Reinterpreting a Revolutionary Space

Join Fraunces Tavern Museum in celebrating the legacy of the Long Room with a discussion about the history and significance of taverns throughout the Revolutionary Era.

In this special presentation, Education & Public Programs Coordinator Mary Tsaltas-Ottomanelli will sit down with former Fraunces Tavern Museum Guest Curator Kym S. Rice. Rice will offer a glimpse into her journey to open the museum-wide exhibition Early American Taverns: For the Entertainment of Friends and Strangers in 1983. She will also discuss the role taverns played throughout the 18th century and take a look at life inside an urban tavern.

Kym S. Rice is the interim director of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, and a full-time faculty in the Museum Studies Program at George Washington University. A long-time exhibition developer and curator, Rice works with museums and historical organizations throughout the United States.

In 1983, she curated the exhibition Early American Taverns: For the Entertainment of Friends and Strangers at Fraunces Tavern Museum. For this exhibition, Rice embarked on one of the biggest research projects in the Museum’s history, writing a book by the same name which offers an extensive history of urban taverns. Her work on the exhibition can still be seen in the Long Room today, a space which has served the public in different capacities for nearly 300 years.

Rice’s other award-winning exhibitions include A Share of Honour: Virginia Women 1600-1945 for the Virginia Women’s Cultural History Project and Before Freedom Came: African American Life in the Antebellum South, organized for the Museum of the Confederacy.

This event is free and will take place on Zoom, and the recording will be released as a special episode of Tavern Talks: A Revolutionary Podcast. Registration ends at 3:30pm EDT on April 15.