2025 loan exhibit
Preservation Pioneers: Lessons from SEVEN Historic Houses
To mark the Washington Winter Show’s seventieth anniversary, the 2025 loan exhibition draws from the collections of seven historic houses who previously had been featured with a solo exhibit. Preservation Pioneers will focus on the history of the individual houses and how the institutions that have saved and preserved them have had a lasting impact on the fields of collecting and historic preservation.
The houses represent a sweep of more than two centuries of American history, from the Lee family’s Stratford Hall, established in the 1730s, to Marjorie Merriweather Post’s twentieth-century estate, Hillwood. Each house has a unique preservation story—beginning with the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association’s pioneering work in the 1850s—but collectively these historic institutions offer insights and inspiration to private collectors, curators, designers and preservationists who seek to preserve the future of our past.
