FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
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Black America finally gets a museum

Black America finally gets a museum

The Smithsonian this week opens a facility dedicated to a long-abused populace

The new National Musuem of African American History and Culture in Washington might help heal the persistent problem of US racism when it opens on Saturday, says the head of the Smithsonian Institution.
President Barack Obama will inaugurate the US$540-million (Bt19-billion) museum as racial and cultural differences dominate the national scene, and is an ideal place for a dialogue about them, says Smithsonian Secretary David Skorton.
The bronze-coloured facility sits on the National Mall, known as “America’s Front Yard”. It’s the only national museum in the country devoted exclusively to black American life, history and culture.
“Opening now, at a time when social and political discord remind us that racism is not, unfortunately, a thing of the past, this museum can, and I believe will, help us advance the public conversation,” Skorton says.
Although workers are still putting finishing touches on the museum, director Lonnie Bunch insists it will be ready for the opening.
“It’s a piece of cake,” he says. A Smithsonian spokesman adds that 200,000 timed passes have been snapped up and there are no more openings available until November.
The 36,000 items in the collection range from trade goods used to buy slaves in Africa to a segregated railway car from the 1920s and a red Cadillac convertible belonging to rock ’n’ roll pioneer Chuck Berry.
Other displays include a slave cabin from South Carolina, items used by boxing great Muhammmad Ali and the coffin of Emmett Till, whose 1955 murder in Mississippi helped galvanise the civil-rights movement.
The building designed by Ghanaian-born architect David Adjaye is 60 per cent underground. Half of the cost of construction and installing exhibitions came from the federal government and half from the Smithsonian.
The museum’s outer layer consists of 3,600 bronze-tone aluminium panels formed into the shape of a three-tiered crown. The pattern |of the exterior panels is designed to evoke ornate ironwork created|by enslaved craftsmen in New Orleans.
Black Civil War veterans first proposed an African-American museum in 1915. Congress finally approved its creation in 2003, and construction of the 400,000-square-foot building took almost four years.
Three days of opening festivities will include concerts with Public Enemy, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Living Colour and Sweet Honey in the Rock. 
 
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