President Obama, Mayor Vince Gray, former first lady Laura Bush and others were on hand at a ceremony on the National Mall this morning to break ground on the Smithsonian Institution’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture. The museum, which will be the Smithsonian’s 19th facility, is slated to open in 2015. Actual construction work won’t begin until this summer.
The museum’s creation was authorized in 2003 by then-President George W. Bush. The $500 million cost of the new facility is being split by the federal government and private donations.
At the ceremony today, which was also streamed live on the Smithsonian’s website, Obama said a museum charting several centuries of black history will show “not just a record of tragedy, but a celebration of life.” The goal of constructing a museum dedicated African-American history and culture stretches as far back as 1915, the Washington Post noted. Laura Bush, who is a member of the new museum’s advisory board, said it “will pay tribute to the many lives known and unknown that so immeasurably enriched our nation.”
Also participating in the ceremony were Smithsonian Secretary Wayne G. Clough, museum director Lonnie Bunch, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (who sponsored the museum’s creation while serving in the Senate) and Citigroup Chairman Richard D. Parsons. When it came time to turn over the first ceremonial clumps of dirt, however, Obama was not among those wielding a shovel, though the president and his family remained on stage.
Though the museum won’t be finished for a few years, the Associated Press points out that it already exists to some effect. As its advisers and staff have been raising the $250 million in private donations needed to build up the five-acre site adjacent to the Washington Monument, many artifacts that will be housed in the museum’s permanent collection have been on display at the National Museum of American History.
The building itself was designed by Freelon Adjaye Bond, a firm with offices in Washington, London and North Carolina. As we noted when the winning blueprint was picked in 2009, the firm’s reputation for designing cultural facilities specializing in African-American culture and education runs deep:
Philip Freelon of the Freelon Group can claim the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Culture, the Atlanta Center for Civil and Human Rights, the Museum of the African Diaspora, and the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of African American History and Culture. J. Max Bond, Jr., of Davis Brody Bond worked to design the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Change, the Langston Hughes Community Library and Cultural Center, and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.
The new museum’s layout stacks a pair of trapezoidal plints decorated in stone and bronze. Inside, a bronze “corona” will offer visitors views of the collection and the city outside. A trio of local developers—Clark, Smoot and H.J. Russel—are handling the construction.
