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.
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