, at the Ford's Theatre talked about how these people were petitioning for places on his cabinet, and that he would listen to them, and that he's seen Sojourner Truth—it just seems like he was a listener. And that to me looks like he's almost listening to somebody talk attentively, he didn't brush people off—is what I kind of got the impression. Briana Zavadil White: So you're getting this feeling of him listening to somebody telling him something. Okay, interesting. Speaker 1: There's no accoutrements, there's no symbolism, there's no draped background, there's no mini log cabin on the floor. It's just him and the chair and the room. Briana Zavadil White: It lacks the objects, right? We know that there's a setting; it's most likely some sort of studio type of setting, right? But, again, like Sherman, we're forced to focus on Lincoln himself. So this particular piece—people always flock to it. It always strikes them for some reason, and maybe it's the pose, maybe it is that there isn't a lot of the extra stuff in it, but this particular image—which is by the artist George P. A. Healy—is actually a replica. Everybody knows the difference between a copy and a replica, right? A replica is a piece created by the same artist who completed the original, and a copy is a piece created by somebody entirely different. So here's the sneaky detail about this portrait, Lincoln had already died when Healey painted The Peacemakers. So he had to use a model, and then he used, mostly likely, photographs of Lincoln to create this likeness. Isn't that interesting? So, similar to the Brown downstairs—that portrait, like I said, is 1872—the artist had to use photographs from the trial to create the likeness. Alright, be in a position where you can see this portrait. Tell me about Lincoln's expression here. Speaker 2: At peace. Briana Zavadil White: At peace, what makes you say that? Speaker 2: He has somewhat of a smile on his face. Speaker 5: Relaxed. Briana Zavadil White: Okay. Does everybody agree that he has somewhat of a smile on his face. Speaker 4: He looks tired to me. Speaker 1: I don't think he looks peaceful. Briana Zavadil White: You don't think he looks peaceful. What's giving you the impression of him looking tired? Speaker 6: The eyes. Speaker 4: Yeah, I was going to say the eyes. And the shoulders are kind of slouched a little bit. He just looks tired. Speaker 1: His hair is just sort of ruffled around his ears. Briana Zavadil White: Kind of a bit unkempt, Lincoln is known for that certainly. Speaker 1: The big bags under his eyes. Briana Zavadil White: Okay. So we've got these bags, right, under his eyes here. And tell me about his cheeks. Multiple Speakers: Sunken. Briana Zavadil White: They're sunken in. What else? Speaker 1: His bowtie is askew. Briana Zavadil White: His bowtie is askew, isn't it? And it's always so interesting because this is a formal photograph, right? And yet, here we have Lincoln with his bowtie askew and his hair sort of a little disheveled, okay? It really is a true likeness of Lincoln because that's how he often was portrayed. Speaker 2: He looks like a common man. Briana Zavadil White: So, this is a photograph; where is the focus? Because we all can see a focal point, we also can see a blurred piece of the portrait. So what becomes the focus? Speaker 8: His face. Briana Zavadil White: Okay. Right really in the middle of his face, right? And then everything else gets blurred out from there. Speaker 3: The crack of the glass plate negative is a focal point though, too. Briana Zavadil White: Okay, and everybody sees that? Speaker 3: That wasn't intentional though. Briana Zavadil White: No, it absolutely wasn't. It absolutely wasn't. So is this—we certainly know, think about the plaster cast on the other side. You can tell that this is Lincoln, right, at the end of the war. This is February 5, 1865. This is one of the last formal sittings that Lincoln sat for. And this wasn't the only portrait of him that was created on that day in Alexander Gardner's studio, but the reason why this particular image was saved is because of that slight smile. Speaker 2: He did accomplish what he set out to do: he kept the Union together. And that was the goal. Briana Zavadil White: I want you to think about all of the photographs of Lincoln that you've seen. Do you ever see that expression? Multiple Speakers: No. Briana Zavadil White: No. The crack has taken on so much importance in contemporary times. But the reason why, again, the portrait was kept then, was because of the expression on his face. People talk now about how the crack is a foreshadowing of his assassination, and how it's separating North from South—but that's all contemporary ideas. Absolutely. I would urge you—and I saw that you have the Lincoln Smithsonian in your classroom, right? Did you get that? So the Portrait Gallery partnered up with the Center for Education and Museum Studies to create that issue. So in that issue you will have this piece, along with the life masks, as well as the Cooper Union carte-de-visite that I was telling you about downstairs. It really does provide a nice comparison between Lincoln at the beginning of the Civil War and Lincoln at the end of the Civil War. The other thing that you're going to get as well—and I think it's either on the CD or in your folder—is a lesson about the chronology of Lincoln. So I'm giving you about 20 different images of Lincoln spanning from I think 1857 to 1865 for your students to be able to consider that chronology and place—really place the portraits in order and to do it visually.