Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures will Debut at the NMAAHC March 2023
The Smithsonian announced that the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) will debut a major exhibition, Afrofuturism: […]
National Museum of African American History and Culture
National Museum of African American History and Culture Launches Freedmen’s Bureau Search Portal
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) recently announced the launch of the Freedmen’s Bureau Search […]
Smithsonian to Host National Conversation on Race
The Smithsonian will host a National Conversation on Race at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The program […]
Rediscovered Last Supper Frieze Restored By NMAAHC
When the Studio Acting Conservancy, a training school for for actors and directors based in Washington DC, began to renovating […]
Kevin Young Appointed New Director of National Museum Of African American History And Culture
In 2019, founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture Lonnie Bunch III. succeeded as secretary […]
National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Alvin Ailey Photo Collection Now Available to Public
Even those not intimately familiar with the modern dance scene have likely heard of Alvin Ailey. Yesterday, on the 30th […]
Ebony and Jet Photo Archives Donated to Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture
A group of foundations have acquired the photo archives of Jet and Ebony magazines with plans to donate the collection […]
Two Kings and the NMAAHC
By Mariam Williams
Not seeing black people as active participants in American history and its ongoing push toward democracy always has been a hurtful and angering thing to me. It says to black people—and especially to black children who have little, if any, control over their education—that they are irrelevant and that black people have deserved all race-based mistreatment they’ve received, past or present.
Reconstructing Reconstruction: Post-Bellum Public History in the Smithsonian and National Park Systems
The September 2016 opening of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture offers a timely opportunity to evaluate how existing branches of the Smithsonian represent the era of Reconstruction, a period about which public opinion “matters more than most historical subjects” because “it forces us to think about what kind of society we wish America to be,” according to historian Eric Foner in a March 2015 Op-Ed in the New York Times.
Building a Museum Collection from the Ground Up
Museum collections are so often the product of serendipity and circumstance— accumulated over a long period of time, shaped by […]