George Washington Talk with Jill Vaum Rothschild

Jill Vaum Rothschild will be at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) on Thursday, November 5, for a talk about George Washington. It's part of the Academy's Art At Noon series, which brings in scholars and artists for discussions and lectures on PAFA's exhibitions, collections, and general areas of interest. This one runs from 12 PM to 1 PM in the Rhoden Arts Center, inside the Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building at 118-128 North Broad Street.

Rothschild is an associate curator of fine and decorative art at George Washington's Mount Vernon, where she looks at the art and material culture of the 18th- and 19th-century Atlantic world. A good part of her work focuses on the visual histories of slavery and freedom in the United States. She curated Lives Bound Together: Slavery at Mount Vernon, an exhibition that opened in June 2025 and is still running; it uses archival, archaeological, and visual records to introduce visitors to the history and landscape of slavery on the 18th-century estate. She also oversees the museum's rotating exhibitions.

Before her time at Mount Vernon, she held a Luce Curatorial Fellowship from 2022 to 2025 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and has published research on the portrait painter Joshua Johnson and the potter Josiah Wedgwood I. She holds a B.A. in the history of art and American studies from Vanderbilt University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in the history of art from the University of Pennsylvania.

The talk is free with museum admission, which is $25, and free for members. It runs from 12 PM to 1 PM on Thursday, November 5, at the Rhoden Arts Center in the Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building, 118-128 North Broad Street.