Review: From the Grounds Up: Thomas Jefferson's Architecture and Design

Recalling the many accomplishments of his long public life, the polymath Thomas Jefferson instructed that his gravestone be inscribed with what he considered the three most important: “Author of the Declaration of American Independence of the Statute of Virginia Religious Freedom and Father of the University of Virginia.” To mark the bicentennial of the last of those achievements—the founding of the university on the edge of the courthouse town that stood in the shadow of Monticello—Jefferson scholar Richard Guy Wilson organized From the Grounds Up, an exhibition of drawings, books, letters, paintings, prints, models, tools, and architectural fragments that exemplified Jefferson's passion for architectural design and building....