The Smithsonian’s African American museum: Stunning views, grand scale

WAPO ^ | May 15, 2016 | PEGGY MCGLONE

[PROCON]

WASHINGTON - A dream for 100 years, the National Museum of African American History and Culture promises to become an instant favorite when it opens Sept. 24, its soaring spaces and magical views of the Mall a fitting setting for its tale of African-American history and achievement.

Museum officials offered a sneak peek last week at the 400,000-square-foot museum, the 19th of the Smithsonian Institution, that’s next to the Washington Monument. President Obama is expected to cut the ribbon on the dramatic space, which features layers of galleries focused on slavery, segregation and the civil rights movement as well as music, entertainment, sports and politics.

Dozens of hard-hatted workers crammed the fourth-floor cultural galleries, where circular exhibition cases are being filled with objects related to food, education and sports.

[C19fan]

I imagine it will be as worthless as the National Museum of the American Indian. I went there once and it was the worst museum I have ever been too.

[riri]

Whites conceived of it, will build it and drew the plans, no doubt.

I am pretty sure museums are something that only ever existed in white countries.

[2banana]

I wonder if they will discuss the person who become the first slave master in the Americas...

And yes - HE WAS BLACK.

[TEXOKIE]

Conservative parents subscribed for years to the Smithsonian magazine. They gave me a gift subscription, which I continued for a while. Finally I woke up and realized that the people running the Smithsonian are flaming liberal globalists.

“Koom bah yah, ya’ll!”

[chasio649]

No thanks-—I’ve had enough of their history to last two lifetimes..

---

Me 2!!!!!!!!!!!!

[GemStateConservative]

“...which features layers of galleries focused on slavery, segregation and the civil rights movement”

*******

Complete with trigger warnings for the many snowflakes who will no doubt come to visit.

Considering all the historical revision they’ve been pushing for (e.g removing confederate monuments), I’m surprised these galleries are being included at all.

[Ray76]

Very racist.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

Plus they’re going to suffer from dilution as several more local AfAm museums are opening in various cities around the country. Charleston SC’s is opening in 2018. Anyone think they’re going to give up exhibits to the Smithsonian when they need them too?

[Organic Panic]

They are going to put Thug Brown’s bloody shirt, Trayvon’s hoodie, and Tamir Rice’s gazebo.

I’ll never go there. I would like to see artifacts from slave days but not there. Now it looks like the Smithsonian is just another “bash whitey” entity.

[sphinx]

I don't think ethnic separatism should be enshrined on the Mall, but that bridge was crossed with the American Indian museum. That said, my big objections to the African American museum are siting and, correlatively, style. It has been built on a section of the Mall that had been previously dedicated to open space. It intrudes on the setting for the Washington Monument, which is the centerpiece of the entire Mall. It obstructs sight lines. And its design, like the design of the American Indian museum, clashes with the classical styling of the rest of the Mall. It would be a fine building somewhere else. It is disfiguring on the Mall.

Folks, the Mall is FULL. Repeat, FULL. Yet we keep shoehorning more stuff in there, mainly because lobbying groups crusade about how their constituencies are being disrespected if space is not found for them. At the rate we're going, we'll end up with every inch of the Mall being paved over, with every self-anointed victim group memorialized in clashing designs, each trying to be more dramatic than the next. I sometimes think we should just give up and move the real Smithsonian Museums to Omaha, and turn the Mall into a Plaza of Grievances.

[hal ogen]

What a racist museum.

[sphinx]

I disagree. There is nothing conceptually wrong with an African American history museum, just as there would be nothing wrong with a museum celebrating the Irish in America, the Poles in America, the Germans in America, the Chinese in America, etc. There are all kinds of micro-history museums scattered around the country celebrating niche interests and constituencies of every description. Most of these are privately funded. But it’s a very different issue when the Smithsonian, a federal agency, gets into the act, and devotes incredibly scarce space on the Mall to a tribal heritage museum just in order to appease ethnic pressure groups.

[EDINVA]

Oprah probably donated many millions to get her name on that theater. I wonder if, somewhere in the future when no one knows who Oprah Winfrey was, will someone else donates many more millions to restore the then-obsolete theatre to have it named after him or her? (sort of like sports arenas where one company can go belly up and another comes in to take its name’s place)

[hal ogen]

I agree. Spending tax dollars on these are insult to the rest of us. But...I guess it is black-privilege and PC.