Home Subjects

Editor’s Note: Today we have an offering following in the Home Subjects tradition of taking the month of December to reflect on the meanings of holiday decorations in museums and historic interiors. Today’s contributor, Rob DeHart, is curator at Tudor Place in Washington DC. Built in stages between 1795 and approximately 1816, it was purchased in 1805 by Thomas Peter and his wife, Martha Parke Custis Peter, a grand-daughter of Martha Washington. The house stayed in the Peter family until the 1980s, after which it opened to the public. During the nineteenth century Tudor Place was a site of enslavement and its history is fascinatingly intertwined with that of Black Washington. In a future post we hope to have Rob return to share more about Tudor Place’s ongoing work to re-integrate the stories of Black Washingtonians into its long-standing displays focusing on the story of the Peter family and their connection to George and Martha Washington. –ANR

Disco balls twirl in the front hall at Tudor Place. Photo courtesy of Rob DeHart

Did you know Cincinnati native Louis Bernard Woeste patented the disco ball in 1917? He called it a “myriad reflector,” and while he patented it, he really didn’t invent it because it had been used in nightclubs for decades. Nonetheless he often gets mentioned when people write about this essential piece of 1970s disco nostalgia. I learned this bit of trivia while developing a 1970s-themed Christmas installation and tour through my role as curator at Tudor Place Historic House & Garden in Washington, DC. Having developed myriad Christmas tours (12^th Night, Victorian, Civil War, etc.) at historic houses during my career, this year I wanted to tackle something fresh, fun, and uplifting. My team decided to focus on the idea of a “disco” Christmas, which frankly feels out-of-place at Tudor Place, but also just right for the tense times we are living in.

As far as we know from recorded history, 2024 is the first time a disco ball has been hung at Tudor Place. While this sounds trivial, those who have worked at historic houses know that introducing an alien, non-collections item into a museum is never taken lightly. Armistead Peter 3rd and his second wife, Helen Tucker Peter, lived in the house during the 1970s. By this time, they were aged, conservative, and certainly did not embrace DC’s disco culture. Therefore, hanging a disco ball in this space meant stepping outside the site’s historic narrative and being intentionally inaccurate. This runs counter to our training as historians and museum professionals, which emphasizes recreating historic interiors through rigorous historical study of primary source material.

However, I have begun to recognize this “intentionally inaccurate” technique as essential for the survival of historic houses and to preserve their statuses as relevant cultural institutions. As we all know, many of the historic houses preserved in the US reflect the lives of white elites. In the case of Tudor Place, it was preserved by Armistead Peter 3rd as a tribute to his ancestors who were descended from Martha Washington. He carefully recorded this history and documented the collection in a way that he wanted his family to be remembered. It was a remarkable act of preservation but mostly conveyed one-dimensional human experiences void of tension, conflict, and anything that could be deemed as unflattering and controversial. The problem this creates is that if we don’t occasionally step outside of these parameters, we risk telling the same stories repeatedly. These beautifully-preserved homes fail to project an accurate depiction of the history they proport to interpret.

Christmas tree on display at Tudor Place, December 2024. One of the Black descendant photographs added to Tudor Place this year as part of the ‘Ancestral Voices’ exhibition is visible at upper left. Photo courtesy of Rob DeHart

Last year we experimented with introducing non-collection pieces into the house that were completely outside the realm of what Armistead Peter 3rd would have owned. In the installation and tour titled “Ancestral Spaces: People of African Descent at Tudor Place,” we replaced the portraits of enslavers hanging in the principal entertaining room of the house with photographs of descendants of individuals who were enslaved by the Peter family. We mounted the images in gold leaf frames and gave them places of honor in this room. Obviously, the Peter family would never have done this, and despite this inaccurate depiction of this space, the house did not fall down and no one took away our 501C to operate as a historic property. On the contrary, this technique was embraced by most visitors as they understood the significance of having Black faces on these walls. It set the stage for the tour to convey the message that the grandeur and extravagance of Tudor Place and its grounds was tied to the exploitation of enslaved laborers, the very ancestors of the people given places of honor on these walls. For perhaps the first time in the museum’s history, visitors of African descent truly felt welcomed and represented in this space.

Album covers on display at Tudor Place. Photo courtesy of Rob DeHart

So, although Armistead Peter 3rd never attended a disco, we brought the disco to Tudor Place. And this became a means to consider the tensions between the conservatism of the estate’s owners and the cultural revolution for civil, gay, and feminist rights happening outside Tudor Place’s walls. Perhaps more like two tours in one, disco Christmas interpreted some rooms as Armistead Peter 3rd left them while other rooms received a disco aesthetic makeover. The conflict between cultures was clearly illustrated by three record albums encountered by visitors when they began the tour: Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls,” a disco compilation entitled “Get Down and Boogie,” and a spoken word album “Spiro T. Agnew Speaks Out.” Only one belonged to Armistead Peter 3rd and is from the museum’s collection. Can you guess which one? Yes, it was the musings of Richard Nixon’s vice president that was the choice of Mr. Peter. Visitors saw this pattern repeated throughout the tour in playful ways.

We also found a way for old and new to converge in disco Christmas and show how the disco fashions of the 1970s were inspired by earlier trends that are represented in the Tudor Place collection. We displayed Armistead Peter 3rd’s World War I US Navy bell-bottom trousers, which to contemporary eyes looked like something Davy Jones of the Monkees may have worn in the early 70s. Bell-bottoms served as a symbol of the counterculture because they downplayed gender distinctions since they were worn by both men and women. These pants represented liberation and freedom and were quickly adopted by mainstream manufacturers during the 1970s. We also displayed a c.1925 sequined flapper dress, which to my eyes, could easily have been worn by Cher during the height of her career. These artifacts make one wonder if Armistead Peter 3rd might have recognized these connections between his generation and the youth of the 1970s.

Armistead Peter 3rd’s WWI United States Navy bell-bottom trousers keeping company with Cher-worthy sequined cocktail dress c. 1925. Photo courtesy of Rob DeHart

“Disco Christmas” had another very important goal. It was an opportunity for the site to bring queer history into its interpretation. One cannot legitimately separate disco music from its significance to the gay community. During the 1970s, disco clubs provided refuges where LGBTQIA+ could be themselves and socialize during a time when homosexuality was still widely criminalized. In historic houses, queer history suffers from the neglect that Black History experienced 20 years ago. In my career I have heard more than one respected consultant say, “If we don’t have the documentation, we can’t tell the stories because we must preserve historic integrity.”  This reasoning was used for decades to not even attempt to answer questions about the feelings and experiences of enslaved persons. Historic interpreters simply answered, “We don’t know.” As a field we have become much better at interpreting enslavement by using the circumstances we know about one historic character to inform the experiences of another of similar status, gender, and ethnicity for which sources are absent. The perspectives of descendants of enslaved individuals are additional valuable tools to fill in the humanity of people where surviving documentation focuses primarily on their status as property. We often don’t have documentation of homosexuality in these preserved domestic spaces because it was viewed as controversial, and in some cases, shameful, by those who preserved these sites. Yet we know it to be a part of human existence, and chances are highly probable that every historic house, including Tudor Place, possesses this history one way or another. Generation-Z, more than previous generations, view gender and sexual preference as existing on a spectrum. One must wonder what people 50, 100, or 200 years ago might have thought if they could express these views without prosecution.

One of my inspirations for infusing queer history into historic spaces has been the work of President Lincoln’s Cottage in DC. The “Q and Abe” podcast episode 5.1 “Was Lincoln Gay” considers the sexual preferences of one of America’s most revered figures. The episode draws upon the work of independent exhibit designer and museum consultant Margaret Middleton. They explore the concept of “queer possibility” as a non-confrontational way to have this conversation. They admit there will never be hard evidence to determine whether Lincoln was gay, but the discussion in itself is important because it helps to reduce the stigma of talking about queerness in historic houses. I can think of at least one person who lived at Tudor Place for which “queer possibility” is a valid source of inquiry. Historic houses usually don’t have problems talking about the possibility that a man felt love for a woman or a woman for a man. Why not talk about the possibility of love between two men or two women? Disco Christmas allows Tudor Place to tiptoe into queer history and cover a period of American historical significance that is rarely portrayed at historic houses. Visitors are learning how to dance “the Hustle” and discovering that disco balls fit right in with 18^th and 19^th century decorative arts. Staff took some unorthodox approaches to historic interpretation to make it happen, but risk-taking has always been part of the museum curator’s toolbox. Historic spaces are never static and continually adapt to meet the needs of their communities. I am truly excited to see what the next generation of museum professionals has in store for us.