'A welcome rebuke to dead white men'
September 23, 2016 10:07 AM   Subscribe

A century in the making, and now completed by Britain’s David Adjaye, the Smithsonian’s gleeful, gleaming upturned pagoda more than holds its own against the sombre Goliaths of America’s monument heartland.
Preparations are in full swing for a historic opening on 24th September 2016 when America's first president of African heritage will ring an equally historic bell. Related.
posted by infini (19 comments total) 18 users marked this as a favorite
 
David Adjaye was born 50 years ago yesterday in Tanzania to Ghanaian diplomats.
posted by infini at 10:11 AM on September 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'd been planning to do a post based on the latest issue of Smithsonian Magazine, but since this appeared, I will just put it all here.

The Director of the new Museum writes about the journey to bring the museum from idea to reality.

Reflecting on the Great Black Migration post Reconstruction, including its present day effects as reflected in individuals.

Maroons (escaped slaves living in freedom) find refuge in The Great Dismal Swamp.

Smithsonian is one of a few magazines I get in print form, and their September issue contains much more than just these three articles, all centered around the opening of the new museum. Powerful stuff, and I'm happy to have read it all.
posted by hippybear at 10:19 AM on September 23, 2016 [7 favorites]


I am very excited to take my kids here!

One thing to say (about the article, not about the museum): to call the neighborhood a 'world of white marble monuments to dead white men" erases the really wonderful Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, not to mention the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial, which is most definitely not white marble and most definitely not a memorial to white people only. Adjaye himself makes the point in the article that the Mall isn't a marble monoculture: "once you start looking at the Mall, you realise there are a lot of other materials here beyond stone, from terracotta to bronze moldings.”
posted by escabeche at 10:24 AM on September 23, 2016 [11 favorites]


Not to mention the National Museum of the American Indian, and the Holocaust Memorial, the latter of which memorializes men, women, and children who were not considered fully white by Americans at the time. Just saying -- this is already not your grandfather's Smithsonian.
posted by escabeche at 10:28 AM on September 23, 2016 [8 favorites]


'A welcome rebuke to dead white men'

Ironic considering the writer of those words is a White man. Why not have a Black person write the article about African American history?
posted by Beholder at 10:58 AM on September 23, 2016 [1 favorite]


So many great live tweets of this the other day during an early tour group of African American (and other) VIPs/journalists. Sounds like it really is great. can't wait to go.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:07 AM on September 23, 2016


Why not have a Black person write the article about African American history?

Since I've never learnt how to tell* the colour of a person from their newspaper articles, I'd be very grateful if you could provide some further additional links from Black writers on African American history related to this museum. That OP is an architectural review in the arts and design section tbh.

*I am not American, do not live on that continent, and am not of European descent.
posted by infini at 12:08 PM on September 23, 2016


About real life: I've been working hard to get Adjaye as a guest professor where I work. It has been consistently ignored, not even commented. I've had a boss telling me I could have limitless funds for a relevant guest, and when I said that's easy, I want Adjaye, the money disappeared.

It's the same I'm telling everyone about this years election: keep it simple, it's the racism.
posted by mumimor at 12:13 PM on September 23, 2016 [6 favorites]


I've been visiting the Smithsonian in its many iterations since I was four, although it's far away now and I only read the magazine. I was childishly delighted to find out I was going to share a birthday with this particular museum.
posted by lagomorphius at 12:27 PM on September 23, 2016


My browser doesn't preview links, so I'm not sure if you have this one: Making a Home for Black History from The New Yorker.
posted by zompist at 12:57 PM on September 23, 2016 [2 favorites]


The Obamas and Lonnie Bunch are on MSNBC right now.
posted by XMLicious at 1:54 PM on September 23, 2016


If you find yourself in DC without a Metrocard, as I did last week, you may get a special limited edition Metrocard marking the opening of the museum. Options include Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, and the one I got, Parliament Funkadelic's mothership! Public transit has never been so funky.
posted by gingerbeer at 5:27 PM on September 23, 2016 [4 favorites]


I hadn't come across that one, zompist. Thank you for the link
posted by infini at 12:42 AM on September 24, 2016


I've been excited about this for years! I have friends who got tickets for the opening day and I am so jealous. I have family that lives in the DC area, so I plan on making a trip down there ASAP. Everything I've read about it is very positive. It's more relevant than ever and long overdue.
posted by Anonymous at 1:18 AM on September 24, 2016


The media got an early preview and used #nmaahc as their hashtag. My favorite tweet.
posted by colt45 at 1:33 AM on September 24, 2016


My husband and I got in to see this on a preview viewing last Sunday. It was still a work in progress at that point, but impressive nonetheless (we know we need to go back now that things are finished, but it will be a while before we will be able to get in). It was crowded so we did not see the whole museum, but I was moved by what I did get to see. Things like the history of slavery section on the lower level with slave shackles, whips, and an auction block were chilling. It deliberately becomes more positive as you move to the upper levels. Langston Hughes' poem "I, too" is inscribed on the wall. One of the things that choked me up was the humble sack that is talked about in this blog post (there is a photo of it).
posted by gudrun at 10:08 AM on September 24, 2016 [1 favorite]


One of the folks present at the opening, Ruth Bonner, is the daughter of a former slave.
posted by rmd1023 at 3:35 PM on September 24, 2016


C-SPAN aired the opening ceremony
posted by gladly at 7:19 PM on September 24, 2016


If you have an hour to spare, I highly recommend this talk by the museum's founding director, Lonnie Bunch, at Brown University. He goes into some of the research that he did, how they gathered and curated the collections, the overall vision for why the museum is the way it is, and how they addressed the various stories that needed to be told, and reconciled the conflicting things that people desired from such a museum. It's a good companion piece to the speeches that were given yesterday.
posted by hyperbolic at 9:44 AM on September 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


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