Author: Sam Eskenazi

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.

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

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.

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

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:

1. It will be America’s only national institution devoted exclusively to telling the full story about the making of the American People;
2. Our nation was uniquely created and built by peoples from every land; they made us the world’s economic, military, scientific and cultural leader;
3. It will celebrate all of the peoples who came to this land and nation, from the very first to the most recent;
4. 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;
5. It will foster a sense of belonging to the nation by telling about the mosaic of people that have come here;
6. It will contribute to our national identity and unity;
7. The full story about the making of the American People is not well known or understood by the American People or by foreigners;
8. 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;
9. It has the support of more than 246 diverse organizations representing virtually every major American ethnic and minority group;
10. Foreign visitors will come to learn about natives of their countries who became Americans;
11. It will be a top destination for school groups visiting Washington;
12. It will foster learning nationwide through its education and curriculum programs;
13. It can become a national pilgrimage destination and be among the most visited museums in the world;
14. Eminent scholars will provide the intellectual bedrock upon which it will be built;
15. It has the support of more than 144 scholars of immigration and migration history;
16. It will incorporate a Center for the Advanced Study of the American People to foster knowledge about who we are;
17. It will be a resource for state, local and ethnic museums throughout the nation;
18. It has had bipartisan support;
19. 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;
20. As the central story of our nation, it belongs near the National Mall in Washington;
21. It can incorporate these components: a film center, genealogical center, nationwide peopling of America sites, bookstore, public programs, collections and special and traveling exhibits;
22. It will provide a range of knowledge, learning, stimulation and entertainment for visitors;
23. No federal tax money is planned to design, build or operate it;
24. It will show how our central documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, helped shape the American character;
25. Our Constitution begins “We the People of the United States…” This museum will tell who “We the People” are;
26. It will embody our original national motto: E Pluribus Unum — From Many, One!;
27. It will be the best story-telling museum in our nation;
28. It is the most important American museum that doesn’t exist … YET!

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

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.

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

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.

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

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