The Countrywide Park Support (NPS) is reopening Robert E. Lee’s mansion for community viewing immediately after a 3-yr renovation interval.
NPS issued a assertion Tuesday announcing the reopening of the memorial, noting that it extra new exhibits that display the 100 enslaved people today who labored on Lee’s plantation.
The business also related with descendants of the enslaved workers to aid with the historical past of the property.
Curators also acquired 1,300 antiques of Black background to be exhibited at the house and restored much more than 1,000 historic objects, according to the statement.
Philanthropist David M. Rubenstein donated $12.35 million in 2018 to NPS for the renovation of the mansion.
“The reopening of Arlington Property provides a area for challenging and critical conversations that illuminate extra views, like the encounters of enslaved men and women and their descendants,” National Park Foundation President and CEO Will Shafroth stated in the statement. “David Rubenstein’s generous reward to the National Park Basis served restore the plantation home and enslaved people’s residing quarters and established new academic exhibits, inspiring persons to mirror on the realities of our previous, take into consideration how it informs in which we are now, and function with each other to generate a a lot more just and equitable foreseeable future.”
The mansion was built by George Washington’s stepson George Washington Parke Custis as a memorial to his father. Robert E. Lee, who was commander of the Confederate States Army during the Civil War, moved into the mansion right after marrying Custis’s daughter Mary Anna Randolph Custis, according to ABC Information.
