JHU Seminar: 3/20/2017 National Museum of African American History and Culture

Today we got down to business…

…to defeat the huns…

Sorry… that might be a lack of sleep in general.

We visited NMAAHC today, a musuem that I have poped into a couple of times but never really experienced. I was incredibly impressed by the voice and tone of the museum, the curators did an amazing job of layering the story of the African American experience. It is not a simple story, it is an important story.

I was really struck by a work of art in the gallery:

Here we have an image of Jefferson, his immortal words of equality above him, and behind him is a brick wall with the names of his slaves.

This is a stunning piece, and the museum does incredibly multilayered things like this all over. Here is one example:

The old plaque on this rock says the this Rock was notable because Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay stood on this Slave Black to give a speech. The museum chose to highlight that “THIS WAS A SLAVE BLOCK!” and people were sold on it. This multilayered emphasis was incredibly impressive.

In our group we actually got to talking about this, the idea of one smaller story telling the bigger story. We felt we were on the right track with this idea when in the museum gift shop we found on the back of the museum logo key-chain it said:

This may be the African American “Journey’ but it is absolutely an American Story. Our group felt this was a thematic idea we want to explore as we visit other museums.

At the end of the day though, I think we are all still trying to figure out what we are doing.