The House in Which: Dispatches from the Declaration House

This provocation explores the various ways in which the history of Thomas Jefferson’s time at the Graff House (the modest eighteenth-century home in which he rented rooms while composing the Declaration of Independence) has been understood and interpreted at various crucial flashpoints in the 250 years separating Jefferson’s occupancy and our own contemporary moment. In particular, the provocation seeks to think about the life of Robert Hemings, Jefferson’s fourteen-year-old enslaved valet, who also occupied the Graff House while Jefferson worked on his draft. Taking its occasion public interest in this site in the lead-up to the Semiquincentennial, the provocation considers the work of the contemporary American visual artist Sonya Clark who sought to illuminate Robert Hemings life at a site-specific installation at the Declaration House in 2024.