The National Museum of African American History and Culture Takes Its Rightful Place

Inga Saffron offers a positive review of the new of National Museum of African American History and Culture, opening on September 24 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in a location overlooking the Washington Monument.

Designed by Tanzanian-born superstar David Adjaye and Central High grad Philip Freelon - two of a tiny contingent of black architects working in the U.S. - the stunningly radiant building is unlike anything else on the mall, or, for that matter, anything else in official Washington.

Saffron begins by noting the absence of African-American history along the National Mall, and in the rest of Washington, D.C., saying the museum makes up for that omission.

Of all the civic buildings that dot the park and its environs, the museum is the only one not weighed down by a quarry's worth of stone, most of it white. Instead, in a refreshing break from tradition, the architects have fashioned the African American museum out of glass and wrapped it in a lacy metal scrim the color of dark honey. The scrim rises in three angled tiers that suggest both a traditional African crown and America's celebrated waves of amber grain.

Not lost on Saffron is the museum's proximity to the Washington Monument—which honors the father of the country, who also happened to be a slave owner. Saffron's review gets into the mechanics of the building, and notes some of the political obstacles it had to overcome to take its place on the National Mall. This Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, however, obviously believes that the museum makes a fitting contrast to its neighboring cultural institutions.

If that review hasn't sated your thirst for the architectural and engineering details of the new museum, another article by Annys Shin has more.