Gunston Hall: Visiting Physically and Digitally

This last weekend, I took a trip to George Mason’s Gunston Hall to explore the historic site and museum. As part of this assignment, I wanted to choose a museum that would be beneficial for multiple purposes, rather than just this blog post. As I’m currently studying the Mason family for one of my other courses this semester, Gunston Hall was a good fit.

Physical Space

The site had a visitor center and museum building, including a giftshop, a picnic area, reconstruction outbuildings (including laundry, well, dairy, kitchen, and schoolhouse), a cemetery, walking trails, garden, and the historic mansion itself. While there was occasional signage discussing the outdoor attractions, many of them were generalized information about the type of building, rather than any specifics about the family or their enslaved staff.

While the site is not inherently accessible, there are accommodations for wheelchair users. The visitor center and museum are accessible, with ground floor restrooms and wheelchairs available to borrow. The grounds are relatively flat, though the paths are not paved, which may present some difficulties. For the most difficult part of the site, the mansion, the first floor is accessible with a wheelchair lift, but the second floor is only accessible by stairs. The staff have a prepared book of photographs of the second floor for visitors who can’t view it themselves. In addition, for individuals who cannot stand for long periods, there are usable chairs stationed in every room of the mansion tour. The site is less outwardly accessible for individuals with other disabilities, such as blindness or deafness. For instance, the signs in the museum are not brailled, and there are interactive elements that play audio which are not subtitled. If these accommodations exist, they must be asked for at the information desk.

Like it’s famous resident, Gunston Hall’s argument about history appears to revolve around the protection of personal rights of American citizens, with exhibits about the rights of American citizens. While this is the prominent theme that brings together most exhibits and sections of the museum, this argument is harder to find while touring the historic buildings on site. When it comes to the mansion, much of the arguments seem to revolve around the wealth of the Mason family, with some allusions to the people enslaved there. As many questions of my tour group revolved around the historic preservation of the building and enslaved population, that was the majority of the information we received during our guided tour. It is possible that the tour changes depending on the docent and the group taking it. 

Gunston Hall’s approach of having the mansion, museum, and outbuildings give it a unique audience: the mansion is perfect for people who love historical preservation. The grounds are helpful, but also in many ways lacking, but would be sure to interest people who like DIY tours of historic sites, like Historic Jamestowne, but less interesting for visitors who expect costumed interpreters like Colonial Williamsburg. The museum is also more of a highlight for people who want hard historical facts, while also being interactive, with some activities being child-friendly.

Gunston Hall, compared to other historic houses I’ve visited, has many authentic Mason family artifacts or reproductions of artifacts. They also reference a plethora of historic primary texts from the Revolutionary War era, including documents about taxation or a diary of one of George Mason IV’s sons. One particular source that stands out is an audio recording by a historian discussing reasons why views of leaders during the formation of America differ in their views of slavery than leaders of the Confederacy. The implementation of secondary sources always felt natural and well incorporated. 

Forgiving for the strange location of historic reproduction buildings, which follow the archaeological evidence of their original locations: the site is laid out fairly well. Signs clearly point out where the parking for the visitor center is, there are stationary maps of the entire site. When you enter the visitor center, you immediately find the help desk and how to check in for tours. There are ground floor restrooms, a temporary exhibit section off the main museum, and the museum leads through a mostly linear chronological explanation of the Mason life, legacy, through to modern day human rights advocacy. The use of a non-historical museum building on site greatly improves the site’s organization. 

While it is not completely interactive, there are fun interactive elements, such as the aforementioned phone with audio from a historian. There’s also a printing simulation, where visitors can use large stamps to make their own copy of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Another element allows a visitor to “vote” whether Senators should have duration limited terms by placing glass beads on a scale. While these smaller interactive elements are simple and don’t use extravagant technology like other larger museums, their existence helps break up the experience of “walk and read” that many museums default to.

I honestly think that an increased number of staff would have improved my experience. I believe adding at least two more docents or interpreters (one to walk around the museum, and one to discuss details about the outbuildings) would have made the site feel less empty. 

Digital

The digital site gives a completely different impression than the physical site, and honestly, I think it’s great. While the site has the same information as the physical site discussed, there’s more (different) information. One of my highlights from the website is that there’s a section for hands-on learning about colonial food, where you can read the historical background around a colonial dish or drink, and then finish the lesson by making it at home. There’s also craft projects for making colonial toys, activities for working with primary sources, video courses on archaeology and more. It might be one of the most educational activity focused websites for a plantation house museum I’ve ever seen, and I imagine it would be perfect for anyone doing homeschooling. Color me impressed. It’s not even that it’s overly technologically advanced either. Many virtual materials consist of blog post equivalent pages with embedded pictures and videos, but the fact that the pages have such fun concepts makes it stand out. 

While the museum has a partial emphasis on human rights, the website simplifies the site’s message to be more about the Mason family, genealogy, and colonial life, but I also think this is to engage with a more specific audience (Geneaologist and Homeschool Educators). I don’t consider this a bad thing, but the audience who visits the site physically and virtually feel like separate groups. 

The site is not purely educational, it actually holds a lot of information, especially about visiting the physical site, supporting the non-profit, and more business efforts, such as an online shop and employment information. Because of this, it’s not the easiest to navigate to digital programming, but there is a large button marked “Learn” which brings up the categories, which leads to more subcategories, and then the subcategory entries like the recipes. Because of this nesting approach, the site does not offer a linear path to follow, but there is a semi-linear path if you want to learn about the Mason Family, with a side panel of topics that you can follow in order or skip around if you’d like. 

For more at-home education, there’s a section called “Families and Teachers” with activities that point towards specific sections of the Virginia Standards of Learning Guidelines, making sure the activities are in line with potential standardized testing. There’s also information about setting up field trips or talks for classrooms. For the genealogy side of the site, it’s actually fairly hidden. There is a database called The Mason Web which allows researchers to search through genealogical charts and entries about family members for research.

If you want more information about Gunston Hall, there’s also a robust contact list including every major department of the site with a library and curatorial staff email, and the opportunities for private appointments.

Through my cursory checks, the website is accessible with my screen reader software, though I have not been able to check for alternate text on images. One big accessible plus I found, however, is that there’s a plethora of buttons with decorative images or text that still work with the screen reader. I think the navigation of the site would be significantly more difficult without vision, as the navigation menus move around depending on what page you’re on. One last accessibility note: the videos have auto-generated captions, but could be improved by official captions to alleviate any potential wrong transcriptions. 

It’s honestly really difficult to think of ways to improve the digital experience. If there was anything I could add, it would be making the genealogy pages more clearly accessible from the homepage. Nevertheless, this is an impressive webpage, and it’s probably going to change my standards of other historic house websites.