Washington Museums – Bringing All Americans Together!

#39: Creating the National Museum of the American People Without Federal Funding

NMAP Staff — Mon, 20 May 2019 13:50:32 +0000

There are three funding phases anticipated to plan, build and operate the National Museum of the American People. None of them foresee using federal appropriations.

The first phase is to cover the cost of a study to explore the feasibility of creating the Museum, which we talked about in Blog #18. We estimate the cost would be up to $1.75 million for this study which would take approximately a year to produce. We plan to obtain support later this year from a handful of prospective major donors and foundations to cover this entire cost.

The second fundraising phase will be to raise all of the funds required to plan and build the Museum. Our model for this phase is the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum which raised all of its money to plan and build that museum from private sources. The work done in the feasibility study will let us know approximately how much money we will need for the NMAP and the time frame required to raise it. We expect it to be in the $600-800 million range.

While we will not be seeking federal appropriations for this phase, we will want legislation passed to create a self-funding entity charged with planning and building the Museum and raising all its funds required to do so. This legislation would officially designate the institution as a national museum.

That legislation would also do two other things to expedite the Museum. One would be a transfer of a prime piece of land in Washington from the National Park Service to the Museum entity. The particular plot we seek, the Banneker Overlook site, is already on NPS books as a site for a future national museum.

Another element of the legislation would allow the Museum to accept gifts from foreign governments. A senior U.S. diplomat, possibly a former secretary of state, could be recruited to obtain gifts of $1 million to $20 million, but with a cap so that no single nation could contribute an inordinate amount.

The Museum, telling about the origins of all Americans, can draw U.S. relationships with other nations closer. The heads of state from across the globe could be expected to participate in the Museum’s opening and the gifts from nations’ would be acknowledged in the Museum.

Another significant fund-raising element of the second phase is to seek seven-figure or higher gifts from selected individuals, foundations and corporations that have a special interest in their heritage, in civic education for all Americans and in strengthening our nation’s social fabric. And as the Museum tells the story of every customer of every corporation in the land, an association with the NMAP will carry a positive impact with every corporation’s customer base.

With significant gifts providing a solid financial base to begin planning and building the Museum, the last element of this phase is to engage in a broad national fund-raising effort to obtain gifts from all Americans in any amount.

Once the Museum entity is established by Congress, all money donated to that entity are considered gifts to the federal government and are ear-marked for the Museum. They would be tax deductible up to the limit laid out in the tax law.

The third phase is to fund the annual operating budget of the Museum. One element of this is to establish a major endowment that would be used for this purpose. So in addition to raising funds described in the second phase to plan and build the NMAP, funds from those sources would be applied to the endowment once the initial goals were reached.

In addition, income from Museum operations such as the book store, shops, restaurants, programs and facility rentals would be applied to cover operations. There would also be a significant on-going fund-raising effort to fund particular programs at the Museum and an effort to obtain grants for other programs as well. There would be an ongoing membership program and other general fund-raising efforts.

One significant source of income could be from visitor fees, but the NMAP would initially plan to follow the lead of the Smithsonian Institution and the USHMM which are free for visitors.

Whether federal appropriations are ever provided to the NMAP in the future to defray annual operating expenses would be up to future congresses and the public, but the National Museum of the American People is not planning for that contingency.

But first things first. Phase One will begin later this year.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

#38: Latino/Hispanic Story Is Incorporated into All 4 Chapters of National Museum of the American People

NMAP Staff — Fri, 10 May 2019 13:00:43 +0000

Flags representing the origins of the nine largest Latino/Hispanic groups in America:
Mexican, Puerto Rican, Salvadoran, Cuban, Dominican, Columbian, Guatemalan, Ecuadoran, Honduran

The history of Americans of Hispanic/Latino descent is the only story, along with Native Americans, that will flow through all four chapters of the Making of the American People, the permanent exhibition of the National Museum of the American People from the first people in the Western Hemisphere through today.

In the Museum’s first chapter that goes from prehistory to the founding of the Jamestown colony in 1607, includes the story of first contact between natives and Europeans which is predominantly about Spanish and Portuguese explorers and settlers interacting with natives in the Western Hemisphere after 1492. This chapter includes the first Spanish arrival in what is now Puerto Rico in 1493 and the first Spanish settlement in what is now the United States at St. Augustine, FL in 1565.

In the second chapter from 1607 to 1820 the Museum’s story will focus on what is now the United States and all of its territories. During this period Hispanics moved into those lands, primarily in the U.S. Southwest. They also owned territory that would later be lost to the French who sold it to the newly established United States. Likewise, Florida and the New Orleans area were Spanish territories that become part of the U.S. during this period.

In the third chapter from 1820 to 1924 the U.S. fought wars with both Mexico and Spain. As a result it acquired Hispanic lands, including California and most of the rest of the U.S. Southwest, from Mexico. Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines were obtained from Spain. Texas, which had gained independence from Spain on its own, was annexed by the U.S. during this chapter.

In the last chapter from 1924 through today, the Museum will tell the modern immigration stories from the Americas. These new arrivals have primarily come from Mexico, but large numbers have also come from other Hispanic nations and territories in the Caribbean, principally Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic. The story of their journeys across the nation’s borders is one of the major issues facing our nation today.

Supporting the Museum now are 25 Hispanic/Latino organizations representing Americans from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Cuba, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic and Bolivia as well as blanket organizations representing a cross section of all Hispanics or Latinos.

There are already 23 eminent scholars from universities across the U.S. supporting the Museum who focus on the study of Latino and Hispanic history and culture. They and others who will join in the future will help the Museum tell its story.

While there has been a call for a separate Smithsonian museum on the National Mall in Washington, DC devoted to Latino history and culture, in December the Smithsonian announced that it would create a permanent exhibition devoted to Latino history and culture in its National Museum of American History. That museum attracts more than 3 million visitors annually and that new permanent exhibition is scheduled to open in 2020.

The story of Hispanics/Latinos told in the context of the history of all those who have become Americans will attract all groups to see their own stories and better understand everyone else’s story. One of the primary goals of the National Museum of the American People is to bring all Americans together.

This blog is about the proposed National Museum of the American People which is about the making of the American People. The blog will be reporting regularly on a host of NMAP topics, American ethnic group histories, related museums, scholarship centered on the museum’s focus, relevant census and other demographic data, and pertinent political issues. The museum is a work in progress and we welcome thoughtful suggestions.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

#37: You Don’t Have to Be a Smithsonian Museum To Make It in Washington, DC

NMAP Staff — Sat, 13 Apr 2019 14:17:45 +0000

One of the issues for the National Museum of the American People is whether it will be part of the Smithsonian Institution or independent of it. In this article we’ll look at some of Washington’s museums, both public and private, that are independent of the Smithsonian. In future blogs we’ll discuss Smithsonian museums and proposals for new museums in Washington.

National Gallery of Art

While there are many great art museums in Washington, we’ll only touch on one here because it is on the National Mall, the National Gallery of Art. While it seems part of the Smithsonian it is actually independent of it. It consists of two major buildings, the neo classical West Building opened in 1941, the East Wing that opened in 1978, and the NGA sculpture garden that opened in 1999. This complex stretches from 3^rd Street to 9^th Street along the Mall on Constitution Avenue. The NGA has 4.3 million visitors a year and is asking this year for an appropriation of $137 million to operate.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The USHMM, located just off of the National Mall near the Washington Monument, has served about 1.7 million visitors a year since it opened. It receives an annual appropriation now of approximately $59 million a year. It is a public-private partnership like the Smithsonian and has recently undertaken a long-term $1 billion fund-raising effort. The museum opened in 1993 and was the first significant museum in Washington that tells its story in a chronological fashion. Early visitorship studies found that the average visitor spent about 3 hours walking through the museum’s story about the history of the Holocaust.

Spy Museum

The International Spy Museum opened in Washington in 2002 as a private museum and has had about 300,000 visitors a year since it opened. This Spring it is moving to a large new building a few blocks off of the National Mall on L’Enfant Plaza. It is just a block away from the NMAP’s favored site at the Banneker Overlook. The Spy Museum charges $23 for adults for visitors to walk through the history of the dramatic spying profession around the world.

Bible Museum

Another new museum in Washington opened in 2017, the Museum of the Bible. A private museum funded by the founders of the Hobby Lobby, it tells about the history of the bible. It charges $25 per adult and has had 500,000 visitors during its first six months.

National Geographic Museum

Operated by the National Geographic Society, its exhibits focus on natural history, culture and history along the lines of the society’s National Geographic Magazine. The society was established in 1888 and is a non-profit organization in Washington. Located in downtown DC, this museum charges $15 for adults to visit its exhibits.

Newseum

The Newseum, started by the Freedom Forum funded by the Gannett newspaper company, promotes the 1^st Amendment clause to the Constitution calling for freedom of the press. It moved to its DC location on Pennsylvania Avenue near the Capitol Building in 2008. While it says it has 815,000 visitors a year and charges $25 for adults to visit, it announced in January that it sold its building and will close the museum.

National Archives

The National Archives is most famous for displaying the nation’s founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Archives attract 1 million visitors a year to its building across the street from the National Mall on Pennsylvania Avenue. The federal agency was born in 1934. Before that, federal documents were housed by the State Department and the Library of Congress. It is funded by federal appropriations.

Library of Congress

An arm of Congress, the three buildings of the Library of Congress on Capitol Hill attract 1.6 million visitors, most of them to its Jefferson Building across the street from the Capitol and the Supreme Court. Holdings include one of the original Guttenberg Bibles. Its collections of books and documents is massive and it changes its displays periodically. Its reading room is one of the most interesting and famous rooms in the Nation’s capital. Its funding is from federal appropriations.

National Museum of the US Navy

Operated by the U.S. Navy at the Navy Yard in Washington, DC, the museum chronicles the U.S. Navy from its beginning during the Revolution through today. Located on a military base poses some hurdles for visitors, but it is free and counts about 200,000 visitors a year. The Navy Yard is located adjacent to the Washington Nationals baseball stadium and has a Metro stop near the main gate of the Yard. While smaller collections of Navy memorabilia opened in 1865 soon after the Navy Yard opened, the current museum opened in 1963.

German American Heritage Museum

Located in a townhouse in the Penn Quarter of downtown Washington, this museum focuses on the heritage of all Americans of German descent. The museum is free and is operated by the German American Heritage Foundation. It opened in 2010.

Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum

This museum chain opened its Washington branch in 2007. It features wax likenesses of U.S. presidents, first ladies, cultural icons and famous people from music, sports, media and entertainment. Located downtown, it costs $22 per adult ($18 online) for tickets.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

#34: The NMAP’s National Genome/Genealogy Center Would Help Visitors Discover Their Ancestors

NMAP Staff — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 13:00:14 +0000

One of the proposed components of the National Museum of the American People would be a center where visitors could learn about their ancestors on two levels.

First, through genealogy they would be able to trace their immediate and direct ancestors through various records.

Second, visitors could contribute their DNA information to provide more general and distant information about a person’s past. We’ll be talking about this in more detail in our next blog post.

For genealogy research, the Museum would partner with organizations throughout the nation and the world with extensive data bases to help those researching their families fill in the blanks of their ancestors’ lives.

The Family Search Center and Family History Library in Salt Lake City, operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is the best known of these entities. Containing the records of more than three billion deceased persons, this is the largest collection of its kind in the world. The Salt Lake City library attracts about 2,000 visitors a day. Holdings include census records, passenger and immigration lists at major U.S. ports, military records and state, county and town vital records. Some records go back to 1550.

Another significant source of data is the National Archives and Records Administration, which has military records going back to the Revolutionary War, Census data from 1790 through 1940, and a variety of documents, photos, recordings and other materials grouped by ethnicity. Researchers who visit there can discover ship manifests including the names of their ancestors who first arrived in the U.S. along with details about the ship, where it left from, and where and when it arrived.

State archives also include helpful information from state records, Native American records and pioneer information. The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation has a database of passenger records of those who arrived in New York City. The Library of Congress offers a wide variety of local history and genealogy reference services.

The best place to begin a genealogical chart is to put down what you know, and then to get information from parents, grandparents and great-grandparents or people still alive from their circle of friends and relatives. While most genealogy research is performed by individuals researching their own families, professionals can be hired to do a more detailed search and go farther back in time.

Some genealogists specialize in the heritage of particular ethnic groups, focus on a surname or are experts on a small community. Others focus on famous people and some seek to become part of a genealogical-based group whose ancestors, for example, played a role in the American Revolution, such as the Daughters of the American Revolution, or those who came here on the Mayflower.

The National Museum of the American People will incorporate a system that would allow visitors to print out their own genealogical information. All Americans take pride in their heritage whether it be from the early days of our nation or from their parents who emigrated here just in the last generation. The NMAP will assist them in their search for their American roots.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

# 32 – The Timeframe for Chronological Storytelling Exhibitions Can Range from a Day to Billions of Years

NMAP Staff — Mon, 25 Mar 2019 13:33:21 +0000

History museums that tell their story along a chronological path seem to capture their visitors’ engaged attention for longer periods of time than any other type of museum. Whether the subject is military history, astronomical history, natural history, Holocaust history, the history of a terrorist attack or the history of a people or a nation, audiences are mesmerized and become immersed in the story being told.

The time range for these histories vary wildly from a day to billions of years. The 9/11 Museum, for example, guides the visitor through one of the worst days in U.S. history from sunrise on a beautiful New York City morning through the devastating events of that day and it incorporates a memorial to its victims. At the other extreme, the Cosmic Pathway in the Rose Center at the American Museum of Natural History explores the history of the universe starting with the smallest particle imaginable and its incredible expansion over the first second of time through the current status of the universe today more than 13 billion years later.

Another exhibition at the AMNH in its Hall of Human Origins depicts the history of humans starting with our early ancestors some six million years ago to modern humans who made their appearance an estimated 150-200,000 years ago and spread throughout our planet. The National Museum of the American People picks up that story approximately 20,000 years ago when the first modern humans are believed to have come to the Western Hemisphere.

The NMAP will tell its story along four chronological paths telling about all of the ethnic, nationality and racial groups coming to this land and nation:

The first chapter is from the first peoples in the Western Hemisphere to the first permanent settlement in what became the United States at Jamestown, VA in 1607 and includes first contact between natives and Europeans.

The Museum’s second chapter from 1607 to 1820 depicts Western Europeans coming, slavery, establishment of the nation and its westward expansion via the Louisiana Purchase taking in new peoples.

The third chapter from 1820 to 1924 covers the nation’s major century of expansion to the Pacific including Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. The nation becomes the destination for millions of immigrants from throughout Europe and Asia and incorporates Hispanic lands in the Southwest.

The final chapter takes us from 1924 through today focusing on refugees and immigrants arriving in the U.S. from every part of the world.

Other American chronological history museums focus on other events or peoples that the National Museum of the American People will also explore. The Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia takes place along a 29-year path starting with the roots of the revolution from 1760 to 1776, the war until its end at Yorktown in 1781, and the struggle to create a lasting government based on principles of democracy, freedom and liberty that culminates with the U.S. Constitution in 1789.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture tells its story over a 500-year path starting with the beginning of slavery by Europeans in Africa in the 1500s through slavery, Jim Crow and the civil rights movement to achievements of African Americans through today.

While the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History doesn’t have a central chronological exhibition depicting American history, it recently announced plans to open a permanent Latino exhibition space in 2021 where it would tell the story of Hispanic and Latino history in the United States. The NMAP will also be telling these stories through all four of its chapters in the context of all Americans coming or being incorporated into the United States.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was one of the first major American museums to devote a permanent exhibition telling a story along a path for visitors. Its story is along a 14-year history of the Holocaust from 1932 until its end in 1945 and includes the American connection to those events.

When the Holocaust Museum was built, studies showed that the average visit to museums, whether an art, history or science museum, lasted about an hour and a half. The USHMM found that the average visit through its permanent exhibition was three hours and many visitors spent five hours going through its story. The National Museum of African American History and Culture which is less than three years old has also found that many visitors need well over three hours to explore its permanent exhibition.

The National Museum of the American People also expects visitors to become immersed in its story about the making of the American People. For all Americans, it is their story.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

#19: The National Museum of the American People Can Play an Instrumental Role in Our Foreign Relations

NMAP Staff — Thu, 07 Feb 2019 14:00:48 +0000

The National Museum of the American People can be expected to have an impact on our nation’s relationship with countries around the globe.

At the opening ceremony for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1993, leaders of a dozen nations plus the President of the United States were in attendance. Since then, leaders of 100 countries and 3,500 foreign officials representing 132 countries have visited that museum.

That museum also established strong ties to Poland, Russian and other eastern and central European nations to obtain artifacts and access to archives. It similarly established a collegial relationship with Israel’s national Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem.

The USHMM is just one example of how a center for education and learning in our nation’s capital helps to improve our relationships abroad. The National Museum of the American People will be another important example.

THE NMAP will tell the stories of peoples coming here from every corner of Earth, most of whom had a continental sense of their forbearers and a nationality before becoming Americans.

The ties to those nationalities will be examined and mined by the NMAP to help tell the Museum’s many stories, to obtain artifacts relating to that connection, and to foster relationships between the Museum and nations throughout the world that provided the migrants who became Americans.

The Museum will help answer the question: What exactly is an American? President Reagan said: “America represents something universal in the human spirit. I received a letter not long ago from a man who said, ‘You can go to Japan to live, but you cannot become Japanese. You can go to France to live and not become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey, and you won’t become a German or a Turk.’ But then he added, ‘Anybody from any corner of the world can come to America to live and become an American.’”

The unique nature of Americans representing every race, creed and nationality around the world will be highlighted by the Museum and will help bind Americans together as it faces global challenges.

By making visitors more aware of their own heritage, the Museum can spur Americans to travel to their ancestral homelands. Foreign visitors will certainly visit to learn how emigrants from their lands and nations came and became Americans and contributed to this nation’s role as a world leader.

At the opening of the National Museum of the American People a virtual United Nations of heads of state could be in attendance to help celebrate that special relationship this nation has with every other nation. As the Museum contributes to the democratization of our society it can also serve as a beacon to nations across the world that have increasingly diverse societies.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

#18: NMAP Feasibility Study Will Explore Every Element of What Museum Would Be

NMAP Staff — Mon, 04 Feb 2019 14:00:46 +0000

In 2019, the Coalition for the National Museum of the American People is proposing an exhaustive feasibility study of the Museum. The study exploring creation of the Museum would be conducted by a consortium of major U.S. university museum studies programs in conjunction with funders supporting the museum.

The final report of the feasibility study would be presented to the President and to Congress. Funding for the report would come solely from supporters of the Museum using no taxpayer funds. The details of the study operation would be worked out by the funders, the consortium and the Museum coalition. It should take no more than a year to complete its work and present its findings.

The consortium could use the final report for the National Museum of African American History and Culture as a guide.

The NMAP feasibility study will explore and report on:

The story the Museum will tell, develop an outline of that story and suggest the manner in which the story will be told
Sites in Washington for the Museum with a primary focus on the Banneker Overlook site
Requirements for the Museum building
The scope and mission of the Museum
Potential US audiences including school groups
Visitors from around the world
Costs, budget and staffing
A fund-raising plan to plan, build and operate the Museum
How the Museum will support state, local and ethnic museums in the U.S. with a similar mission
The Museum’s governance, whether part of or separate from the Smithsonian Institution
Ways for the Museum to communicate regularly with ethnic, nationality and minority organizations including more than 240 of these already supporting the Museum
Components of the Museum
Issues the Museum could encounter
A plan to create the Museum
A plan to gain public attention for the Museum
A plan to pass legislation in support of the Museum
Draft legislation to create an entity that would be responsible for building and funding the Museum

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

#16: World Class Architecture Design Expected For National Museum of the American People

NMAP Staff — Mon, 28 Jan 2019 14:00:58 +0000

Architectural Rendering of National Museum of the American People

The design above at the Banneker Overlook site in Southwest Washington features four soaring structures arising from the grass covered roof of the central building. It evokes several aspects of the proposed National Museum of the American People’s story: waving flags of nations; books opening to reveal the four chapters of the story of the making of the American People; and sails over a landscape of waves recalling the vessels that brought so many to this land.

The maritime aesthetic also relates to the nearby marina where an extension of the museum could berth boats like those used by natives that plied nearby waterways and ships used to bring early European settlers, slaves and others to these shores.

During the day, the textures of the concrete “flags” will constantly change with the movement of the sun’s shadows across the facade. At night, films could be projected onto these surfaces. The design, conceived by MTFA Architecture, calls for a state of the art green building that would serve as a model for the Southwest Washington, DC Ecodistrict.

The building housing the National Museum of the American People would need to accommodate its core permanent exhibition. It would also need to have space for components including special exhibitions, a film theater, auditorium, bookstore and gift shop, dining facility, classrooms, genealogical center, and library and archives. In addition, there would be a need for offices for Museum administrators, scholars, curatorial staff, educators, security, maintenance and other staff.

The NMAP feasibility study, which we’ll discuss in our next blog, would develop preliminary space requirements for the Museum based on space required by other major museums with similar programs.

MTFA Architecture, an award-winning firm located in Arlington, Virginia, created this design for the National Museum of the American People on a pro bono basis. The firm specializes in projects that shape our culture, build on commerce and positively shape people’s lives. They have a long history of projects that build consensus for planning and design involving mixed use, commercial, cultural and educational functions and incorporate environmentally sound features. MTFA designed the recently built St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church just down the street from the Banneker site.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

#15: Banneker Overlook Is Favored Site For National Museum of the American People

NMAP Staff — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 14:00:48 +0000

The gathering of peoples from throughout the world is the essential and ongoing American story. Yet there is little in our nation’s capital that tells the full story about all of the peoples that came to make this nation. This has left a monumental void in the midst of our capital that needs to be filled.

The favored site for the National Museum of the American People is the Banneker Overlook site. It is an eight-acre slope at the end of L’Enfant Promenade, an extension of 10th Street, S.W. The site is on a direct axis with the iconic Smithsonian’s Castle Building and reaches down to Maine Avenue and the Washington, D.C. waterfront along Washington Channel, an inlet of the Potomac River. It is adjacent to I-395.

The site is a short walk from the L’Enfant Metro stop. It is the only Metro stop that serves 5 of the system’s 6 lines. Washington’s Spy Museum is relocating to L’Enfant Promenade. There would be auto and bus access and parking nearby.

The large site affords an opportunity for the design of an architecturally significant building along with an inviting landscape. It is already one of the major sites in Washington designated as a location for a future national museum by three federal agencies that oversee the capital and the look it presents to the world — the National Park Service, National Capital Planning Commission and U.S. Commission on Fine Arts. The Overlook site is now under NPS jurisdiction.

The site also sits at the nexus of a major municipal effort to invigorate the DC waterfront area adjacent to the city’s bustling fish market. Across Maine Avenue from the museum site is the Southwest Waterfront project which opened in 2017 and includes condos, shops, restaurants, a river walk and other amenities to draw visitors from the Mall to the waterfront.

While the Banneker site is already joined to Washington’s core tourist area by a roadway and pedestrian walkway across I-395, there could be an effort to build a lid over the freeway to offer a stronger connection to these two sides of Washington. Such a lid could incorporate a park and sculpture garden to reflect the themes of the Museum. The proximity to the waterfront would also be used to extend the Museum’s exhibition reach to a pier where boats — actual and replicas — used for the migration and immigration to the U.S. are moored for visitors to explore.

While the Arena Stage theater anchors Maine Avenue at one end, this museum could anchor the redesigned waterfront at the other end. The Museum’s international food court and plaza, with a mix of restaurants and a gift shop along Maine Avenue, could remain open after museum hours and help to stimulate nighttime street life.

The site could include provisions for landscaping that could include major water features and flora to enhance the beauty of the Museum building and its property. It could also include works of commissioned art relating to the subject matter of the Museum.

Legislation would be required to transfer the Banneker Overlook site to the National Museum of the American People. The Museum at this site would present the opportunity to create a unique and lasting addition to our capital that tells our American story in an unforgettable manner.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

#14: Celebrating the African American Museum On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

NMAP Staff — Mon, 21 Jan 2019 14:00:49 +0000

Martin Luther King Jr. Coming into Montgomery (Collection of the SI NMAAHC)

The National Museum of African American History and Culture is one of the greatest story-telling museums in the world; the proposed National Museum of the American People will do well to emulate it.

The NMAAHC depicts the 500 year struggle of African Americans beginning with their enslavement first in Europe and then soon after in the Western Hemisphere. A century later when the first permanent European colony in what is now the Untied States was established by the English at Jamestown in 1607, the first slaves followed 12 years in 1619.

The African American Museum carries that history of enslavement forward through the Civil War, a brief post-war period of reconstruction followed by the imposition of segregation for another century until the Civil Rights Movement go underway in the 1950s and continues through the early years of the 21^st Century.

Martin Luther King, Jr., who we celebrate today, is a central figure in this segment of the story.

The NMAAHC begins its story after carrying visitors three stories below ground level and proceeds with its narrative as visitors wind upward through the difficult history of African Americans emerging into a space of contemplation before arriving again at ground level. From there, visitors are ready to explore the broad and deep accomplishments of African Americans on the Museum’s upper floors.

The story of African Americans, told so poignantly in the NMAAHC, will also be told in the National Museum of the American People in the context of the story of the making of all Americans. That segment of the story will be the same in both museums.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

#11: NMAP Has Broad Support From Organizations Representing All Americans

NMAP Staff — Thu, 10 Jan 2019 14:00:25 +0000

The 248 ethnic organizations (and counting) that have signed on to support the National Museum of the American People all want one thing: they want their stories told about how and when and why they came to this land and nation and became Americans. And they want them told in a major national museum near the center of our nation’s capital.

The will tell the story of the making of the American People starting with the first humans in the Western Hemisphere and continuing through today. The organizations that have signed on represent 73 different ethnic/nationality/minority groups that together represent virtually every sizable group in the nation, well over 95 percent of all Americans. The museum will embody our original national motto – E Pluribus Unum (From Many, One).

The museum will tell all of our stories through four chapters of the museum’s permanent exhibition:

1) First Peoples Come (15-20,000 years ago to 1607;

2) The Nation Takes Form (1607-1820);

3) The Great In-gathering (1820-1924); and

4) And Still They Come (1924-Today).

Of the 248 organizations backing the museum, there are 135 representing groups whose ancestors came from every part of Europe, 37 who came from throughout Asia and the Pacific Islands, 36 from the Americas, including 14 Native American organizations, 18 from Africa and a variety of others from throughout the world.

Italian, Scandinavian and Scottish Americans each have 10 organizations backing the museum; Irish, Russian and Polish Americans each have 9 organizations signed on; and there are 8 German, 7 Jewish and 6 Baltic American organizations. All of the organizations are listed on the museum’s web site.* Generally, people who put down “American” on the Census form have ancestors who came from England, Scotland, Ireland and Germany during the 17 and 18^th centuries. They and their descendants thoroughly intermingled and 200 years later they describe their ethnicity as American.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

#10: Would the NMAP be Part of the Smithsonian … or Not?

NMAP Staff — Mon, 07 Jan 2019 14:00:01 +0000

Museums in Washington, DC fall under three forms of governance:

Part of the public Smithsonian system
Public but independent of the Smithsonian
Private

The National Museum of the American People could be governed in any of these ways … or in a new way.

The Smithsonian Institution, with ## museums and other facilities in and around Washington and other facilities elsewhere, is obviously the dominant model in this region. Two of its newest museums both focus on groups of Americans, the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Museum of the American Indian. Most of its museums focus on art, several on science, both physical and natural, and three on history of people, the National Museum of American History as well as the African American and American Indian museums.

There are efforts to have the Smithsonian build two more museums, one about the history of American women and the other about the American Latino. The NMAP also requested that the Smithsonian undertake a feasibility study for a museum about the making of the American People.

While the Smithsonian would undoubtedly like to be able to take on all these projects it is being pushed to the wall financially by significant unplanned costs. The biggest is the unexpected need that came to light in the last couple of years to completely renovate the most visited and largest museum in its system, the Air and Space Museum.

Engineering studies of that museum revealed that its entire façade needs to be replaced by new and significantly thicker marble cladding along with other extensive renovations taking place in concert with the new façade. The price tag is around $1 billion for this work. In addition, the extraordinary success of the African American museum has led to a range of unanticipated expenditures.

While the Smithsonian is run as a public-private partnership and receives corporate and other private support, the largest share of its annual operating income is from federal appropriations.

There are also other significant public museums in the Washington area that are independent of the Smithsonian. Museums in this category include the Unites States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the National Gallery of Art, both its main building and its East Wing. All three are on or just off of the National Mall.

Other public non-Smithsonian museums in the DC area include those operated by the National Park Service, the Army, Navy and Air Force and some others operated by federal agencies and local governments. Some of these are also operated as public-private partnerships.

Three of the newest museums in Washington are private: the Newseum, the Spy Museum and the Bible Museum. They have been supported by some combination of private organizations and wealthy individuals.

Given the Smithsonian’s fiscal issues and the current fiscal climate in Washington a new approach is needed now: A public museum paid for and operated with private donations. The planning and construction of the US Holocaust Museum was paid for by private funding and while it continues to receive significant gifts for a variety of special programs and exhibitions, the bulk of its annual operating expenses are from federal appropriations and it is considered a public museum.

National Museum of the American People is proposing a new public-private relationship where all of the funds to plan, build and operate the museum would come from private donations and other non-federal sources, it would be designated a public museum by Congress and land for the museum, a priceless commodity in Washington, could be transferred from one federal agency, the National Park Service for example, to the museum’s governing entity. At the same time, all of the funds to plan, build and operate the museum would technically be gifts to the government earmarked for that purpose.

In this model, private funding would pay for a feasibility study which in turn would pave the way for Congressional action designating the museum as a national museum, transferring the land for it, setting up the museum’s governing body and requiring all of the funds to come from private or other non-federal donations.

The governing body for the NMAP could be selected by a process involving public and private sector officials as designated in the legislation creating the museum institution.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

#9: Ch. 4 — AND STILL THEY COME: 1924-2024

NMAP Staff — Thu, 03 Jan 2019 14:00:42 +0000

This is the fourth of four blogs to describe how the National Museum of the American People will tell its story through four chapters.

The 4th chapter of this story will take us from 1924 through 2024. The National Museum of the American People will portray the changes that mark the dynamic rich mixture of people that we label “American” as it continues to evolve.

Taking Citizenship Oath at Naturalization Ceremony in Seattle

Immigration slowed to a trickle after 1924 until the end of World War II due to the imposition of quotas. These were based on already existing subpopulations of the United States. While it remained relatively easy to emigrate from Western Europe, those from Eastern and Southern Europe, Africa and Asia had a much more difficult time getting into the U.S. This slowdown was exasperated by the Great Depression and there was even a net emigration away from the U.S. during the deepest four years of the Depression.

Following the Second World War, America became the preferred home for refugees from Europe, including Holocaust survivors. From 1941 to 1987, the U.S. accepted 4.4 million immigrants from Europe, 4.3 million from Asia, and 5.5 million from Latin America and the Caribbean, including Mexico.

From 1948 through 1980, some 2.3 million persons were admitted to the U.S. as humanitarian and political refugees, including about 450,000 persons displaced after World War II from 1948 through 1952; 692,000 Cubans from 1962-79; and 400,000 Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians from 1975-79.

The fourth chapter of the NMAP’s permanent exhibition will continue to tell the story of migrations within the country. It will include the forced migration of Japanese to internment camps during World War II, the continuing westward movement, the movement of African Americans from the South to the industrialized North as well as the movement of vast numbers of Americans from cities to suburbs, and the current movement of young people to cities.

In the post-War years, immigration from Mexico and Puerto Rico became major parts of this story. During recent years, immigrant groups in significant numbers have included Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Koreans, South Asians and Vietnamese. Others have included Caribbeans, Central Americans, Soviet Jews, Dominicans, Haitians, Africans and a variety of Europeans. Over the last few decades, one of the biggest national stories has been the steady flow of immigrants, both documented and undocumented, from Mexico and Central America. The compelling story of new immigrants to our nation is still writing itself.

Today, immigration is an issue that has opened a significant rift in our nation’s body politic. One of the goals of the National Museum of the American People is to help bring our nation back together by telling the story of the making of the American People … all of us.

NOTE: Some of the material herein is based on Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life by Roger Daniels. Leading scholars are expected to develop a detailed outline of the Museum’s story following the establishment of the Museum.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

#8: Ch. 3 — The Great In-Gathering: 1820-1924

NMAP Staff — Thu, 20 Dec 2018 14:00:37 +0000

This is the third of four blogs to describe how the National Museum of the American People will tell its story through four chapters.

The third chapter of the story that the National Museum of the American People will tell brings us up to the period of our great grandparents, our grandparents and, for many, our parents. It delves into the history of those groups that came from all over the world during this great century of immigration from 1820 to 1924. This century, characterized by industrialization and urbanization and tragically punctuated by the Civil War, saw 36 million immigrants flow to the United States. The ancestors of most Americans came here during this period.

About two-thirds, 22.4 million, came between 1881 and 1920. The decade 1901 to 1910 alone saw 8.8 million immigrants, almost a million every year. In general, older stock European immigrants moved to settle the western frontiers while newer immigrants tended to stake their fortunes in the new urban and industrial frontiers.

From 1820 to 1914, 30 million came from Europe, including 5 million Germans, 4.5 million Irish, 4.5 million Italians, 2.6 million Poles, 2.6 million English and 2 million Jews (at first mostly from Germany and then from Poland and Russia).

In addition, 2.2 million crossed over from Canada, 900,000 crossed from Mexico and other parts of Latin America, 370,000 were Chinese and 275,000 were Japanese. Others included Scandinavians, Greeks, Arabs, Armenians, Turks, Hungarians, Russians, Austrians and others from Eastern Europe. All of these peoples added to the rich mix we call Americans

The stories of each of these and other immigrant groups, and the change in immigration patterns over time of these groups, will be told in this chapter of the National Museum of the American People. The further geographical expansion of the nation to include ever more peoples will also be covered, including the movements into lands purchased (Alaska and parts of Arizona); obtained through treaty and annexation (the Pacific Northwest, Hawaii and most of Texas); and war (the U.S. Southwest, including California, and Puerto Rico).

This period ends with a series of restrictive immigration laws including the Chinese Exclusion laws of the 1880s and the Immigration Act of 1924.

This chapter includes the story of Ellis Island from 1892, when it opened, until it stopped functioning as a reception center in 1932. Some 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island, a third of all that arrived during this century of immigration. While some of these stories are told in many ethnic museums around the nation, with Ellis Island being the most prominent, nowhere is the full story of this period told in a full chronological and comprehensive manner.

NOTE: Some of the material herein is based on Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life by Roger Daniels. Leading scholars are expected to develop a detailed outline of the National Museum of the American People’s story following the establishment of the Museum.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

#7: Ch. 2 – The Nation Takes Form: 1607–1820

NMAP Staff — Tue, 18 Dec 2018 14:41:56 +0000

This is the second of four blogs to describe how the National Museum of the American People will tell its story through four chapters.

The second chapter of the story that the National Museum of the American People will tell covers the major settlement groups who came to America from 1607 to 1820 and the consequences of this settlement on the native peoples in what is now the Eastern U.S. The chapter will also focus on the inflow of Western Europeans and Africans in the East, and Hispanics settling in what is now the U.S. Southwest. This chapter is bisected by the American Revolution and creation of the nation.

It will go on to explore the new nation’s westward expansion as it takes in new peoples with the Louisiana Purchase extending the nation to the Mississippi River and the annexation of Florida. The migration within what is now the United States by both settlers and natives will also be covered.

Chapter 2 begins with the first permanent English settlement in Jamestown in 1607. This is generally recognized as the beginning of the Colonial Period. While scholars will provide the essential history of this period, the NMAP will also explore myths and legends about these times, some of which persist.

Europeans in the 18th and 19th centuries, as they pushed west across the continent, reported encountering pristine forests and massive herds of bison and believed that it was always thus. Now, our best evidence suggests that humans settled and dominated most of the land and kept the vegetation and bison in check long before Europeans arrived. In the two hundred years after the near demise of the native population due to disease and government policies, both before and after the nation was formed, the bison population exploded, the land went to seed and “virgin forests” spread.

As visitors walk through this history from 1607 to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution in 1789 they will learn that about 600,000 Europeans who came and 300,000 Africans who were brought to the English colonies. Virtually all of the Africans came as slaves and about half of the Europeans were indentured servants or convicts.

While English immigrants dominated this influx and largely settled in Virginia, Maryland and New England, only a minority, even in New England — even on the Mayflower itself — were Pilgrims and Puritans. While some indeed came to escape religious persecution, most of the English came for economic opportunities. It took about a century before these colonies achieved a self-sustaining population.

The African slave trade with Europe began in the mid-15th Century, before Columbus’ voyage, with the Spanish and Portuguese importing slaves first to Europe and Atlantic islands and then to Spanish and Portuguese America.

It has been calculated that up to a third of all slaves taken out of Africa died aboard ships as they sailed across what was known as the Middle Passage. An unknown number of lives were also lost in Africa, mostly in a strip about 100 miles wide along the central West Coast, as a result of the slave trade from attempts to capture them and on their journey to ports of embarkation.

More than 10 percent of imported slaves — some 50,000 — came after Congress abolished the slave trade in 1810. Slaves brought to this land are the ancestors of more than 20 million Americans, the second largest group in the nation after German Americans.

This chapter also begins showing an inkling of the great diversity of peoples that will characterize the American people. By 1790 there were significant numbers of Scotch, Irish and German immigrants living side-by-side with the English colonists, with smaller numbers of Dutch, French, Swedish, Spanish and others. Each group added to and influenced the language, culture, economy and politics of the fledgling nation.

The Scotch settled primarily in the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. The first Irish immigrants tended toward the middle and southern states. Few Germans went to New England and instead migrated to the middle states, with Pennsylvania getting most of them.

The Dutch went mostly to New York and New Jersey where the early colony of New Amsterdam had been. The French settled almost entirely in the Northwest Territories of modern Canada and on a long and narrow swath that ran from Detroit down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.

The Spanish at this point were in territories in Florida, California and New Mexico. The largest of a small contingent of Swedes was in New Mexico. Jews were scattered throughout the colonies and established outposts in the port cities of New York, Newport, Savannah, Philadelphia and Charleston. Smaller numbers of many other European ethnicities came as well, mixed among other groups.

The National Museum of the American People will show where each group settled and how they contributed to the creation of the nation.

At the heart of this chapter is the story of the creation of the nation. The history about the relationship of the 13 colonies with England, the actions and reactions that led to that relationship souring to the point of being irreconcilable, the American Revolutionary War and the creation of the United States of America will all be told.

Groups that played significant roles in the lead-up to the Revolutionary War, played a major role during the war, and were represented among the Founding Fathers are part of this story. The museum will also explore where the ideas came from for our founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Federalist Papers and the Constitution.

Facets of this chapter are told in partial ways at a variety of on-site museums and recreated exhibitions such as at Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, Plimoth Plantation, Savannah and Charleston. The new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington tells the story about African slavery in the United States during this period and the new American Revolution Museum in Philadelphia tells the story about that war.

But there are no institutions that tell the full and comprehensive story about this phase of the making of the American people. The National Museum of the American People will be the first to do so.

NOTE: The material herein is based in part on the books 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann and Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life by Roger Daniels. Leading scholars will develop the museum’s story following the establishment of the museum.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

#6: Ch. 1 – First Peoples Come: 15-20,000 Years Ago – 1607

Sam Eskenazi — Thu, 13 Dec 2018 17:00:18 +0000

This is the first of four blogs to describe how the National Museum of the American People will tell its story through four chapters.

Most histories about the making of the peoples of this nation begin with the arrival of European explorers after 1492 and the first European settlers around 1600. We propose that the full story must also encompass the history, so far as it is known, of the first peoples to have settled on this land, an occurrence thought to have taken place less than 20,000 years ago.

This seldom told and little understood story about great and diverse civilizations, cultures and peoples that prevailed in the Western Hemisphere and throughout North America before 1607 is an integral part of the history of the American People. The museum’s first chapter would start with the earliest known groups to come to what is now the United States.

Contemporary research indicates that there were probably more people living in the Americas than in Europe when Columbus landed. The people living here had transformed the land so completely that when Europeans arrived in the hemisphere, it had already been massively ‘landscaped’ by humans.

Using the latest findings from the fields of archeology, genetics, history, linguistics, demography, geography, anthropology, contemporary American Indians studies and other sources, the Museum would portray the long history of human settlement and accomplishment in this land before 1607.

The National Museum of the American People would try to answer a long list of questions: When did the first humans come to this land? How did they get here? Did they come in different waves? Why did they come? How did their cultures evolve from when they arrived to 2,000 years ago to 400 years ago? Answers to these questions will focus on the peoples who populated the Western Hemisphere, including the Caribbean and Pacific Islands that are now part of the United States.

In the century before Columbus, how were Indian tribes distributed across what is now the United States? What were their histories up to 1607? What was the nature of inter-tribal relationships? What are the population estimates for North America in 1607? What was the nature of native culture, economy, governing structures, communications, weapons, agriculture and health?

The first hundred years after Columbus’ voyages were marked largely by Spanish and Portuguese expeditions into what is now Latin America with forays into areas now occupied by Florida, Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. The Museum would explore Hispanic settlements in what is now the United States during this period. While the Spanish and Portuguese dominated the Western Hemisphere in the early part of the 16th Century, the English began their explorations in the 1580s when Sir Walter Raleigh led expeditions to the North Carolina coast.

The main purpose of the Spanish was to exploit the gold and other riches from the Western Hemisphere and to convert the natives to Christianity. Tragically, the Eurasian diseases that the conquistadors brought with them coupled with the natives’ lack of an immune response to fight those diseases led to waves of pandemics that spread throughout the Americas. There is evidence that these killed more than half of the native population, with some estimates ranging up to and above 90 percent, within 150 years of the first contacts.

Because of the spread of these diseases, when the Spanish, Portuguese and British came to the North, they found the Indian populations reeling; their millennia-old civilizations and cultures crashed in a matter of decades. In their weakened state, the Indians could only partially oppose these new settlers on their land.

Some museums, including the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of the American Indian, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York, depict the cultures, beliefs and art and artifacts of different Indian tribes. Others, such as the Pequot Museum in Connecticut, tell the story of a particular tribe. But all of these institutions only give hints about the overall history of native peoples, and can only partially answer the questions raised above due to their narrower focus. In the NMAP, the story of native peoples will be told in the context of all of the people who lived on the land of what is now the United States.

While some of the questions asked here could not have been answered a generation ago, or even a decade ago, new research and discoveries about early human life on this land is bringing more and more of the past into light.

This story of America’s earliest settlers and inhabitants as it is currently known and understood needs to be told, and it needs to be open to updating as new information is found. The National Museum of the American People, working with Native American organizations and scholars supporting the museum as well as others still to come, will stimulate the search for that information.

NOTE: The material herein is based in part on the book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann. Leading scholars would be expected to develop a detailed outline of the museum’s story following the establishment of the museum.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

#5. NMAP: The Next Great Story-Telling Museum

Sam Eskenazi — Mon, 10 Dec 2018 10:00:56 +0000

MTFA Architecture of Arlington, Virginia developed a vision of what the National Museum of the American People could look like.

There are only a handful great story-telling museums in the world and Washington, DC has two of them.

While all museums claim that they tell a story, only a few do so in the conventional use of the term. In a true story-telling museum the visitor is on a chronological path that tells a story with a beginning, a middle and an end.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum which opened in 1993 was one of the first … and the best … until the National Museum of African American History and Culture opened September 2016. Both the USHMM and the NMAAHC shared one crucial ingredient, the great museum exhibition designer Ralph Appelbaum.

MTFA Architecture of Arlington, Virginia developed a vision of what the National Museum of the American People could look like.

In the case of the Holocaust Museum, it’s director Shaike Weinberg did one simple and very brilliant thing. He teamed Appelbaum with a British documentary filmmaker, Martin Smith, who had made documentaries about a variety of World War II subjects. He was the perfect choice to address the huge task of presenting the Holocaust to a diverse audience. With Smith in charge of designing the flow of the permanent exhibition, that’s why when visitors walk through the Holocaust Museum it is like walking through a documentary film of that period from 1932 through 1945 and the aftermath.

Smith and Appelbaum worked so closely together that at presentations when the exhibition design was underway, each would often finish the other’s sentences. They took the history of the Holocaust from a range of scholars and witnesses and weaved a path through that history for the museum’s 40 million visitors (and counting).

A similar creative process was used more than 20 years later to tell the 500-year history of African Americans. The director of that museum, Lonnie Bunch, is a historian and quintessential story-teller.

Now it’s time for a third story-telling museum to be built in our nation’s capital, the National Museum of the American People.

The story about the making of the American People in the NMAP would use the same processes that made those two other great institutions. A premier museum exhibition designer teamed with a great filmmaker to tell about the 20,000-year history of the making of the American People based on the work of a vast range of great scholars.

In the case of the Holocaust and African American museums, the architects worked collaboratively with the exhibition designer, both inside and out, reflecting and amplifying the story-telling process. For example, both museums include a railcar to help tell their stories, the architects made special provisions for them and in both cases the railcars were placed in the museum during construction and the rest of the museum was built around them. The effectiveness of this approach can be seen in two symbiotic ways, the number of of visitors and the visitor experience.

At most museums, whether they focus on art, history or science, an average visit is around an hour and a half. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has found that its average visitor stay is closer to three hours going through its permanent exhibition with many spending five or more hours. The same has turned out to be true at the National Museum of African American History and Culture as well. In both cases the visitors are caught up in the incredible story being told and the way that it is told. They are literally walking through those compelling histories.

In the past, museums were centered on collections and designed their exhibitions around them. The collections dictated the content. But at the USHMM and the NMAAHC, the museums sought out artifacts from around the nation and from around the world to help them tell their stories. It was the stories that dictated the content with the artifacts bringing the story to life.

The effectiveness of this approach is also seen in the word-of-mouth generated by visitors to true story-telling museums. In the case of the USHMM, they instituted timed-tickets when the museum opened 25 years ago in April, 1993 but assumed they wouldn’t need them after that first summer. A quarter century later it still generates large numbers of visitors and timed tickets are still needed to control the flow through the museum. The NMAAHC shares that same popularity.

The next series of blogs will summarize the story that the NMAP will tell and prospective museum visitors can envision walking through that history where every American will see some part of their story along the way.

— Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

#4. A Museum to Bridge Our Nation’s Rift

Sam Eskenazi — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 10:00:27 +0000

Our nation’s airwaves, newsstands, twitter feeds and conversations are saturated these days about how our nation is split. It seems like a dream come true for every enemy and adversary of the United States.

No matter which side they are on, everyone wishes the rift would close. So how do we go about it? The National Museum of the American People can help provide the answer.

The NMAP is about the making of the American People — all of us. It will tell every group’s story from the first humans in the Western Hemisphere to today. The proposed museum will provide and foster a sense of belonging by all Americans and instill a renewed sense of identity as an American. At its core, the museum will be built atop our original national motto, E Pluribus Unum — From Many, One!

The museum has had bipartisan support in Congress and there are now more than 246 organizations representing 70 American ethnic, nationality and minority groups supporting this effort. Together, they represent virtually every American whose group’s story will be told in the museum.

In summary, here are 28 reasons why our nation needs the National Museum of the American People:

It will be America’s only national institution devoted exclusively to telling the full story about the making of the American People;
Our nation was uniquely created and built by peoples from every land; they made us the world’s economic, military, scientific and cultural leader;
It will celebrate all of the peoples who came to this land and nation, from the very first to the most recent;
It will tell the compelling stories about every group’s migration and immigration to these shores and the story of their subsequent migrations within the country;
It will foster a sense of belonging to the nation by telling about the mosaic of people that have come here;
It will contribute to our national identity and unity;
The full story about the making of the American People is not well known or understood by the American People or by foreigners;
People from every American ethnic, nationality, minority and genealogical group will flock to the Museum to see how their own group’s story is told and to learn the stories of every other group;
It has the support of more than 246 diverse organizations representing virtually every major American ethnic and minority group;
Foreign visitors will come to learn about natives of their countries who became Americans;
It will be a top destination for school groups visiting Washington;
It will foster learning nationwide through its education and curriculum programs;
It can become a national pilgrimage destination and be among the most visited museums in the world;
Eminent scholars will provide the intellectual bedrock upon which it will be built;
It has the support of more than 144 scholars of immigration and migration history;
It will incorporate a Center for the Advanced Study of the American People to foster knowledge about who we are;
It will be a resource for state, local and ethnic museums throughout the nation;
It has had bipartisan support;
Canada and Mexico have major national museums in their capitals telling the story of their peoples and they’re among the most visited museums in those nations;
As the central story of our nation, it belongs near the National Mall in Washington;
It can incorporate these components: a film center, genealogical center, nationwide peopling of America sites, bookstore, public programs, collections and special and traveling exhibits;
It will provide a range of knowledge, learning, stimulation and entertainment for visitors;
No federal tax money is planned to design, build or operate it;
It will show how our central documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, helped shape the American character;
Our Constitution begins “We the People of the United States…” This museum will tell who “We the People” are;
It will embody our original national motto: E Pluribus Unum — From Many, One!;
It will be the best story-telling museum in our nation;
It is the most important American museum that doesn’t exist … YET!

— Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

#3. The NMAP’s Focus: Answering Who We Are

Sam Eskenazi — Mon, 03 Dec 2018 10:00:55 +0000

The National Museum of the American People aspires to be the best story-telling museum in the world. The making of the American People is certainly one of the greatest stories in the history of the world and the proposed museum will serve an educational purpose that encompasses our planet.

Who are Americans? How did people from everywhere — Europe, Asia and Pacific Islands, Africa and the Americas — assemble to create this nation? This incredible and poignant story is poorly taught to Americans. And it is no wonder that people around the world must wonder about a nation where peoples from their own countries played an important role in building the United States. For Americans, what role did they and their ancestors play in building this nation? For foreigners, what role did their countrymen and women have in our nation-building project?

The museum will be at the top of places to visit for students from across the nation on school trips to Washington. It will foster learning nationwide as schools adopt lesson plans based on the museum’s story, developed in part by the museum’s education department.

There are now 144 leading scholars who signed on to support the museum. They and others cover fields including history, anthropology, archeology, genetics, linguistics and sociology. They will assure that the story the museum tells is based on the best scholarship available. The museum will be able to adjust the story it tells as new scholarship is brought to light.

The museum will host a Center for the Study of the American People with in-house scholars to coordinate a network of scholars throughout the United States and the world studying subjects related to the museum and its central story.

The NMAP would serve as a resource throughout the nation for museums and other institutions that focus on particular ethnic, nationality or race-related subjects and we imagine having a close relationship with such institutions across our national landscape.

The National Museum of the American People can be expected to use reams of data provided by the Census, from the first one mandated by the Constitution and continuing every ten years through today. The museum will use that information and adapt it to modern technology to track the growth of the American people in easily understood electronic graphics showing those who were here and those who are newcomers. Visitors leaving the museum will have an enhanced knowledge of their own stories about becoming Americans and a visceral sense of who the American People are.

— Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

#2. The National Museum of the American People; Why We Need It

Sam Eskenazi — Thu, 29 Nov 2018 10:00:52 +0000

Why do we need the National Museum of the American People? There are many correct answers. This blog is the first of three answering that question. In a sense the National Museum of the American People was kick-started at our country’s birth when our founders began the Constitution with the three most powerful words in our nation: “We the People.” The “We” of 2018 has greatly expanded and has been enhanced since its first appearance in 1789. Today it incorporates the descendants of slaves, the natives who were here for millennia, and peoples of every gender, race, nationality, ethnicity and religion whose ancestors are here from every corner of Earth.

How did the United States get to be the world’s leader economically, scientifically, militarily, agriculturally and culturally? The answer, of course, is through the contributions of the American People in all our diversity. The making of the American People is the central story of our nation from first peoples through today. That idea is embedded in the nation’s original national motto bestowed by our founders: E Pluribus Unum … From Many, One!

Among our nation’s first orders of business was to find out more about “We the People.” The Constitution prescribed instituting a decennial census to see just how many were here and where they lived to determine how many representatives each state would have in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Constitution then went on to expand the definition of who was incorporated into “We the People.” The 14th Amendment said that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States. The 15th Amendment opened voting rights to persons of every race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The 19th Amendment said the right to vote can not be denied or abridged on account of sex. The 26th Amendment allowed citizens 18 years of age or older to vote.

This expansion of who “We the People” are coincided with the ever-growing status of our nation. There is no story-telling museum anywhere that tells this powerful story about the making of the American People in a chronological manner. Visitors will be able to walk along a path where they will encounter their own story, and learn about every other group’s story.

Both Canada and Mexico have museums telling about the history of their people starting with first peoples to inhabit their land. So do a number of other countries around the world. The United States, with the most compelling story of all, doesn’t yet have such a museum. The National Museum of the American People should be … and can be … the best story-telling museum in the world.

The story of our nation is unique. It attracted peoples from every corner of our planet. Our founders designed it so. John Jay declared that: “The portals of the temple we have raised to freedom shall be thrown wide, as an asylum to mankind. America shall receive to her bosom and comfort and cheer the oppressed, the miserable and the poor of every nation and of every clime.”

Patrick Henry declared, “Make [the United States] the home of the skillful, the industrious, the fortunate, the happy, as well as the asylum of the distressed …. Let but this, our celebrated goddess, Liberty, stretch forth her fair hand toward the people of the old world — tell them to come, and bid them welcome.”

The NMAP will tell the story of all of the groups who came and will celebrate each.

The National Museum of the American People is already the most important museum that doesn’t exist … yet. Once open, the museum will gain in importance as it tells our story to generation upon generation of our lofty ideals, for the opportunity for all to succeed that we must continually strive to achieve, about where we’ve fallen short, and about our nation’s great accomplishments.

— Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

#1. A Museum for America’s Future

Sam Eskenazi — Mon, 26 Nov 2018 10:00:55 +0000

This is the inaugural blog on this platform about the proposed National Museum of the American People which is about the making of the American People. I will be reporting regularly about a host of NMAP topics, American ethnic group histories, related museums, scholarship centered on the museum’s focus, relevant census and other demographic data, and pertinent political issues. The museum is a work in progress and we welcome thoughtful suggestions.

The National Museum of the American People is the most important museum in our country that doesn’t exist … Yet!

It could well be more valuable than any other museum in our country. The NMAP will tell the story about the making of the American People, a story that begins with the first humans in the Western Hemisphere and winds through millennia, centuries and decades to the present.

This story encompasses every person in our nation, whether they or their ancestors over the centuries came from Europe, Africa, Asia or the Americas … or were natives long before. This story is about crossing oceans and continents, whether voluntarily, indentured or enslaved, to get here. This story is one of the most compelling stories in human history. Yet we don’t tell this full story anywhere.

The recently opened National Museum of African American History and Culture was the first major national museum to tell a part of that story in our nation’s capital, and it does so brilliantly, covering a 500-year tale of oppression, slavery, segregation, discrimination struggle and glorious achievements. While the African American story is rightfully told, so must the story be told of all Americans … Americans whose ancestors came from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean, East Asia and Pacific Islands, South Asia, Central and South America, Africa, and our neighbors Canada and Mexico.

It was George Washington who said, “The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions.” Following Washington’s invitation and that of many of our nation’s other founders, people came here from every land and nation and became Americans.

Some 90 percent of Americans recognize their ancestry with a hyphenated attribute to an ethnic, nationality or minority group and, more and more, Americans have fascinating combinations of ancestry. We’ve tried to forge an ideal nation based on the idea behind our original national motto: E Pluribus Unum … From Many, One!

When you’re in the U.S. military, you’re an American soldier no matter where your ancestors came from. That unifying theme begins with the first words of our Constitution: “We the People.” Those words are the basis of the first self-governing people based not on a race or ethnic or tribal or religious basis, but on an idea. Our founding documents, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, all helped to shape the American character.

As that character is reshaped by each succeeding generation, we must continually renew and expand our commitments to our national ideals. The National Museum of the American People will make that task easier for future generations.

— Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People