The metalwork matches that made by Black craftsmen in Charleston and New Orleans.
The building is brown, but next door, the Smithsonian’s (white) American history museum is white! NMAAHC looks like a modern art museum, not a Roman temple. The shape is based on the crown of an African queen, its angles matching those of the nearby Washington monument. David Adjaye, a British-Ghanaian architect, was the lead designer.
Because of height limits, half the building is underground. So when you take the elevator to the bottom, it counts the years backwards, like a time machine: 2015 … 1776 … to the early 1400s. You soon find yourself in a slave ship! From there you work your way up through history to the ground floor, going through slavery, the Civil War, Emancipation, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, the inauguration of President Obama, all the way to Black Lives Matter. Freedom is still a work in progress.
Photos by Elinor Tatum
