Thursday, July 01, 2004
Heading back down the interstate from Charlottsville (where my "Colonial Geek Tour" took place) toward Richmond, I was attracted by two signs. One alerted me to an "Aboriginal Art Museum."
Funny, I had no idea Virginia had aborigines. I had to go. Was it aboriginal art in the form of "Native American" aborigines, or was it really aboriginal art? I had to know.
I found the museum; it's in a cul de sac and is located in an old mansion (very cool!) now owned by the University of Virginia. And the artwork inside is indeed South Seas aboriginal art, collected and stored by two Virginians, one dead (who did most of the go-and-get-it collecting) and one living (who bought the dead guy's stuff and combined it with his own healthy collection).
So the museum was on a residential street; it was free, and by the time I got there, it was closed. No matter. It wasn't locked so I went in. I wandered around for about 30 minutes, left a buck in the donation box and went on my way.
Back on the freeway, I see a sign for a turnoff to Orange, VA.
Orange, VA. Wait a minute, that's where JAMES MADISON'S house, Montpelier, is!
GOTTA go see this.
You see, if you seen my act then you know that James Madison and I go WAAAY back; maybe five, six years now. His action figure (yes, there's a James Madison Action Figure) plays prominently in my act. Gets huge laughs. Plus, he was an early president, he wrote the Constitution, and his wife was a babe.
Not bad for a guy who was 5'1" in his boots.
So I left the freeway and headed north for Orange. Driving through the rain (on a road called, appropriately enough, the James Madison Highway) I am nonetheless treated to some of the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen. Rolling hills, bored cattle, you get the idea.
I finally get to Orange and for some reason I miss the painfully obvious signs pointing the way to Montpelier. However, there is a James Madison museum in town, and the lady there points me in the right direction.
And I thought James Monroe had a spread.
The grounds of Montpelier are HUGE. You buy your admission at the gift shop across the street, then you drive over to the entrance where a guard waves you through--provided there isn't someone coming the other way, trying to get out. (It's a one-lane entrance-exit.)
The road leads to an ample parking lot. Signs point to things in all directions; I headed for the orientation room, where they show you a powerpoint show; but it had just ended so I latched on to the last tour of the day.
I was warned at the gift shop that Montpelier was going through a bit of a restoration phase. They weren't kidding.
The familiar four pillars known to historical geeks like me as the front of James Madison's house were still there, but the stairway leading up to the front door was gone; both of the extended wings that Madison added to the home (the service wing, to the right and the so-called "Dolley wing," to the left) were covered in construction platforms and a steady sound of drilling and pounding could be heard.
The tourguide apologized that the house wasn't open for tours yet (Hardhat tours start on July 3) but she did allow us to go into one room in the basement, which was accessible from the front and apparently sturdy enough to allow non-hard-hat visits. That room alone was neat enough; it meant that I actually got into the house.
This restoration is due to the fact that the home's immediately previous owners, the Du Pont family, had bought the home in the 1920s and done a lot of work to it. They added new rooms and sections on to the home, which are now being removed to bring the home back to the size and design of how it looked when the Madisons actually lived there.
(The home has only been in public ownership since 1983; I didn't know that.)
The Duponts also added two horse race tracks to the property, which are still there and very beautiful. In the back of Montpelier are some amazing gardens which I much enjoyed wandering through. This led to a temporary home for most of the Madison goodies, now stored in a temporary location for the public to see.
Before I left, I stopped at the family cemetery to see James and Dolley's stones. Interesting. Jefferson's stone is locked behind a huge iron gate. Monroe, as I mentioned yesterday, is encased in a cast iron cage in downtown Richmond to protect the public from his zombie ways. But Madison and his wife are separated from the rest of the family cemetery by a simple, waist-high iron fence. Several people have left American flags at the grave, so they apparently don't mind if you hop the rather pointless fence. I didn't; there wasn't really any point.
That done, I hopped back in the car, went back across the street to the gift shop, picked up a shirt (they didn't have the action figures!) and I was on my way back to Richmond, just in time to meet up with my friend and host Tom Anderson at a live outdoor concert by George Thorogood. Can anyone possibly have a more "American" day than that?
TT
Funny, I had no idea Virginia had aborigines. I had to go. Was it aboriginal art in the form of "Native American" aborigines, or was it really aboriginal art? I had to know.
I found the museum; it's in a cul de sac and is located in an old mansion (very cool!) now owned by the University of Virginia. And the artwork inside is indeed South Seas aboriginal art, collected and stored by two Virginians, one dead (who did most of the go-and-get-it collecting) and one living (who bought the dead guy's stuff and combined it with his own healthy collection).
So the museum was on a residential street; it was free, and by the time I got there, it was closed. No matter. It wasn't locked so I went in. I wandered around for about 30 minutes, left a buck in the donation box and went on my way.
Back on the freeway, I see a sign for a turnoff to Orange, VA.
Orange, VA. Wait a minute, that's where JAMES MADISON'S house, Montpelier, is!
GOTTA go see this.
You see, if you seen my act then you know that James Madison and I go WAAAY back; maybe five, six years now. His action figure (yes, there's a James Madison Action Figure) plays prominently in my act. Gets huge laughs. Plus, he was an early president, he wrote the Constitution, and his wife was a babe.
Not bad for a guy who was 5'1" in his boots.
So I left the freeway and headed north for Orange. Driving through the rain (on a road called, appropriately enough, the James Madison Highway) I am nonetheless treated to some of the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen. Rolling hills, bored cattle, you get the idea.
I finally get to Orange and for some reason I miss the painfully obvious signs pointing the way to Montpelier. However, there is a James Madison museum in town, and the lady there points me in the right direction.
And I thought James Monroe had a spread.
The grounds of Montpelier are HUGE. You buy your admission at the gift shop across the street, then you drive over to the entrance where a guard waves you through--provided there isn't someone coming the other way, trying to get out. (It's a one-lane entrance-exit.)
The road leads to an ample parking lot. Signs point to things in all directions; I headed for the orientation room, where they show you a powerpoint show; but it had just ended so I latched on to the last tour of the day.
I was warned at the gift shop that Montpelier was going through a bit of a restoration phase. They weren't kidding.
The familiar four pillars known to historical geeks like me as the front of James Madison's house were still there, but the stairway leading up to the front door was gone; both of the extended wings that Madison added to the home (the service wing, to the right and the so-called "Dolley wing," to the left) were covered in construction platforms and a steady sound of drilling and pounding could be heard.
The tourguide apologized that the house wasn't open for tours yet (Hardhat tours start on July 3) but she did allow us to go into one room in the basement, which was accessible from the front and apparently sturdy enough to allow non-hard-hat visits. That room alone was neat enough; it meant that I actually got into the house.
This restoration is due to the fact that the home's immediately previous owners, the Du Pont family, had bought the home in the 1920s and done a lot of work to it. They added new rooms and sections on to the home, which are now being removed to bring the home back to the size and design of how it looked when the Madisons actually lived there.
(The home has only been in public ownership since 1983; I didn't know that.)
The Duponts also added two horse race tracks to the property, which are still there and very beautiful. In the back of Montpelier are some amazing gardens which I much enjoyed wandering through. This led to a temporary home for most of the Madison goodies, now stored in a temporary location for the public to see.
Before I left, I stopped at the family cemetery to see James and Dolley's stones. Interesting. Jefferson's stone is locked behind a huge iron gate. Monroe, as I mentioned yesterday, is encased in a cast iron cage in downtown Richmond to protect the public from his zombie ways. But Madison and his wife are separated from the rest of the family cemetery by a simple, waist-high iron fence. Several people have left American flags at the grave, so they apparently don't mind if you hop the rather pointless fence. I didn't; there wasn't really any point.
That done, I hopped back in the car, went back across the street to the gift shop, picked up a shirt (they didn't have the action figures!) and I was on my way back to Richmond, just in time to meet up with my friend and host Tom Anderson at a live outdoor concert by George Thorogood. Can anyone possibly have a more "American" day than that?
TT
Comments:
I've enjoyed reading about your Virginia adventures and getting your take on all the local sites that we haven't bothered to check out yet (hangs head in shame). I'll keep you in mind should I ever run across an uber-kitchy presidential memento. Debora K.
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