Case study · Mount Vernon · Editor, Winter 2020 — Spring 2024
Mount Vernon Magazine: A Tri-Annual Print Publication for the Members Who Sustain the Mission
For four years and twelve issues I edited Mount Vernon’s flagship print magazine — a quarterly that doubled as a serious academic publication on Washington-era history and as the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association’s most valued donor-stewardship vehicle. Each issue paired a single big theme with deep features by leading historians, original visual reporting from the estate, and a stable cast of recurring departments that members came to expect.
The brief
Mount Vernon Magazine is a single product that has to do three very different jobs at once. It’s a serious history magazine in the lineage of American Heritage — commissioning long-form essays from working historians, archeologists, and Mount Vernon curators. It’s the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association’s premier piece of donor stewardship, mailed to the members and major donors who keep the estate operating. And it’s an institutional voice document — a place where Mount Vernon as a 170-year-old organization gets to talk to its constituents about what it’s doing, what it’s finding, and where it’s going.
My job, as editor, was to make all three of those audiences feel like the magazine was made for them. Every issue.
A repeatable architecture
One of the things I’m proudest of about the tenure is that the magazine got a stable, repeatable structure that readers, writers, and the production team could rely on. Every issue followed the same beats:
The Theme
One big idea per issue — religion, foodways, fashion, philanthropy, preservation, women in charge — threading through three or four major features.
Features
Long-form essays from working historians, MVLA curators, and outside experts. ~3–5 per issue, beautifully photographed.
News
What’s happening at the estate: a new exhibit, a podcast, a special-program weekend, a fresh acquisition.
Object Spotlight
One object from the collection, told in close-up — a Rembrandt Peale portrait, a piece of needlework, a surveyor’s instrument.
Focus on Philanthropy
A donor profile that doubled as a stewardship piece — why this family chose Mount Vernon and what their support unlocks.
Washington in the Classroom
A teacher, somewhere in America, using Mount Vernon resources in their actual classroom. Concrete, named, photographed.
Shows of Support
Mount Vernon’s donor events, anniversaries, and campaign milestones — the social pages.
Featured Photo
One archival or contemporary image that gets a full page and a paragraph — the closing note for every issue.
That architecture meant writers always knew what they were writing into, the design team always knew what was coming, and members got an experience that felt familiar from issue to issue while always being about something new.
Read the Winter 2023 Preservation Issue
One of my favorite issues to edit was Winter 2023 — the Preservation Issue, themed entirely around the painstaking, decades-long work of keeping Mount Vernon’s Mansion standing. Features included “The Science of Preservation” (Mount Vernon’s preservation team using the building itself as evidence), “The Prequel” (the Mansion before Washington moved in), “Future Proof” by senior curator Susan P. Schoelwer (the bold plan for the building’s next century), and a deep MVLA history piece on the Association’s lifelong commitment to historical accuracy.
Use the arrows to flip through. Open the full issue on Issuu →
Issues from the tenure
How Elizabeth Powel convinced a reluctant Washington to run for a second term.
Washington’s religious life, the role of faith in the new nation, and the enslaved-community cemetery.
Washington as a global figure; Joseph J. Ellis on Harry Washington; the Lafayette bedroom restored.
Martha Washington as a wealthy widow, intrepid wartime wife, and lifelong needleworker.
The 10th anniversary of the George Washington Presidential Library; ten facts; secrets from the vault.
The Mansion before Washington; the science of preservation; a 100-year plan for the building.
The full back catalog (including the issues during my editorship) is available at mountvernon.org/magazine/past-issues.
Inside an issue
Below: spreads from the Fall 2023 issue (commemorating the 10th anniversary of the George Washington Presidential Library) showing how the architecture above translates onto the printed page — a cover spread, a feature opener, a curated “Secrets From the Vault” piece, and a Focus on Philanthropy department spread.
What I learned
Running a tri-annual print magazine on a fixed institutional cadence is a different muscle than the rest of museum communications. There’s a finished, perfect-bound, four-color object at the end of every cycle that you can’t patch after press. Every comma matters and every photo has to clear rights. It taught me, in a way that everything else in my career didn’t quite, what it means to ship a deliverable that 50,000+ people will sit down with for a quiet hour at home.
It also taught me how much a recurring print product matters to donor relationships in a sector that often over-rotates to digital. The magazine landed in members’ mailboxes three times a year as a tangible, beautiful reminder of their support — the kind of thing that doesn’t fit in a database or a dashboard but absolutely shows up in membership renewal rates.
Why it mattered
A great institutional magazine is the rarest kind of communications product: it makes scholarship readable, donors proud, and the institution’s own staff feel seen. Mount Vernon’s magazine had to do all three. Most issues, it did.