 Good afternoon. And welcome to the William G. McGowan Theater here at the National Archives. I'm David Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States. And I'm pleased you could join us whether you're here in the theater with us or joining us on our YouTube or Facebook channels. Before we hear from Lester Gorlich about Barry Faulkner's murals and the rotunda, I'd like to let you know about two other programs coming up this week. Tomorrow at noon we'll host a conversation between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail Adams. Portrayed by Stephen Endabao and Kim Hanley. Expect the spirited discussion of their views on the events that surrounded the struggle for American independence and the establishment of the United States under the Constitution. And on Thursday we'll host our annual July 4th celebration on Constitution Avenue. Come early for the free t-shirt giveaway between 8 and 9.30. At 10 o'clock the Declaration of Independence reading ceremony will begin. The Continental Color Guard and Fife and Drum Corps of the U.S. Third Infantry will perform. And costume reenactors will read the declaration. Inside the building we'll have family activities until 4 o'clock. Check our website at archives.gov. For more information or sign up for the table outside the theater to receive email updates, you'll also find information about other National Archives programs and activities. And another way to get more involved with the National Archives is to become a member of the National Archives Foundation. The Foundation supports our education and outreach programs. Check out their website, archivesfoundation.org, to learn more about them and join online. Dr. Gorlick has been a volunteer at the National Archives here in Washington for almost 10 years. It'll be 10 years in November. And the reason I know that is Lester and I started on the same day. Our core volunteers do so much for us every day. And we're so grateful for their time, expertise, and willingness to pitch in. And I know many of you are in the audience. So just raise your hand. You volunteers. Thank you for being here. Thank you for the work that you do. As a docent, Lester has conducted many tours of the museum for our visitors. And the two murals and the rotunda piqued his curiosity. His interest in the depictions of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution extended to the artist Barry Faulkner and the creative process that shaped the paintings. After exhaustive research, Lester was able to uncover the story behind the murals and their composition. And we're pleased that he's here today to share what he's learned. Before he volunteered as a docent at the National Archives, Lester was a program director at the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Health in Rockville, Maryland, and had a productive independent investigator in physical, biological, and clinical sciences. He received a B.S. degree in chemistry from the Illinois Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Chicago. And did postdoc work in micro and molecular biology at Washington University School of Medicine, where he coauthored such fascinating articles as increased ribonuclease to activity and temperate sensitive mutant Esucheria coli and chromosomal location of ribosomal N.R.N.A. cisterns. More recently, he published his research on the Faulkner murals in a 2014 prologue article depicting the creation of a nation. Much simpler. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Lester Gorell. I'd first like to thank you very much for the introduction. I'd also like to thank all the individuals who took time out of work, lunchtime, and possibilities to come here and listen to my presentation. At the top of my present, what I'm going to be doing during the next 40 minutes or so is literally taking you on a tour through the Faulkner murals. What I'm going to be doing is describing to you the stories that are hidden in the murals. Now, you might wonder why what the murals having been here for so long. This is something that's needed. There is a lot of information that's available on the murals, except most of it is archived, and it's really not accessible to the general public. In addition of the information that is available, there are gaps in knowledge which really require going through the historical information and addressing these gaps if this has not been done. This is what I've tried to do these past couple of years, is to address the gaps in knowledge and also to resurrect all the information that is lying in the archives in this particular building, also in the Smithsonian Association's Smithsonian affiliate institutions and other localities, and to bring everything together. What I want to do, my objective here is basically to give you a true understanding of the murals, what they are really, what the stories that underlie the murals. Also, I really want you to gain the, hopefully, you'll gain the appreciation of the incredible creativity of the murals and what is really done. These are just not pictures. They really do tell stories of early history. Now, I'm going to provide you with some basic information. First of all, even though these are called the Faulkner murals, one is left with the impression Barry Faulkner is the one who worked on the project, which is incorrect. This is part of a team effort. It was Barry Faulkner that was supported by a federal contract. The individuals who are the director of the project were John Russell Pope. He was the archivist for the National Archives at that particular time. In addition, the government representative to the project was Louis A. Simon. He was the supervisory architect of the Treasury Department. They really provided valuable input. In addition, overseeing the project was the United States Commission of Fine Arts. The particular person here was the chairman of the commission, Charles Muir, who provided absolutely invaluable advice and guidance on the project. Now, all the individuals above Charles Muir had expertise in either the artistry, sculpture, or architect, but there was not one U.S. historian on this particular team. That's the way it stayed for a couple years until they finally added, I mean, sorry, that's the way it stayed for almost halfway through the project until they finally added two very noted historians to the team. One was John Franklin Jameson. He was first of all a very strong advocate for the construction of the National Archives. He was the director of historic research at the Carnegie Institution. And he brought in Max Ferrand, another very well-known historian. He is the, he's labeled editor, but I sort of consider him author. There's the three volume series on the proceedings of the Federal Convention, and he was the one to organize all that was a tremendous task. So they brought in the historic expertise, and without that I wouldn't be up here, because I'm going to have to interpret, provide explanations for what's happening in the murals. And these, the underlying assumption of a lid of these explanations is that the history of the representative is accurate. Now, there are going to be two categories of information I'm going to provide. One is factual, and most of the factual data comes from all the archived records. A lot of it comes from Faulkner's specific statements. Then it's going to be assembled. I sort of gave you a hint about that. This is this information that I had to assemble making, going through the historical data on the times that are represented in each of these compositions. Now, this type of data, in contrast to factual, which is factual, it's good. The simple data is not quite as unequivocal. So basically, I have to add a caveat that any of the conclusions that I explained, I need a lot of the information I'm presenting that is not directly from the factual data is subject to alternative interpretation. And there's going to be a question and answer period at the end of the session. And I really welcome any input from any of you on this, because my ultimate objective is really to get to the truth, really what is going on in these compositions. All right, now, first of all, the painting, the project started with very little guidance on where to go. Basically, they said the only thing that they wanted was something to fit into the New Archives building, and they had to make sure that it fit well into the architecture and the decoration to rent the building. So the team had to decide what was going to be the role of the mural, the role for the murals. And I think a lot of us are under the assumption that it was strictly to sort of expound on the Constitution and decoration. Actually, the role was much larger, much more global. And it was intended to serve as funnest pieces for the contents of the entire Archives building, which is much larger. Now, the subjects of the mural remained, as everyone thought, when they came into the project, Constitution and decoration. But in order to count for the broadened scope, they had to change the working a little bit to make it a little bit more general. And we'll see an application of that when I talk about the Constitution. And basically, in general terms, we can note the spirit in which these documents were produced. And that's almost like putting a minivan through the entire thing. It gives a lot of freedom. Moore developed a vision for the murals, and he saw the murals doing the same thing the second time. It's being done where you have murals, for example, in the Rotunda in the White House that reflect, that basically tell you the significance of the White House in terms of the history of the country. This, he saw the same vision for his murals, for these murals. The murals were intended, they do in fact are compatible with the architecture in the Rotunda. The architecture he chose was really classic architecture, and these are supposed to be classic protocols. They have the space in between, which is called the pronales, the foundation, and also the pillars. Now the columns are very interesting, those are very smooth. There's four columns, they didn't start out that way initially. They started as pleated columns with a well-defined structure, base structure, which meant they weren't door columns. Then they changed over time, and eventually not only did they become something entirely different, they became symbolic. In a conversation I had with Jocelyn Ball, the living niece of Barry Faulkner, she very nicely shared with me that they are symbolic, and they're supposed to represent pillars of democracy. Moore felt that since the Constitution represented, since the Declaration represented war and everything about it, or as the Constitution represented peace, that these political climates could be represented in the skies. And so you have the stormy skies here that are supposed to represent war and the clear peace. But then Faulkner took this another step forward, and what he did is he used his experience that he gained to incorporate these feelings into statues. And they actually generated a total of seven intermediate studies on the project, and about his sixth study had really well-defined statues, one represented war, Greek statues, and the other piece. However, there was a member on the commission who said that what's much better is to have something representative of the time, more representative of the time in which these documents were prepared. And Jocelyn was instead to use the flags of the colonies to represent the dangerous times that these individuals, that the writers of the decoration were being exposed to while they wrote the decoration. And in the case of the Constitution, trophies of victory and of lasting peace. Again, Faulkner took this one step further. He did adopt this, but what he did, sorry, what he did is the flags that are represented there are actually the battle flags commonly seen during the Revolutionary War, and that's where you get to tie into war. Then the flags that you see in the Constitution are really arranged in the form of a union. Those are all the flags, and that's all 13, the original 13 colonies, and one has to remember that Rhode Island absented themselves from the convention. So you see where the generalization of the overall subject of the murals takes place. I'll talk about them then. I can't get back to there. The selection of men that he decided to depict in here were based on, there were actually two listings. They had the possible individuals. One was Faulkner, he prepared a listing, and one, Jameson prepared a listing. Jameson's was realistic, and the men in his listing really fell within the timeframe of the two documents. Faulkner's was broader. He felt that one way to match up with, the murals would match up with their function to expand, to make the men there more comprehensive in terms of the history that's covered. So he included a number of individuals outside of the immediate period of these documents. And some of these individuals were Clay, Guillotine, and also Lincoln. And what he did, he generated a study where he actually put Lincoln in there, incorporated in there. Now, if you're going to do something when you prepare a study, pick a sketch, showing the men a declaration of independence. They put Lincoln in there. He's one of the more identifiable individuals of our history. You take a look at it, and they ask yourself, really, what is Lincoln doing in here? And apparently, that's the same thing Commission asked, because about two weeks afterwards, Moore, who was again from the Commission, and Pope had a meeting with Faulkner, and they laid down the first real strong guidelines, and specifically that each mural had to have one single historic hypothesis. Now, from this list, all right, this is a declaration. What happened is there are two committees represented, Faulkner represented two committees in his declaration mural. The first was the committee writing the Art of Confederation. He included it in there. He decided to use that committee because the committee was appointed at the same time as the committee writing the decoration, and they shared parts of each of the documents. The chairman of that particular committee has the red dot underneath him, and that's John Dickinson. The second committee was a committee writing the declaration that's in the blue arrows, together with John Hancock and Benjamin Harrison. Benjamin Harrison was the chairman of what's called the Committee of the Whole, and the Committee of the Whole worked together with the Congress, and I don't know if you're familiar with how a Committee of the Whole works when you have a discussion, but generally what happens is a situation is brought up for discussion. It's immediately turned over, brought up to Congress. The Congress, the full Congress actually adjourns, and what happens is the Committee of the Whole convenes in order to conduct discussion on the issue. It's basically transferring the gavel back and forth. Then once the Committee of the Whole makes some decisions or recommendations, it's then reported back to the formal Congress, and that's why he's paired both Harrison and Hancock very closely. If you notice, Hancock's hands are wide open, as if he's welcomed in the entire assembly at this committee. Then he has the Committee of Five. That's a committee that actually wrote the declaration, and included Richard Henry Lee because of his defect, that he was the one who moved for the vote for independence. In the Constitution, you have three committees. First of all included in here, I put arrows in there. Those are also members of the Articles of Confederation. The first committee is the committee that wrote the first draft of the Constitution, and they're indicated by the blue arrows. Then when he included the Committee on the Connecticut Compromise, and some of you may not be familiar with their compromise, so explain it a little bit. This compromise arose because of the issue regarding suffrage in the legislature. In other words, number one, do you have one house or two houses? Number two, how are they represented? Are they represented by population or their equal representation? This really is a reflection of the conflict during that time between the power of the large states and the small states. The third committee in the gold arrows is a committee that wrote the final draft of the Constitution. They need the chairman of each of these committees. The one on the left is Nathaniel Gorham. The next one is John Maltich. He's the chairman, the so-called chairman of the first committee. That was called the Committee of Style and Revision. That's a committee of detail. And the third dot is the Committee of Style and Revision. That's William Samuel Johnson. Now we can go to the so-called compelling stories that I call them, and actually one of the individuals on the commission named them that way. And that's the point when I'm going to have to go down here and talk about it. First, we'll talk about the first story's production of the title documents. And I want to show something about, and I'm really fascinated about the global aspects of the artistry that he employs. It turns out that he, first of all, you have a central focus of each of the murals. You have Hancock and Benjamin Harrison, the decoration, and you have Washington and the Constitution. His flow of the production of the decoration is from right to left. Constitution is from left to right. And when you put these on the walls, you have an inherent symmetry in the production. All right. Now, starting. First of all, again, he captures, he uses the flags and the skies to capture the political climate. It was war. Process starts with the two men in the corner. Lee delivered the Lee resolution for independence to the Congress. Then went to the Committee of Whole for discussion. Nelson is the one who actually delivered that particular resolution, was the Virginia resolution. He delivered it from the state, from Virginia to Lee at the meeting, and there was some editing done. There was a second resolution resolved for independence. It had been submitted to the Congress earlier. And that's from Josiah Hughes. And he's from the colony of North Carolina. And he actually brought to the Congress what were called the Halifax Resolves. That really wasn't discussed. It was simply right into the minutes. And the difference between the two resolutions, the original resolution for Virginia said that Virginia wants to become independent. Contrast from Halifax, it said that North Carolina wants to become independent, but let's join, or have all the colonies join in. Then what happened, there was a committee that was assigned to write the Declaration of Independence called the Committee of Five, you can see why. There's five men in there. And you have Jefferson in the front holding a document probably forward. That's the draft declaration that he presented to the Congress for discussion. And again, the muralist, so you know immediately he's the one who wrote it primarily. Now what he did also, and he's very clever in this, he positioned John Adams immediately behind him and then Franklin behind him. That's the order in which these two men actually edited the draft that was submitted to the, that was the draft before the final that Jefferson actually submitted to the Congress. And again, I talked about Hancock and Harrison. Now the results, they had a vote on the resolution to gain independence first. And that was a pretty tight vote on July 1, 1776 late at night. There were a couple of states that did not want to vote for independence. One of the holdouts was New Jersey. Finally, they voted to approve independence. And their vote was critical because you needed nine out of 13 to get this approved and they cast a nine vote. In addition, you see Falkner's position wrote Island in the grouping. And the reason is they were also another holdout state. So he's positioning common things together. Now if you take a look at John Dickinson, he was the chairman of the committee who wrote the Articles of Confederation. He's looking at the other side, not particularly happy with transpiring. He really was not in favor of independence. He was what's called a moderate conservative, moderate conservative revolutionary. He acted through pamphleteering and he did not feel that it was the right time to gain independence. And when I put a line up here, it's because what you have is next to him is the opposite. So what Falkner is also doing is generating foils in these murals. You have Dickinson Stan who was very, does not want independence. On the other hand, what you're putting is the major force for revolution in the colonies. We have Samuel Hopkins was sort of the correlate of Sam Adams in the state of Rhode Island. And you have Tim McCain. Then at the same time with that line, everything on that left at that line refers to revolution. Whereas again with Dickinson, it's a peaceful resolution to the situation. What you see in the last three men is represented the war powers of the Congress at the time. Robert Morris was in the mercantile business. He had a huge fleet, shipping fleet industry. And what he used is he used these ships to spy on British movement around the world. So this is the espionage aspect of powers in Congress. Chase and Carol were sent as emissaries to Canada in an attempt to bring Canada into the fold as the 14th state. The reason for this is a lot of British soldiers were stationed there. So this is the alliance aspect of it. In addition, you have Carol and Morris who were involved in munitions, supplies, shipping, and also men. So these are the powers of the Congress. So everything on the left side is all war. Now the Constitution is a little bit different, a lot different. Because their primary concerns, their conflicts in the meeting were not so much with war because we were at peace. But it's the structure of the government. And the issues were what should the central government look like? And what about the rights of the states? And we'll pick that up as I go through the discussion of the Constitution. Faulkner starts off his story here with Edwin Randolph all the way in the corner. And that to sort of make him obscure, but in terms of his function it was important. Because without him we might not have ever had a federal convention. He was a very powerful force in our getting that convention. So it's logical we have a process moving from left to right that he'd be all at the beginning. Now in contrast to the declaration where you just have one document to deal with, there were actually three drafts of the Constitution were submitted to the convention. The first two were submitted actually the day before. One was submitted by James Madison. And this really was a working template for our constitution that worked through the entire process. Charles Pinkney also submitted one. They were able to identify fragments of his in the final Constitution, but there was never discussed. And Hamilton submitted one about 19 days later. It was dubbed the British plan. The reason why it described the monarchy and basically there was not discussed at all. All the discussions on these drafts, every discussion started in the Committee Hall. Chairman of the Committee Hall was on the agoram. That discussion lasted for a couple of months. And you can see he accumulated a lot of notes. You can see that's represented by all the stuff that he's holding underneath his arm. Then there was a second committee created called the Committee of Detail. The agoram had to condense everything into report, the so-called agoram report. Committee of Detail's responsibility was to take the agoram report and actually construct the draft of the Constitution. Chairman of that committee was John Rotledge. And you can see how the muralist not only defines the function, but also the name of the committee. Because you see Rotledge is pointing his hand into a book as if pointing out a detail. And the name of the committee is the Committee of Detail. Now during the deliberations of the Committee of Detail, the issue that I brought up before about suffrage and the legislature came up. And the individuals involved in that are the ones whose I've named here. There was a committee called the Committee of the Grand Compromise. And Edmund Jerry of Jerry Mandarin fame was the one who was the chairman of that particular committee. James Wilson paid a very important role because what's done is they had in order to decide how they were supposed to, how this was going to work in terms of the suffrage issue. They had to take a look at the two plans that were presented to the Congress for the composition of our government. One was the so-called New Jersey or small plan. And the other was the Virginia plan or the large state plan. And what James Wilson did is he compared the two and wrote a beautiful synopsis. And what you see the way Falkner represents that is James Wilson is holding a sheet of paper in each of his hands as if those are the two plans. Oliver Ellsworth, I'm sorry, go back a little bit. Roger Sherman in the corner. He actually proposed a solution and proposed a type of government organization of our government that we see now with one exception. He said nothing about the Art of the Confederation disappearing. It turns out that he proposed this early in a convention and the decision was made to postpone discussion until later. And the person who took the flag up on this on the issue was Oliver Ellsworth. And so once the compromise was passed, you have a first draft of a constitution that was generated. And Ellsworth, you can see, he was probably the one who inserted that into the draft. And you can see it's really sort of this several type document. There was then a second draft that was prepared and that was actually prepared by James Wilson. They believed there was a handwritten draft that was actually prepared. That second draft was given to the next committee, which is called the Committee of Style and Revision. The purpose of that committee was to take these 21 article document and just simply make it readable. And they felt that Gouverneur Morris, who was over there, the G. Morris, would be the perfect person to do this because he was a very good writer. Well, he did a great job. The only problem is he didn't listen to instructions. The instructions were did not do anything major. He took the 21 article document condensed down to the seventh that we have. And you can see Johnson is cradling, very carefully cradling, which is likely the Constitution of the United States. Now, Falkner also does, he brings everything together into the school because you see Madison's draft, that's a template for the Constitution, the final Constitution. You see Pinkney in the back who made a contribution to the Constitution. Then you have the chairman of the committee on the grand compromise together. Where Morris comes into play is that Morris not only did the writing, the final writing on that final draft, but what he also did is contributed the preamble to the Constitution. Now we start about the issues of the central government. One first issue is, and again understand that at this point, I'm doing a lot of interpretation from available data that I have. Therefore, again at the end, if you have any questions, please feel free to comment about this and the question and answer. One possible interpretation of the arrangement of Washington, Mason and Franklin is that they really represent the different forms of executive they were considered being considered at the time of the convention. Now I don't use president because the term president was nonexistent for countries at that time. It was only with Washington that you first had the president of a country. Mason and Franklin both favored a multi-man executive between two and three again because of the fear and the past experience with someone just having a single power, just having one person run the country. And obviously Washington represents the single executive. Then what you have is the conflict between the large states and the small states and also the issue between federal type government and national type government. Patterson was the author of the New Jersey Small Plan for the states. And this really, he was a strong supporter of a national government where the states still retained power. In contrast to him, you have Rufus King who was a very strong federalist who favored a very strong central government. So that's one foil. Oh, I'm sorry. There was Charles Colworth Pinkney next to Patterson. He came from South Carolina, another of the states that really did not want to have their rights absolved. Contrast, what you have on the other side is representation of the federal form of government and its three colors. First of all, you have Hamilton, wanted a very strong central government but did not advocate for disappearance of state governments. Contrast, you have Gouverneur Morris. He's dressed, if you notice, he's carrying a cane and it really doesn't look like he's using it for support. They use canes a lot in artistry as symbols of wealth and aristocracy. In addition to the way he is dressed, it's obvious he comes from the aristocracy and he really favored an aristocracy over democracy. He also felt strongly that what's going to happen is that the way you're going to get a federal government, it's going to be absolute because eventually the states are going to, state governments are going to disappear. But then you had George Reed who was really sort of an outlier. His feeling was that you never have states, that you dissolve all the boundaries and you have a single central government. And that's probably the reason why Falter put him all the way on the outside, sort of really looking like an outlier. Now there's some individuals up here who are important. Interesting George Bedford, he can see, he's with his hand extended. He was a supporter of a national government, strong state supporter. And he was really concerned that if you don't give the states any power, that's wrong and he said that we'll basically have to go to foreign governments to help us out. And so basically standing like a helping hand. Depp, by the way, did not engender favor at the convention. He was not looked upon favorably after that. You have Luther Martin who was a strong states' rightist. He came to the convention with the intent to really disrupting it. But yet he played a very important role in our government because he was the one who authored the Supremacy Clause of the Seventh Article, which states specifically the Constitution, Supreme Law of the Land. See all the history that Falter is putting in this. But that's only one layer. Second layer, what he does with personal things. Now I'm convinced, he said that he looked into the lives and attitudes of everyone. I know with all the electronic aids that I have, how much work I went into trying to find the details about these lives and some of them are really strange. I don't think he did it. He probably relied very heavily on Jameson because it's just impossible. And you'll hear some of them. I don't have time to go through all of them, but afterwards if you want to hear some more, I'll be glad to provide it. First thing, what was decided more felt very strongly that you can do things with costuming in the murals. And he put up this, he made this sort of cryptic comment basically saying that there are two strains of the Congress and there are really the Southerners and Northerners. And you distinguish them through the costuming. And if you take a look at the costuming of the Adams and Franklin, that's typical of New England. The more cavalier costuming is typical of the Southern states. And you see this also in the Constitution. If you take a look at John Hancock's fair addressing, it's very, very aristocratic, very wealthy. In fact, they came from the aristocracy and there had been serious doubts about him even becoming a patriot. They thought he was a loyalist. And apparently the story is that this is what he wore every time the Congress convened. In Washington, we would berate him, hunky or possibly come dressed like this to this meeting when everyone is dying and getting killed out there. And probably to him, it's just like you and I walk out the street in a t-shirt. John Witherspoon, he was the only clergy in their meeting, but he also had another role. He was the president of the City College in New Jersey, which ultimately became Princeton. And he is dressed in the robe of the latter role because he doesn't have the standard collar of clergy. And you have this group. This group is interesting. Start with Stefan Hopkins. He's holding a hat, like a bamboo hat. That's typical Quaker hat. He was in fact a Quaker. If you take a look where he's holding, he's holding this heart. He lived the life according to the Bible. We'll talk about Thomas McKean first because he was more complicated. Thomas McKean not only was a delegate from Delaware, but he also had a position in the judicial system of the state of Pennsylvania. The color of the robes that they wore in the state of Pennsylvania were red. That's likely his judicial robe. In terms of Sam Adams, his complicated. It turns out that the sons of Liberty from Boston knew that they're going to have a representative come to this Congress with all the wealthiest people in the country. And he was considered, and it's actually in writing, one of the more slovenly members of the population in Boston. They couldn't allow that to happen. And the story is what they did methodically before they went away to the Congress is they would come. Someone would measure his shoes. Someone would measure him for a suit. A new wig, et cetera. And just before he left, he found a box of all these goods ready for him to take with. Now, if you take a look at his clothing, that falter put in there. His shoes had silver buckles. And unfortunately, you can't see it, but there are silver buckles on his shoes. He was bought at the Red Stockings. Presumably, that's a new suit. I can't tell him. Maybe that's a new wig. But that's how a falter depicted him. Then you have Floyd in the bank, who was one of the wealthiest individuals in the colonies at the time from the state of New York. And if you see, he's holding a cane. Again, cane is a symbol of wealth. We actually had someone come in who was a relative of Floyd, and I talked to them into the rotunda. And I said, did you know this about your relative? He said, I don't know where all the money went. I don't certainly don't have it. In the Constitution, here again, as you see, that pairing of individuals with radically different clothing, again, to represent the fact that he had the southern and northern interests at this meeting. And they eventually did come together. Wilson was known to be a student of your jurisprudence. So he doesn't have a judicial role. To me, this looks like a lab coat where we're reflecting a student. Ellsworth was a judge, and he's wearing judicial robes. Charles Pinkney was interesting. He came from a very wealthy family from the aristocracy in South Carolina. So you can see he's carrying the cane. At the same time, he had a love for scholarship. If you also notice, he has a book to his heart. James Madison, that's a ruffle shirt that he wore at each meeting of the convention. Archibald Baldwin, he was from what was called a frontier state, but you can see he's dressed in clothing you would expect for a frontier. William Patterson is interesting. That's an associate Supreme Court judge robe that he's wearing. And I'm going to go back to him later because this is one of the hidden secrets in the murals. Finally, you have Washington. He's complex. Fearing called him almost a commander-in-chief, again, inspiring one fear. On terms of war, you can see the way everyone is turned towards him. Almost a commander-in-chief, again, if you take a look at the sleeves on his uniform, they have two gold buttons. Commander-in-chief is three. If you take a look at the scarebird, it's empty. So he captures all of this. Now, he's been a little bit enigmatic to me because what's missing in all of this is a very important event in history. He's inauguration as president of the United States. It's very possible that he's dressed so regally, this very similar to what you see in the costuming of the king of France, for example, his coronation. It's possibly symbol of this way. He could not have dressed Washington in the clothes that he wore as an inauguration, but as he was a very ordinary man, he would have died if he would have seen his self-portrait in this. Basically, he came to the inauguration so he couldn't have illustrated it any other way. A little bit of the hidden stories. William Patterson, I mentioned that I hope that this works because I forgot that I have a hyperlink. Yes. So what I've done is taken his picture out of the mural. This is the mural picture. And take a look at his robe. This is a photograph of William Patterson. And yes, the face is the same, but the robe is radically different. Whose robe is this, then? Take a look at John Jay. Same style of robe. It's very possible what Falter did. He interjected Jay into the into the mural through the judicial robe. And he wanted Jay in there from day one. If you take a look at the sketch he submitted with the bid for the contract, Jay was in there. Hamilton is another one. Hamilton we know had a very important battle. The military uniform that he's dressed in is the same style as the same style as the uniform he wore during the Revolutionary War. Pinkney was the general, but I think the important thing is to compare the colors of the two uniforms. Most of the uniforms in those days were dark blue. It turns out that Hamilton's is blue-gray. And there was only one time in our early history where we had gray uniforms during the War of 1812 because the British sunk enough of our ships that we lost all the dye. So one possible explanation for this is that Falkler's trying to get the War of 1812 in here again through Hamilton's costuming. Another hidden one is the famous cloud in the sky and the decoration of independence. And some people can't see it, but if you look on the side I try to put arrows there. You see the nose, the lips, and the chin. They're in essence a profile of Abraham Lincoln. Now, as I mentioned before, they wanted to expand the scope of the history covered by interjecting Lincoln in here and he could not do it realistically. There's one way to do it allegorically. And the positioning of Lincoln in the mural is very important because he is essentially the cloud is almost over Jefferson. And I'm not sure if I remarked that the draft decoration before the final had a large section on slavery. The slave trade that was promoted by King George and the section actually really blasted that and said that should be removed. You shouldn't have slavery. So what that does, that sort of links the cloud into what is going on and integrates it with the rest of the composition. At the same time that moves history into the 1900s, into 1865. Now, I'm not sure I forgot if I showed you on the other slide. Oh, let's see what happens. Let's see if we have. Yeah, no. It turns out in the kind of constitution you have two trees on the left side. Those are cedars of Lebanon. Cedars of Lebanon were planted at the tomb of George Washington 100 years after his death. It's 1899. In Lincoln Cloud. And the cedars of Lebanon, what the murals is doing is really moving history through time and making this more historically comprehensive and taking you up almost to the beginning of the 20th century. Now the other thing he wants, he captures in here is the concept of nation and he does that with the folia. It's just incredible what he does. And the countryside. First place, that countryside is characteristic of the northern Atlantic states where they blow it up. We take a look at the trees. They're sycamore. Sycamore is in the decoration also in the constitution sort of integrates both of them. So if there is a notion of nation it brings everything together. But you can tell from the bark of the tree this is white oak. And keep that in mind as we go to the constitution. Here we have red oak. The two oak span the entire eastern seaboard of our country. Which is the southern states and again the sycamore. So I think this is the way Falkner captures the notion of nations. I think the way to conclude this is Edgerton's I can never pronounce his name. Compensated that the composition needed compelling story but monumental composition. And I think that Falkner is really delivered on that. In terms of the significance of the place of the building itself in the history of the country what you see is you really have covered the full span of history from pre-revolutionary period up until the beginning of the 20th century. And I achieved that also and the notion of country has been achieved using the fall age on the countryside. So at the end what I really think what Falkner has really done he's really created an artistic masterwork of history. And I'm just hoping that this really informs the people of our country what treasure we really have here and what treasure it really gave us. Alright I'm finished. And by the way there's still are many more things in here that I didn't talk about. It's just, it's absolutely amazing we were just talking once I started this project I could not stop it because all of a sudden you see such creativity you have to try unveiling unveiling everything in here there's no choice so people can appreciate what the man has done. Okay and what I want to do is first of all the full details of this are going up in an article on the National Archives website oh yeah I wanted to give you a run down really there were a lot of sources I went to the archives here went to correspondence at Smithsonian black and white photographs of the individual studies Library of Congress went through all the journals and these are the acknowledgments could not have done this work without the assistance of Richard Blondo I had to actually get the hold of the contract for the construct, for the painting and never would I have ever expected that instead of it being in the National Archives a folder would be somewhere in the Treasury Department if you take a look where it was it was between all the contracts for all the painting supply and Richard was really helpful in directing me in all the literature all the other work in the archives Smithsonian American Art Museum this is a good example of don't rely too much on what's listed electronically when I started searching for Faulkner's papers these museums did have like 45 folders I said I really don't want to go downtown I'll start scanning but then in the back of mine I said my cynical aspect came out I said I bet you any amount of money that one folder that hasn't been scanned in that's where everything is I went to all 44 finally had to come downtown and I don't feel if any of you have done any digging for historical information this is my first experience and here is a Manila folder and I know there's something precious in there so I hold it up carefully I tilt it a little bit and something slips out and you see the edge of a photograph comes a little bit further oh my gosh there's a black and white of the study that he submitted for the contract and all the other black and white slip out it's just an absolutely incredible feeling National Gallery of Art when I commented about the I don't know anything about Greek sculpture but Jonathan Boll was very very nice person I went to I had to go up to New Hampshire because one thing that's missing is the color scheme and that would have sort of helped me on the search for what's going on in those secret hidden things so I went up there and I learned from my experience here not to rely necessarily on sources that are online sometimes better to go in person and what I did find there were the cartoons for the murals and I don't know if any of you know the process of generating this type of mural what you do is you generate all sorts of studies you get your final study your photograph it you send it out photograph it use that as a base for deciding your color scheme then you pick out the correct folder what you do is you then enlarge the correct study you then enlarge it and you enlarge it to in this case you enlarge it to half size and then what you do is you do charcoal the back and you have hard white paper you generate a cartoon by basically sketching using pressure to simply sketch the figures onto their cartoon you fill out the cartoon and you actually make color cartoons then what you do is you take that color of that cartoon and you do the same thing to it on the canvas you blow it up to full size you put charcoal on the back and you trace it onto the canvas so it's a really interesting process oh but the vegetation the flora I know nothing about trees and I never would have ventured talking about them at all but the people the National Arboretum are absolutely fantastic on that and Piggy Corbett on Thomas Jefferson Foundation was also really good the horticulturist Norton really a nice guy I talked to him I sort of pointed out I found a rear book that really describes all the trees they were on Mount Vernon and when I mentioned about the trees Cedars of Lebanon it turns out that in his little book he has two dates for planting Cedars of Lebanon and we had an argument I said you've got two dates and he says no I don't have one I said two, finally went back and yes it's one it was really 1899 the person you need to honor really this is Barry Faulkner and these are his murals and really monumental creation ok thank you any questions if you have any questions come to the microphone good one let's see if I can answer it oh the other one here too Phil thanks, enjoyed it tremendously a couple questions did you have any comments of the symmetry do you have any more to say about that and then for some reasons this painting reminds me of the school of Athens which is I don't know somebody helped me there but anyway anybody hear that so either the school of Athens as a sort of an antecedent of the composition or the symmetry of it it makes sense to look at it but was there any more significance to the symmetry what kind of symmetry you noted the symmetry of the painting it's a reverse the landscape is just reversed is there a point to that what you have is the sycamore in both murals so what you're doing is you're bringing both murals together representing different country sides so you're uniting into making one united nation won't you put it up on the wall is that the question you're asking that's the reason why this was terrific when I look at Richard Henry Lee and Hamilton it always occurs to me that they look as though Faulkner has dressed them the same with the same cape and the same sword what do you say about that no I can't he doesn't always use the same sword I think from New Hampshire that's a shorts the delegate from New Hampshire in the decoration he used a shorts or those are different sorts but on the right side of both paintings he sort of has Hamilton and Lee kind of in the same pose and the same position oh yeah oh yeah make a comment one of the comments on his first sketch is one of the few comments on the sketch that were submitted with the contract because they didn't like it at all with the fact that he needed more men everyone was facing forward he needed more men with backs and so this is if that's what you're getting at so what you decided to do was to keep a couple men in there with their backs to the front of the painting I'm pretty positive that's the reason why I wasn't thinking for that at all and when I did notice that Falter really did follow all the advice he picked up on everything the only one that I didn't see having picked up on it turns out more when they were dealing with the issue of comprehensiveness Moore had concerns about the approach he was taking so it might be well worth considering another approach and basically changing the subjects entirely and having one mural with Washington at his first inauguration at the City Hall in New York and the other one with what you call it with the reading of the Declaration of Independence from Independence Hall and he didn't decide not to do that but think about City Hall in New York with the inauguration the first thing I took a look at I said maybe he's built something into the structure that's being used here if you take a look at the protocol they do have and a friend of mine I do not know how to pronounce it balusters they do have these railings in there and you can see the railings in the back the railings for the balusters are not the same shape number one, number two he didn't start out with railings he started out with a flat area and once you put the railings on you know it's on a balcony but the problem is he didn't put the balusters in until he put it in about a week before Moore made the suggestion of the New York City Hall and the inauguration so unless he changed his mind during the process I don't think that's the link that's the identifier for the inauguration but as I said there's something missing in this in his Washington's inauguration and perhaps what he did do was really in his costuming and one final question Lester when I was in training, does in training somebody told me that Faulkner denied having put Lincoln in the sign of the declaration having put Lincoln as the cloud above Jefferson's head is that true or is that apocryphal? Well the person wasn't there when Faulkner actually tried he really, he tried and I think that you have to assume that he did try and he got beaten down that way he would try again and what he's done, he's put all these hidden things in, he used allegory and this is just logical because that cloud fits in perfectly where Jefferson integrates into the mural and that was by the way another criteria they're really concerned about total integration and the two murals could not stand by themselves they had to be integrated thank you all very much for your patience I have to admit this camera's off this is my first attempt at delivering a lecture in this area it's double, number one it's history, number two it's art history because I'm a scientist and so I appreciate your staying with me during this time because one thing I notice, the difference between the two is that when you're a scientist you talk from the slides and forget about the people out here but I notice in history what you do is you talk to the people the slides are used to back up your and you're really talking to people and you really appreciate the reception thank you very much oh, no one asked that, good I know that the original contract was laid out for two years Falkner somehow knew exactly what to do and Pope they requested a I'm from the government so it's called a no-cost extension, I don't know if you know what that is and that's a 12 month extension the contract was signed on October 23 1933 the murals were installed the last week in October 1936 now there are two elements to the painting you have all the preliminary stuff he got through with all the studies he generated seven studies that took him a year then what he had to do was decide on the color scheme then what he had to do was blow it up then what he had to do was transfer it to the canvas and paint the canvas and process it the other question, yes, that's good the total cost was $36,000 plus $6,000 for supplies but wait sounds paltry this was during the depression and I've done this if you go ahead and take the figures and take them up to 2019, I noticed the value of the dollar dropped I tried there I take it up to 2018 the response $800,000 it was not nickel in time it was a lot of money, especially during that time but it's I don't know if you gather my enthusiasm about this but it just really was enthusiastic going through this and finding all these things out and I said that this is something I consider privileged to have worked on this because what Faulkner has done is absolutely amazing I would not mind if his niece calls me and says, you know, even if I'm wrong it's the only thing that was a surprise were the columns that was the only thing that you really I never would have guessed that those columns were really pillars of democracy everything else does fit in though