I firmly believe that one of the past parts of living in Raleigh is the great museums we have in our backyard. I know – we have great restaurants, bars, shopping, college and professional sports teams and everything else you can imagine but we are particularly fortunate to have the state Art, Natural Science and History Museums so close. (I’ll even count whatever Exploris/Marbles is on that list.)
That being said with another day off for the holidays we decided to go see the George Washington exhibit at the Museum of History. After a short setback of forgetting the memory card for the camera we got to the “Discover the Real George Washington” exhibit. It was extremely impressive and I encourage you to go. They have gone to great lengths to recreate our first president both how he looked and how he lived. The life-size replicas of George Washington are likely the best representation of what he would have looked like using everything from dental records (his dentures to the right) to sculptures and paintings thought to best represent him. They also explore him as an individual who ran a plantation that made whiskey, had mixed feelings about slaves (while owning them) and didn’t want to create an American monarchy.
So enjoy the pictures after the jump but try to make a point to visit the NC Museum of History before this exhibit disappears on January 21st. It is extremely worthwhile and oddly relevant to today’s political landscape. I don’t know if our first president would be terribly impressed with the current state of our country. He might be a little upset with how we the people have become too polarized in our two-party system. He would however be extremely impressed with the advances in dental technology.
