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.