Source: BBC News
By Devon Van Houten Maldonado
Museums do more than allow us to engage with history and art. They are forms in and of themselves, which, to varying degrees, enable and propagate missions and legacies through design and architecture. Perhaps no museum in recent history has created as much excitement or reverberated through culture as much as the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, which, just in time for Black History Month, was awarded the Beazley Design of the Year Award presented by London’s Design Museum. Since opening in 2016, the museum has welcomed more than 2.5 million visitors and tickets are still reserved months in advance.
A museum of modern art in Cologne isn’t so different from one in Chicago
One of the first visitors to the one-of-a-kind institution, created by congress in 2003, was then-president Barack Obama who said, “Hopefully this museum can help us talk to each other. And more importantly, listen to each other. And most importantly, see each other – black and white and Latino and Native American, and Asian American – see how our stories are bound together.”
The National Museum of African American History and Culture is encased in bronze-plated aluminium latticework as a tribute to African-Americans in the iron trade (Credit: Alamy)
Categories: America, American History, The Muslim Times, USA