The National Museum of African American History and Culture

Washington’s getting a new museum. In 2013 the National Museum of African American History and Culture will be completed. It will be located across the street from the National Museum of American History. While the architects had been chosen in April, today’s NYT ran a story called Tracing the Threads that Join America and Africa. (Interestingly the title of the last article announcing the choosing was called Architects Chosen for Black History Museum. Evokes a different feeling, right?) The team of Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup was selected and David Adjaye, born in Tanzania but living in London, was the lead designer. “The museum was established in 2003 by an act of Congress. And although it does not have a building yet, it has already begun collecting artifacts and conducting seminars and other events, including a recent two-day program on the Black Power movement. Efforts to build a national museum of black history stretch back to the early 1900s, but they were thwarted by political opposition well into the 1990s. Among the opponents was Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, who in 1994 blocked Senate passage of a bill authorizing the museum, saying Congress should not have to “pony up” for such a project. The museum’s cost will be borne half by the federal government and half through private donations.” (From Architects Chosen for Black History Museum.)

This is some of what is said in today’s article:

It is also a history lesson. Mr. Adjaye, who was born in Tanzania and lives in London, says that the museum’s form is based on late 19th- and early 20th-century tribal Yoruban sculpture.

The sculptural reference is an obvious attempt to express the frayed cultural threads that link black America and West Africa. Yet it also carries subtler cultural associations: the stacked wood blocks, which evoke an African version of the Parthenon caryatids, remind us that Washington’s neo-Classical buildings represent only part of a vastly more intricate cultural narrative.

What was interesting to me about the way this article was written is that the writer was using many visual metaphors and allusions to animals and tribal traditions to describe the building while citing Western architects like Frank Lloyd Wright and IM Pei, as well as established New York Museums like the Guggenheim and the Whitney, as Adjaye’s references for cultural museums. Another intriguing aspect is that the article make the museum seem all about tying African American history to West Africa. While that is primary site of origin, that rupture took place hundreds of years ago and African American history evolved on its own, pretty much independent of Africa. I am interested to see which histories are put in the forefront. The stories of origin and slavery, or let’s say the Civil Rights Movement and the election of Obama.

DC already has a ton of museums, some of which are dedicated to minority cultures like the American Indian Museum. When I visited that one, the newest addition to the Mall, I thought it was tacky and operated a lot on stereotype. I am concerned that this new museum will turn into “history lite” like the others. And I have another concern: Why does African American history need its own Museum? Why not better r those stories into the Museum of American History? It is a shared history and while a museum is a wonderful thing and that history is fully deserving of recognition, there is a way that separating it, although across the street, continues to isolate African American narratives from the mainstream.