As the historian Merrill Peterson noted in his classic study The Jefferson Image in the American Mind (1960), the popular image of Thomas Jefferson has undergone numerous permutations over the years. In his introduction to the book's 1998 reprinting, Peterson drew attention to the continuing interest in Jefferson as shown in recent historical fiction, films, and documentaries, by the renaming of the Library of Congress main building as well as an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, and by president-elect William Jefferson Clinton's pre-inaugural pilgrimage to Monticello, as well as Sotheby's auction of a Jefferson letter for a record price. The shifts that Jefferson's portrait underwent over time, in accordance with changing political currents, had been largely among rival claimants to his image as a champion of liberty and equality, rather than over Jefferson's merits as such a champion.
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