Executive Director George McDaniel featured in Antiques and Fine Arts Magazine

Dr. George W. McDaniel, executive director of Drayton Hall

Although our Executive Director, Dr. George McDaniel, has spent the majority of his career at Drayton Hall, he is the first to tell people that at heart, he’s always been an educator. After college and the Peace Corps, Dr. McDaniel got his first teaching job at his alma mater in Atlanta, The Lovett School. His time there spent teaching young students cemented in him a desire to engage them in topics like art, culture, and most importantly, history. Fast forward a few decades, and that motivation is still just as strong as ever. But over the past few years, Dr. McDaniel had started to notice a troubling trend among students and people of all ages who come to visit Drayton Hall. If you know George, then you’ll know that he couldn’t just observe something that caused him concern and not take some sort of action. He began to talk to friends and colleagues in the fields of history, art, and antiques, and those conversations spurred him to write the article that was featured in the Winter 2013 issue of Fine Art and Antiques Magazine: “America’s Historical Illiteracy and the Future of Art and Antiques.” We hope you enjoy the article, but most importantly, note the things that we all can do to engage our students and teachers so that this trend is reversed.

Click here to read the entire article on Issuu.