Director: Lonnie G. Bunch III
Total Full-time Employees: 20
Annual Budget (federal and trust) FY 2008: $12.4 million
Approximate Number of Artifacts: 8,500

Background
The National Museum of African American History and Culture was created in 2003 by an Act of Congress, establishing it as part of the Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian Board of Regents, the governing body of the Institution, voted in January 2006 to build the museum on a five-acre site on Constitution Avenue between 14th and 15th streets N.W. This site is adjacent to the Washington Monument and across the street from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The new museum, the Smithsonian’s 19th, will be the only national museum devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life, art, history and culture. It is expected to open in 2015.

The enabling legislation (available at http://www.si.edu/nmaahc) also established a Council for the National Museum of African American History and Culture to advise the Smithsonian Regents on such museum matters as recommendations on the planning, design and construction of the museum; administration of the museum; and acquisition of objects for the museum’s collections.

Collections
The museum is building a collection designed to illustrate the major periods of African American history, beginning with the origins in Africa and continuing through slavery, reconstruction, the Civil Rights era, the Harlem Renaissance and into the 21st century. Special emphasis is placed on military history, popular culture and the full spectrum of the arts.

Some of the highlights include the following:

• Black fashion collection (approximately 1,000 items)
• H.C. Anderson photographs (5,000 images, negatives and studio artifacts from Civil Rights-era Mississippi)
• Tuskegee airman medal
• Works of art by Charles Alston, John Biggers and Jacob Lawrence

Exhibitions
The museum opened its inaugural exhibition in May 2007 at the International Center of Photography in New York in a unique collaboration with that museum and the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, from whose collection the exhibition images were drawn. The exhibition, “Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Photographs,” is on a national tour through 2012. Tour stops include the following:

• California African American Museum in Los Angeles (June 23-Sept. 14)
• Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit
  (Oct. 25-March 1, 2009)
• Atlanta History Center in Atlanta (Jan. 30, 2010-April 25, 2010)
  
• Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, Ala.
  (Aug. 28, 2010-Nov. 21, 2010)
  DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago
  (Dec. 11, 2010-March 6, 2011)

Education and Research
The museum’s educational programs, which are designed for adults, youth and student groups ranging from grade school through the university level, include seminars, panel discussions, concerts and guided exhibition tours.

“Save Our African American Treasures: A National Collections Initiative of Discovery and Preservation” represents one of the museum’s key programs. In this series of daylong workshops, participants work with conservation specialists and historians to learn to identify and preserve items of historical value ranging from photographs and jewelry to military uniforms and textiles. Instruction is offered through hands-on activities, audio-visual presentations and a 30-page guide book developed by the museum as part of the take-home preservation kit. Launched in Chicago in January 2008, “Treasures” workshops will be held in major cities across the country, including Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C.

Through a collaboration with IBM, the museum launched the first phase of the museum on the Web in September 2007, which offers interactive programs and educational resources. A prominent feature is the Memory Book, which allows site visitors to share family stories, photographs and intergenerational conversations.

Publications and Recordings 
To accompany its inaugural exhibition, the museum published “Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Photographs” by Deborah Willis, guest curator and chair of the department of photography and imaging at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and a 2000 MacArthur Foundation fellow. Featuring essays by nine contributors, including Elizabeth Alexander, poet and professor of African American studies at Yale University, and William C. Rhoden, sports columnist for The New York Times, the book won an Outstanding Contribution to Publishing citation from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.

In preparation is a catalog to accompany the exhibition “The Scurlock Studio and Black Washington: Picturing the Promise,” scheduled to open in February 2009 at the National Museum of American History and in collaboration with that museum.

The museum has released two in a series of compact discs known as the African American Legacy Recordings. The debut release, “On My Journey: Paul Robeson’s Independent Recordings,” offers 32 selections—spirituals, international folk songs and art songs—originally published by Othello Records, the company Robeson started in 1952 because he was denied access to commercial recording companies. The second release, “The Paschall Brothers: On the Right Road Now,” spotlights the Virginia-based quintet performing “roots gospel,” a tradition that emerged in the post-Civil War South. Future releases will include a wide range of artists, including poets Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez and actors Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis. The series is produced in partnership with Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.

About the Museum Construction
An 18-month study is underway, in collaboration with Freelon Bond, an association of planning architects and designers, to examine the needs of the museum and determine what visitor-oriented features should be included in the interior space, from programming to exhibitions. Cost estimates range from $300 million to $500 million with 50 percent of the cost to be covered by Congress. The building is expected to be completed in 2015.

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SI-232-2008