A light-skinned man, woman, boy, and girl, and a brown-skinned man sit and stand around a table spread with papers and a map in this horizontal portrait. The light-skinned man sits on a red upholstered chair at the table to our left, and his body faces our right in profile. His legs are crossed, and he rests his right elbow, closer to us, on the back of the chair. He has a sloping, rounded nose, dark eyes, jowls along his jawline, and his closed mouth juts forward. His left arm rests on an open pamphlet on the table next to a sword with a delicate silver hilt. To our left, the young boy stands also looks to our right in profile, next to the older man's chair. The boy wears a dusky rose-pink suit with a white lacy collar. With his right hand, he pulls back a dark green cloth covering a globe on a wooden stand along the left edge of the canvas. The woman sits at the right side of the table, across from the man. She has dark eyes, full cheeks, a double chin, and her pale lips are closed. She wears a voluminous ivory satin gown and petticoat with a black lace shawl, and an ivory cap with a satin bow covers her gray hair. She points to a spot on a map on the table with a closed fan held in her right hand. The young girl, wearing a gauzy white dress with a pine-green sash at the waist, stands on the far side of the table near the woman, holding the curling edges of the map. Behind the women, the brown-skinned man wears a rust-orange and gray uniform, and stands with one hand tucked into his vest in the shadows at the edge of the composition. His features are indistinct but he faces our left in profile. The room has a gold-and-yellow checkerboard floor, and a red cloth drapes from columns frame the scene to each side. It is unclear whether a river view at the back of the room is seen through an open window or door, or if it is a large painting behind the people.
Edward Savage, The Washington Family, 1789-1796, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1940.1.2

America’s Architecture of Freedom and Unfreedom

The 74th A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts presented by Mabel O. Wilson

Sundays, March 9–30, 2025


Cultural historian, architectural designer, and curator Mabel O. Wilson addresses the history of slavery and dispossession in US civic architecture in this four-part series.

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Over four lectures, Wilson presents key themes and examines buildings, works of art, and other historical documents through the interplay of race and the construction of national identity. She brings together historical research on the United States’ early civic architecture, including Richmond’s Virginia State Capitol, the White House, and the design of Washington, DC. Her talks explore the complex dichotomy between the founding ideals of these institutions and the reality of their construction.

About the speaker

Mabel O. Wilson

Mabel O. Wilson is the Nancy and George E. Rupp Professor of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and professor and chair of the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department at Columbia University. Wilson’s scholarship and projects have explored Black culture, race, and the built environment. She was a member of the design team for the award-winning Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia. She also cocurated the exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America (2021) at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

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The Mellon Lectures

Inaugurated in 1949, the A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts is the longest-running lecture series at the National Gallery of Art. The series was founded “to bring to the people of the United States the results of the best contemporary thought and scholarship bearing upon the subject of the Fine Arts.” Past lecturers have included art historians, artists, poets, and musicologists.

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