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

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 3rd Street to 9th 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 1st 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.

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

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#36: NMAP Will Explore a Peopling of America Program to Mark Significant US Immigration Sites

A Peopling of America program would consist of scholars at the National Museum of the American People working with National Park Service officials to identify sites throughout the nation where events of significant migration and immigration history took place. The sites would be marked with special plaques designating them as “Peopling of America National Historic Landmarks.”

The most famous immigration site in America is Ellis Island, although the ancestors of most people in our nation came before Ellis Island opened in 1892, after it closed in 1954, came through other ports, or were already on land that the U.S. took over. On the West Coast, for example, Angel Island, not far from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Bay, is where many immigrants from Asia arrived in the United States.

As sites are designated, and markers placed, Peopling of America themed maps could be created for the public based on regional designations and specific ethnic designations. Members of ethnic groups could tour the nation to see first hand where people from their homelands landed in the U.S. Families could tour their regions to learn about the special places where different peoples first arrived to become Americans.

The Peopling of America idea was initiated by Hawaii Sen. Daniel Akaka 20 years ago but was never implemented. With heightened interest in genealogy and using DNA to trace ancestors, this would be another way to trace one’s personal roots.

The Peopling of America National Historic Landmarks would also be used to designate original settlements and paths that were followed by groups as they moved across the country. The Landmarks will describe the key events in the immigration and migration histories of these groups.

The Peopling of America program will provide a basis for the preservation and interpretation of the movements of groups that shaped the nation, including groups that arrived on the land before our nation existed. The process could also lead to more structures and places nominated to be added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Significant sites of First Peoples and the sites of both early and current tribal cultures would be marked. Trails leading westward such as the Mormon Trail, the Trail of Tears and the Santa Fe Trail could be designated for their role in the peopling of America. So too could the Underground Railroad which was followed by Southern slaves to free themselves in the North and the actual railroads that helped to move the population center of the U.S. westward.

Sites all along the Canadian and Mexican borders with the U.S could be marked as could ports and beaches throughout the U.S. and its territories.

By making Americans more aware that the places that mark our immigration and migration journeys are all around us, the National Museum of the American People will enhance our understanding of that central aspect of our nation’s uniqueness.

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

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#35: Genes Tell About Our Ancestors’ Past Wanderings Across Our Planet

The National Museum of the American People could explore having Museum visitors participate in a DNA contribution program that could enable researchers to trace that visitor’s ancestors.

Some commercial DNA programs have become well known in recent years, such as Ancestry, 23 and Me and Familytree.com, as more people search for their personal roots.

Of those, Ancestry.com uses the world’s largest consumer DNA data base and it has a tie-in to the genealogical data base of more than 3 billion persons operated by Family Search, an organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

Perhaps the Museum’s program tie in with the National Geographic Society’s Genographic Project. The results of that project could be immensely helpful to the Museum in telling its story. As National Geographic reported, for decades, the primary clues to the human story came from scattered bones and artifacts. Now, scientists have found a record of ancient human migrations in the DNA of living people.

While helping to tell the first chapter of the Museum’s story starting some 20,000 years ago with the first humans arriving in the Western Hemisphere, the information from these DNA studies will also tell the migration stories of the ancestors of those contributing the DNA.

The National Geographic’s Genographic Project uses advanced genetic and computational technologies to analyze historical patterns in DNA from participants around the world. Launched in 2005, the project’s goals are to gather and analyze research data in collaboration with indigenous and traditional peoples, and to educate the general public through participation in the project where they learn their own deep ancestry.

The DNA test is done from a swab of saliva from the donor’s mouth. The DNA found in that swab is then tested for nearly 300,000 identifiers, also known as “markers,” selected to provide ancestry-relevant information. The test measures the genetic markers passed down through the generations from mother to child. For men they also look at the markers passed down from father to son.

Everyone’s DNA is tested against 250,000 ancestry-markers from around the world to discover the regional affiliation of a person’s ancestry. While modern humans started some 200,000 years ago in Africa, they have spread around the globe following thousands of diverse branches. But each branch can be traced back to their origins in Africa.

For the National Museum of the American People, those stories will begin as humans begin flowing into the Western Hemisphere and begin to form tribal groups and civilizations throughout North and South America. The groups in the hemisphere remain isolated from peoples in the rest of the world for about 20 millennia until there is contact with peoples from Europe, Asia and Africa starting a little more than 500 years ago.

DNA research will continue to fill in the many blanks of our diverse past and present and will help tell who we are, where we came from and when it happened.

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

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

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.

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