Professor Anna Arabindan-Kesson and Monument Lab have collaborated with artist Sonya Clark on a public history project that centers the narrative of Robert Hemmings, whom Jefferson enslaved at Monticello and brought to Philadelphia in 1776 to serve as his 14-year-old valet during the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. 

“We went looking for Robert Hemmings and found America.” — Anna Arabindan-Kesson

The public art project Declaration House, a block away from the Liberty Bell and Independence Mall in Philadelphia, is exhibiting Clark’s The Descendants of Monticello, which displays a monumental montage featuring the blinking eyes of Robert Hemmings’ descendants and others who are related to the over 400 people enslaved at Monticello, including descendants biologically related to Jefferson. 

The exhibition illuminates entangled legacies of freedom and enslavement at the core of the nation’s founding; the deleted passage on slavery in a near-final draft of the Declaration of Independence written by Jefferson at this location referred to slavery as a “cruel war against human nature itself.” 

Arabindan-Kesson has been working on the project since 2022, when she was invited to join the curatorial team of Monument Lab Director Paul Farber and poet Yolanda Wisher to work with Clark and partners at Independence National Historical Park and Monticello's Getting Word African American Oral Project.  “The question of who gets to tell the story of a nation, in public, is becoming a heated one, in the United States and internationally,” said Arabindan-Kesson. “This project is offered as something of an antidote, an invitation to approach this moment with clarity, grace, and coalition. And an opportunity to refocus our energies on those descendants of enslaved peoples and their relatives, and how they have fueled, held, and elevated our democracy.”

“We went looking for Robert Hemmings and found America,” said Arabindan-Kesson. 

The exhibition opened on June 24, 2024 and runs through Sep 8, 2024. 

Declaration House in the news:                

In The Guardian, “Public artwork reframes US history of enslavement through Jefferson’s valet” 

On WHYY.org, “Philly Declaration House exhibit offers ‘a window into understanding’ the struggles for freedom in the United States”

In Princeton Alumni Weekly,  “African American History Taking a New View of the Declaration of Independence”