How the National Museum of African American History and Culture was formed

In July 2005, I drove from Chicago to Washington, D.C., and started this great adventure. This trip gave me enough time to think about whether I made the right decision. After all, I love Chicago, my home in Oak Park, and my job as president of the Chicago Historical Society. But it's too late to look back now. I agreed to become the founding director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture as an opportunity and an obligation to the community that far exceeded my reservations. From this Story

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and I was told we would have a temporary office somewhere outside the National Mall. When I say "we," I mean myself and the only other person on staff, Tasha Coleman. Tasha and I looked for our offices and found them locked, so we went to the front desk of the building and asked for a key. They said, we don't know who you are, we're not just giving you a key.

I then went to the security office of the building and told them I was the new museum director and I wanted to get into my office. The officer said no because we don’t have a record of you.

I went back to the Castle, the Smithsonian headquarters building, to confirm that we should be allowed in. While I stood there stupidly looking at a locked door, a maintenance man was pushing a cart and holding some tools. One of those tools is a crowbar. So we borrowed it and broke into our office.

At that moment, I realized that no one was truly prepared for this effort, not the Smithsonians, not the American public, and probably not even me.

On September 24, the museum, which currently has nearly 200 staff members, will officially introduce the public to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Smithsonian Institution’s 19th museum. We will open a $540 million, 400,000-square-foot building on the National Mall to display some of our more than 35,000 artifacts from around the world. What a great time to open this museum at the end of President Barack Obama’s term, during a time when issues of race need to be clarified and understood. First, I want to tell you a little bit about how we do this. The founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture poses in front of the museum, which opens to the public on September 24. (Alison Shelley)

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This moment comes amid a century of fitful and intermittent celebrations of African American history in the nation’s capital. Failed effort. In 1915, a group of African-American Civil War veterans proposed a museum and memorial in Washington. In 1929, President Calvin Coolidge signed enabling legislation commemorating the "contribution of black people to American achievement," but the Great Depression put an end to that. The "Democratic Democratic Party" ideas proposed in the 1960s and 1970s found little support among members of Congress. In the 1980s, with the help of Texas Representative Mickey Leland and others, people's desire to establish a museum was revived. A bill introduced by Georgia Rep. John Lewis in the late 1980s prompted the Smithsonian to begin a formal study of what African American "presence" might be on the National Mall. The study concluded that the museum should exist as an independent museum, but budgetary issues limited this plan. In 2003, a delegation appointed by President Bush studied the issue again and issued a report whose title reflected its conclusion: "The time has come." Congress passed it that year Laws authorizing museums.

All that is left for museum directors to do is articulate a vision, hire a staff, find a site, assemble a collection where none exists, design and build a building, and ensure Raising more than $500 million from private and public sources, by demonstrating how all museums will benefit from the creation of the NMAAHC, the Academy works with the most powerful and influential boards of any cultural institution to answer all reasonable arguments otherwise This museum is unnecessary, to assuage the concerns of African American museums across the country.

I knew the new museum had to serve as the National Museum of American History's tuck on the mall. I worked there for 12 and a half years, first as director and then as deputy director of curatorial affairs. (A colleague and I collected lunch counters from Greensboro sit-ins, one of the museum’s signature artifacts.) But I have been a historian my entire career. I know the American story is too big for one building. A pocket bank, circa 1926, depicting a National Black Memorial that was never built. (Wendel A. White)

The Smithsonian does what other museums cannot: open different entrances for the public into the American experience, whether through the Smithsonian American Art Museum , or the National Air and Space Museum, or the National Museum of the American Indian. The portals we are opening will give us a more complex and comprehensive understanding of the country.

The defining experience of African-American life is having to navigate a dead end, *** agility, ingenuity and perseverance to build a place in this society. Over the centuries, this effort has profoundly shaped the history of this country, and in many ways, African American history is the essence of American history. Most of the moments in which American freedom expanded were tied to the African American experience. If you're interested in the idea of ??freedom in America, if you're interested in expanding equity and opportunity and citizenship, then no matter who you are, this is your story too.

Museums specialize in a particular ethnic group, often focusing only on insiders' views of that group. But the story we want to tell goes far beyond that, encompassing not only African American history and culture, but how that history has shaped American identity. Over the past 11 years, my goal has been to build a museum that emulates what I want a country to be: a country that is diverse; that is fair; that is always striving to better itself and to live up to us ideals in the founding documents.

The museum’s vision is built on four pillars: One is to harness the power of memory to help America illuminate all the dark corners of its past. The other is to prove that this is not just the journey of a people, but the story of a nation. The third goal is to be a beacon that illuminates all the work being done in other museums in a collaborative way without being petty. The final question is the number of people around the world who are learning about the United States through African American culture for the first time in order to reflect on the global dimensions of the African American experience.

One of the biggest challenges we face is how to deal with widely differing assumptions about what a museum should be. Some felt it was impossible to candidly explore some of the painful aspects of history, such as slavery and discrimination, in a museum supported by the Confederacy. Others feel strongly that the new museum has a responsibility to shape the mindset of future generations and should do so without discussing moments that might simply depict African Americans as essentially victims, creating a museum that emphasizes famous firsts and positive images. . Instead, some believe the institution should be a Holocaust museum describing "what they did to us."

I believe the museum should be a place where we can curate exhibitions, publish books, create virtual museums online, and educate potential donors, collectors, members of Congress, and Smithsonians wherever we think it is important Demonstrate the quality and creativity of our work.

With no collection, only 7 staff members, and no space of our own, we launched our first exhibition in May 2007. For "Let Your Motto Be Resistance: Portraits of African Americans," we borrowed some rarely seen works from the National Portrait Gallery.

We have invited a dear friend and a brilliant scholar, Deborah Willis, to serve as guest curator. We have exhibited this work at the Portrait Gallery and the International Center of Photography in New York. From there, it went on a national tour.

This strategy became a way for us that we couldn’t escape. Later, we secured a dedicated space within the Museum of American History, and I began hiring curators who reflected the diversity of America. Sometimes I get flack, but if I think we're telling a quintessentially American story, I need multiple perspectives. Now, the diversity of my staff is a source of pride for me and should be for everyone who cares about museums.

As the staff grew, we organized 12 exhibitions including art (murals by Hale Woodruff, photographs from Scarlock Studio), culture (Marian Anderson, Apollo theater) and history, which means confronting difficult issues. We intentionally stage some controversial exhibitions to test how the controversy is raised and determine how the media or Congress will respond. “Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: The Paradox of Freedom,” a collaboration with the Monticello Historic Site, was a watershed moment. Of course, the issue of slavery is at the heart of America's dilemma, the contradiction of a country founded on freedom but denying the rights of enslaved people. Slavery is an unspoken topic in contemporary American discourse, but we feel we must confront it in a way that shows how much of America's past was shaped by what was then called its "peculiar institution." We featured an iconic statue of Jefferson, but we placed it in front of a wall with 600 names of enslaved residents of Monticello, both to humanize them and to show that what it would have been like to not have been made with slaves Struggle, people would not understand Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers.

Another challenge was raising funds to build and equip the museum. Ultimately, we need to raise $540 million from public and private sources. I’m often reminded of how big that number is, usually during my sleepless moments around 2am. Probably the first week or two since I was here, we got our first big donation, a $1 million gift from the insurance company Aflac. I was so happy that I exclaimed, “Yes, baby, we can do that!” I was later reminded that the museum would need several hundred more of these checks in order to reach our goal. Great. I realized I probably needed to do over a thousand presentations.

Traveling to do these demonstrations, I see more trains, more planes, more taxis, more hotel rooms than anyone else. But I learned two important things. The first is how far I can go in a day: Denver and beyond. Any further and my body collapses. The second time was in 2008, when the country faced its worst economic disaster since the Great Depression, and we began fundraising in earnest. Things were bad, but I was overwhelmed by the support the museum received during the worst of times. Key to the museum's fundraising success is the work of its creative development staff and the leadership of Dick Parsons, Linda Johnson Rice, and Ken Chenault. Along with other members of the Museum’s Board of Trustees, they dedicate their time and contacts to help make the Museum a reality. America thanks them for their volunteer service.

Maybe it’s my curatorship, but what worries me most is whether we’ll be able to find things that are historical, artifacts that tell the story of this community. Some early Pullman Porter hats. This white hat is special, you have to be the porter leader to be guaranteed to wear this hat and I have never seen it outside of a photo before. I was delighted when the woman offered to donate the hat, because while we always knew we were going to tell the story of the Pullman Porters, this piece of art would allow us to tell it in another way.

It was the visibility that came from the Treasure Project that a collector in Philadelphia called me to say that he had received material from a relative of Harriet Tubman who had recently died, Harry Tubman was an abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor. As a 19th century historian, I knew the odds of him having actual Tubman material were slim to none, but I figured it was a short train ride from Washington to Philadelphia and I could buy a cheesesteak. We met in a room at Temple University. He reached into a box and pulled out rare photos from Harriet Tubman's funeral.

When he pulled out a hymn that contained many of the lyrics Tubman used to remind enslaved people that she was in their area, everyone cried. I cried, not only because these were so impressive, but because the collectors so generously gave them to us.

Because we hire more curators, we rely more on their collecting skills rather than people bringing their stuff to us. We had a general idea of ??the stories we wanted to tell, but not the artifacts that determined how we told those stories. We knew we wanted to talk about women's role in the fight for racial equality, but we didn't know we'd be able to collect a 1910 banner from the Oklahoma Colored Women's Club that read "Weightlifting While Climbing,"

Others donated robes belonging to the Ku Klux Klan, one of which was used by Stetson Kennedy, who infiltrated the Klan to write the 1954 book I Ridden with the Klan. These and other potentially inflammatory artifacts raise the question of how we can display them without coming across as exploitative, voyeuristic, or pornographic. Our answer is: environment is everything. There are no limitations to any artwork as long as we can use it to humanize the individuals involved and illustrate the depth of the fight for equal rights.

Curators operate under a firm directive: 70 to 80 percent of their collection must be on the museum floor, not in a warehouse. We couldn't afford to collect, say, a thousand baseballs and end up with just two. Sometimes I have to be convinced. One of the curators brought a teapot - a beautiful teapot, but to me it was just a teapot that cost some money to buy. The curator then pointed out that the teapot bears the imprint of Peter Bengtsson, who was born in St. Croix and came to Philadelphia in the late 18th century. Despite the significance of his name to those who study the decorative arts, this is only the fourth surviving example of his work. So it dawned on me that it wasn't a teapot, but the embodiment of a man who was born into slavery, gained freedom, created economic opportunity, and developed a level of craft that is spectacular to this day, like Nat Turner's Bible and Roy Campanella's catching mitt. Surprises continue to impact our collection. It turns out that the dress Marian Anderson wore when she sang her historic concert at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 was owned by Denise Graves; in 2012, after Ms. Graves sang at our groundbreaking ceremony, She was so moved that she donated the dress to us. Chuck Berry gives us the guitar he wrote "Maybelline," as long as we take his cherry red 1973 Cadillac Eldorado, too. The donation faltered until one of our staff members went to visit him in Missouri and struck a deal over an ice cream sandwich. George Clinton's farewell to his fabled P-Funk mothership made me understand how his stagecraft expressed his desire to transcend a society torn apart by racial discrimination on Easter morning in 1939. There is a feeling, which is fully expressed, that the mall is overbuilt and this museum must go somewhere else; another view, which is fully expressed, is that this museum is so important that it cannot go anywhere else.

I spent several months evaluating the site with my Associate Director, Kinshasa Holman-Conwell. For me, the question is, which one is best for a national museum that can showcase a little-known, often undervalued piece of history to the millions of people who visit the Smithsonian Institution? Of the four cities on the list, two that are not on the mall will face additional costs, including razing, repaving highways and leaving behind an important piece of history far removed from Washington's tourist mainstream. One site in the mall already houses a Smithsonian Facilities, Arts and Industries building, but it needed a major renovation. I believe it is much more difficult to raise funds to renovate an old building than to create something new and unique.

After reviewing the options, I feel that 5 acres of land northwest of 14th Street and Constitution Avenue is the best possible location for this museum. There were meetings, reports, hearings and dueling letters in the newspapers, and "controversial" doesn't begin to describe it. But in January 2006, Smithsonian regents voted to place the museum on the Mall, next to the Washington Monument and in the shadow of the White House.

"My first priority tomorrow is to stop smiling," I said. I don't know what to say, but I must remember. It became ***'s quote of the day.

I knew I wanted the building to be environmentally friendly, to enhance Washington's landscape, and to reflect spirituality, uplift, and resiliency. Of course it has to function as a museum, but I don't know what it's supposed to look like, just not like another marble Washington Building. Early on, I received a series of requests from architects to design a museum, so I knew the task would generate global interest. But questions abound: Do architects have to be people of color? Should we only consider architects who have built museums or such expensive or complex buildings? Is the assignment open only to American architects? ”

I believe that the architectural team must demonstrate an understanding of African American culture and suggest how this culture can inform the design of the building. I also feel that this building should be designed by the best possible team, regardless of race , country of origin or the number of buildings it built.

More than 20 teams were whittled down; we then narrowed them down to 6 finalists. Sonny and asked the petite team to submit models. Later, I did something that some colleagues thought was crazy: We displayed the models at the Smithsonian and asked members of the museum to show the dangers that people were aware of. , the glove choice may be different from the visitor's favorite, I'm willing to take the risk for the sake of transparency, I want to make sure no one criticizes the final choice because of a flawed process. These have been the most intense weeks I've ever had in this job. After all, we have a unique opportunity to work together, to dream together, and to build something worthy of the rich history of Black America that we have over 5 decades. Billions of dollars at stake, but those weeks were also some of my most enlightening, working with some of the world’s best architects, Sir Norman Foster, Moshe Safi, Diller Scofidio and Refro et al describe how their models express their understanding of what we want

My favorite was designed by a team led by Max Bond, an African American. Phil Freelon, dean of the School of Architects and one of America's most productive architects, also received favorable reviews from the public. After a very rigorous and candid evaluation, the design became the committee's choice. Unanimous choice. Unfortunately, the choice was made shortly after Max's death, which promoted David Adjaye, who was born in Tanzania but practiced in England, to become the team's chief designer.

The signature element of the design is its corona, a clad bronze crown that surrounds the first three levels of the fa?ade. It has a basic function, controlling the flow of sunlight into the building, but its visual symbolism is equally important. The architecture of Luban, which to David reflects the purpose and beauty of the African Kaliati, is also known as the Veranda Column, which to me has several meanings. The corona points upward and outward at an angle of 17 degrees. Tilt, the same angle that the Washington Monument raises upward and inward, so the two monuments talk to each other. We have a photo of black women in the 1940s praying, and their hands are also raised at this angle, so the corona is reflected. The spiritual side.

The most striking feature of the corona is its filament design. Rather than simply piercing the corona to limit the reflective nature of the material, I wanted to do something that respected African American creativity. thing. So I suggested we use the ironwork patterns from the many buildings in Charleston and New Orleans that were done by enslaved craftsmen that would honor their and the unacknowledged labor of many others who built this country over time. Since then, much of the African-American experience has been hidden in plain sight. Never again.

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Once you enter our museum, you will be surrounded by history. The exhibition will explore the years of slavery and freedom, the era of segregation and the recent story of America. On another level, you'll explore the concept of community in exhibits that examine the role of African Americans in the military and sports, and you'll learn how the power of place ensured that there was never a single African-American experience. The final level of exhibitions explores the role of culture in shaping America, from visual arts to music to film, theater and television.

Historic stuff will be your guide, whether it's a real slave cabin recreated near Friedman's Cabin, a railroad car outfitted for segregated seating, or Carlotta Walls' The dress her parents bought her that day in 1957, when she and eight other children attended Little Rock's comprehensive high school, or the relief basket she used after Hurricane Katrina. There are nearly 4,000 artifacts to explore, use and remember, with many more stored in the museum until they can be rotated into the museum. Author's Touchstone Image: "Leaving the Fields" by Rudolf Eickemeyer Jr. (Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries)

What I'm taking with me when I move into my new office A photo I had on my desk for years was a photo of a formerly enslaved African-American woman taken in the late 1870s. I was drawn to this photo because her short stature reminds me of my grandmother. She was walking up a small slope. In one hand she held a hoe that was taller than she was. In her other arm she holds a basket for harvesting corn or potatoes. Her hair was neatly tied, but her clothes were in tatters. Her joints were swollen, probably from years of working in the fields. She was visibly tired, but her posture was one of pride, and despite all the stuff she was carrying, she was still moving forward.

This photo became a touchstone for me. Whenever I get tired of politics, whenever money never seems to come around, whenever grueling deadlines stress me out, I look up to her. I realized that because she didn't give up, I had opportunities she couldn't have imagined. Like her, I move on