Nat Geo article on National Museum of African American History and Culture

[lostnfound]

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/10/african-american-history-national-museum-smithsonian/

In some ways the new museum is a cultural measuring stick. A country that refused to offer respect or even basic humanity to African Americans is honoring black history in an extraordinary way. Everything about the new museum is bold—the mission, the collection, the $540 million building inspired by ancient African art and principally designed by David Adjaye, a British architect born in Tanzania to Ghanaian parents.

To say the museum stands out is an understatement. It sits on prime real estate, steps from the White House and across the street from the rolling green that surrounds the Washington Monument. The building is faced with a deep brown metal latticework similar to the intricate designs that African-American metalsmiths crafted for the ornate gates and balconies of New Orleans. Bunch explains: “I wanted a building that spoke of resiliency, uplift, spirituality, but I wanted a building that had a dark presence.”

...
I pass the building often, and I feel a little emotional jolt every time. The first time I took a tour, I saw something that put words to what I felt so viscerally. Everything about the building screams, “I, too, am America.”

Those words, in huge bronze letters on the wall in one of the museum’s exhibit spaces, are the final line from the poem Langston Hughes titled simply, “I, Too.” Written while Hughes was in Europe and denied passage on a ship home because of his race, the poem speaks of “the darker brother” forced to eat in the kitchen, who nonetheless eats well and grows strong with the certainty that one day he will be “at the table when company comes.”

“Besides,” Hughes writes, “They’ll see how beautiful I am. And be ashamed. ”

[awoke_in_2003]

1. If I ever visit DC...

this will be at the top of the list.