Today, February 22, 10 am, President Obama delivered remarks at the construction site of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. The museum is scheduled to open in 2015 and will be the only national museum devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life, art, history and culture. The First Lady also attend.
Later, the President and the First Lady will host a reception in honor of the groundbreaking of theSmithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in the East Room.
National Museum of African American History and Culture
Director: Lonnie G. Bunch III
Total Full-time Employees: 85
Annual Budget (federal and trust) FY 2012: $15 million; $75 million for construction
Approximate Number of Artifacts: 25,000
Background
The National Museum of African American History and Culture was created in 2003 by an Act of Congress, establishing it as part of the Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian Board of Regents, the governing body of the Institution, voted in January 2006 to build the museum on a five-acre site on Constitution Avenue between 14th and 15th streets N.W. This site is between the Washington Monument and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The new museum will be the only national museum devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life, art, history and culture. It is expected to open in late 2015.
The enabling legislation also established a Council for the National Museum of African American History and Culture to advise the Smithsonian Regents on a range of issues, including the planning, design and construction of the museum; administration; and acquisition of objects for the museum’s collections.
Collections
The museum is building a collection designed to illustrate the major periods of African American history, beginning with the origins in Africa and continuing through slavery, Reconstruction, the civil rights era, the Harlem Renaissance and into the 21st century.
Highlights include the following:
- Harriet Tubman collection (39 objects), including her hymnal(c.1876); lace shawl (c.1897), given to her by Queen Victoria; and family photographs from her funeral
- Jim Crow Railroad car (c. 1922)
- Chuck Berry’s red cadillac convertible (c. 1973)
- Black Fashion Museum Collection (approximately 1,000 items)
- Vintage Tuskegee plane—a PT-13 Stearman trainer plane
- Works of art by Charles Alston, John Biggers, Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence and Lorna Simpson
- Emmett Till’s casket (c. 1955)—the glass-topped coffin that held the body of 14-year-old Emmett Till whose murder in Mississippi helped galvanize the civil rights movement
Inaugural Exhibitions
The museum’s inaugural exhibitions in the National Museum of African American History and Culture will focus on broad themes of history, culture and community. These exhibitions have been conceived to help transform visitors’ understanding of American history and culture and to help visitors adapt to and participate in changing definitions of American citizenship, liberty and equality. The exhibitions employ a range of interpretive and experiential strategies.
Traveling and NMAAHC Gallery exhibitions
The museum has its own gallery in the National Museum of American History. Its first exhibition, “The Scurlock Studio and Black Washington: Picturing the Promise,” opened in January 2009 with more than 100 portraits and other photographs of African Americans taken by the Scurlocks beginning in 1911 and continuing until 1994. Among the portraits are photos of Marian Anderson, Duke Ellington, Ralph Bunche, Mary McLeod Bethune and Muhammad Ali.
Presented in partnership with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello, the museum’s most recent exhibition, “Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty,” opened to the public Jan. 27. This groundbreaking exhibition features artifacts from the Smithsonian’s collections and from excavations at Jefferson’s Virginia plantation. It provides a rare and detailed look at the lives of six slave families living at Monticello.
Additional exhibitions at the NMAAHC Gallery include: “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing: How the Apollo Theater Shaped American Entertainment,” “The Kinsey Collection: Shared Treasures of Bernard and Shirley Kinsey” and “For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights.” The museum opened its first traveling exhibition in May 2007 at the International Center of Photography in New York. The exhibit was a collaboration with the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, from whose collection the exhibition images were drawn. The exhibition, “Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Photographs,” toured 15 cities.
Education and Research
“Save Our African American Treasures” is one of the museum’s signature programs. In this series of daylong workshops, participants work with conservation specialists and historians to learn to identify and preserve items of historical value, including photographs, jewelry, military uniforms and textiles. Instruction is offered through hands-on activities, audiovisual presentations and a 30-page guide book developed by the museum. Launched in Chicago in January 2008, “Treasures” events have been held in cities around the country, including Atlanta, Charleston, S.C., Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
Through collaboration with IBM, the museum in September 2007 launched the first phase of the “Museum on the Web,” which offers interactive programs and educational resources. A prominent feature is the Memory Book, which allows site visitors to share family stories, photographs and intergenerational conversations.
About the Museum Design and Construction
In April 2009, a design competition jury selected the Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup as the museum’s architectural and engineering team. The team consists of four firms brought together for this unique project: The Freelon Group, Adjaye Associates, Davis Brody Bond and SmithGroup. The Freelon Group will be the architect of record and Philip G. Freelon, FAIA, will serve as the design guarantor, making sure the design reflects the values and priorities of the museum and the Smithsonian. The Ghanaian-born architect David Adjaye, with offices in Berlin, London and New York, is the lead designer.
The design was shaped in part by the findings of an 18-month study to identify the various needs of the museum—from exhibition space, operations and technology, to acoustics, fire protection and security. Construction will begin with the February 2012 ceremonial groundbreaking. The museum is scheduled to open in 2015 at an estimated cost of $500 million with 50 percent of the total to be covered by Congress.
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