At Washington’s House, A Determinedly Mediated Experience

Mount Vernon has just spent $110 million on a face-lift that includes two new buildings, and visitors are going to be herded through the whole, highly choreographed museum experience, like it or not. “People are channeled with the same linear certainty as cars in a car wash. The goal of the visit, Mount Vernon, becomes a surreal glimpse of the real, framed by dizzying bits of entertainment.”