Elizabeth Chew
Elizabeth Chew, Ph.D., is curator at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia. She is an art historian who is interested in connections between material culture, architecture, and the politics of gender and family. She is particularly interested in Thomas Jefferson’s family at Monticello. She organized the re-creation of Jefferson’s Indian Hall in commemoration of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial. This project took her west and introduced her to amazing Native American artists of the Northern Plains.
Bostonian George Ticknor catalogued the “strange furniture” of the four walls of the room after his visit in 1815, listing heads and horns, “curiosities which Lewis and Clark found on their wild and perilous expedition,” mastodon bones, and the two Native American painted hides.