CHESTERTOWN — The Bookplate is hosting an author event Saturday, Dec. 6 during Dickens of a Christmas festival weekend in downtown Chestertown.
Award-winning journalist and author Matthew Davis will discuss his new book, “A Biography of a Mountain: The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore,” at 2 p.m. in the parish hall of Emmanuel Episcopal Church [101 N. Cross St.].
Davis will be in conversation with Eleanor Jones Harvey, a senior curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
The event is free and open to the public. Reservations are not required.
For more information, call The Bookplate at 410-778-4167 or email contact@thebookplate.net.
“Davis’ new book delivers a sweeping and deeply grounded exploration of Mount Rushmore, revealing the mountain not just as a national monument, but as a biography — of the land, the people who shaped it and the complex legacies it represents,” a news release states.
Mount Rushmore’s first dedication was 100 years ago, in October of 1925, though the first ceremonial drilling did not take place until August of 1927.
Drawing on archival research, extensive travel in South Dakota and the Great Plains, and interviews with Indigenous leaders, descendants of Indian boarding school survivors and pioneering families to the Black Hills, Davis traces Mount Rushmore’s origins as sacred Lakota land, exploring its violent seizure during westward expansion and the contested histories that continue to reverberate throughout our country today.
Few sites capture America’s contradictions so powerfully.
Mount Rushmore remains both a patriotic icon, hosting naturalization ceremonies, and a memorial on land that the Supreme Court ruled in 1980 was illegally taken from the Lakota.
It is within this paradox that Davis explores both the memorial’s broader historical and cultural context, from historian Doane Robinson’s original vision of a frontier monument — including likenesses of Red Cloud and George Custer — to controversial sculptor Gutzon Borglum’s final design, whose artistic ambition and political complexity, including ties to the KKK, transformed the Black Hills into a symbol of American victory.
“From modern debates over legacy and commemoration such as the LandBack movement following protests after George Floyd’s murder, to recent calls to include President Trump on the memorial, Mt. Rushmore remains a flashpoint in national conversations about memory, identity and sovereignty,” the news release states.
“As the nation marks Mt. Rushmore’s centennial, and nears the United States’ 250th anniversary, Davis connects past and present in a way no other book on Mt. Rushmore has, inviting readers to confront how legacy is established, challenged and what it reveals about America in the 21st century,” the news release states.
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Matthew Davis’ previous books are “When Things Get Dark: A Mongolian Winter’s Tale” and the children’s book “The Magic Horse Fiddle.”
His essays and journalism have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Slate and the Los Angeles Review of Books — among other publications.
He’s been an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at New America, a Fellow at the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV and a Fulbright Fellow to Syria and Jordan.
Davis holds a Master of Fine Arts in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa and a Master of Arts in international relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
He founded the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center at George Mason University in 2016 and was its founding director from 2016 to 2023.
Eleanor Jones Harvey’s research interests include 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century American art, notably landscape painting, Southwestern abstraction and Texas art.
Harvey’s past exhibitions include “The Civil War and American Art” (2012), “Variations on America: Masterworks from the American Art Forum Collections” (2007) and “An Impressionist Sensibility: The Halff Collection” (2006).
Her current work supports an exhibition on the considerable impact of naturalist Alexander von Humboldt on American art and culture.
