At the core of the National Museum of the American People is the unique story about the making of the American People . . . all of us!
This story begins with the first humans in the Western Hemisphere more than 20,000 years ago and courses through a dynamic history to today. It is the story of every group that came to this land and this nation, and of how they made the United States of America the world’s economic, military, scientific and cultural leader and includes those who:
Most museums start with a collection and display significant elements of that collection as their central focal point and their reason for being. Art museums, for example, are almost by definition collection-based institutions.
Examples of collection-based museums include these Smithsonian Institutions:
Sometimes referred to as our nation's attic, this popular museum displays incredible artifacts ranging from the original Star-Spangled Banner flag and General George Washington's uniform to pop culture artifacts such as Dorothy's ruby slippers. One popular exhibit presents the gowns worn by first ladies at inaugural balls, and others display a host of American inventions that changed the nation and the world.
Located with branches in both Washington and New York, this has one of the world's most expansive collections of Native objects and other artifacts. It features a variety of exhibitions, such as one about treaties between the US and Indian nations, and others focused on specific tribal groups. However, the NMAI doesn't tell the overall dramatic chronologic story of First Peoples and the great tribal cultures and civilizations that they established throughout the Western Hemisphere.
One of the most popular museums in the world, this museum features the Wright Brothers first airplane, moon rocks and the Apollo 11 Command Module.
This museum features fossils, the Hope Diamond, Egyptian mummies and animal specimens from insects to mammals.
Two new museums now underway by the Smithsonian Institution are the American Women's History Museum and the National Museum of the American Latino. Based on the reports that led to these museums, collections appear to be a core element of both of them.
Museums based on a story rather than on collections engage visitors much more intensely. However there are only a handful of these in the world. In a story-telling museum, rather than going from exhibit to exhibit or gallery to gallery in any random order, the visitor is on a chronological path as the story before them unfolds.
History museums that tell their story along a path capture their visitors' attention more intently 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 drawn in and become absorbed in the story being told.
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 with a beginning, a middle and an end. Some examples include:
This museum guides visitors through one of the worst days in US history from sunrise on a beautiful New York City morning through the devastating events of that day. It incorporates a memorial to its victims adjacent to the museum.
The "Cosmic Pathway" explores the history of the universe starting with the smallest particle imaginable, its incredible expansion over the first second of time, through the current status of the universe more than 13 billion years later.
Its path depicts the history of humans starting with our earliest ancestors six million years ago to modern humans who made their appearance an estimated 150-200,000 years ago in Africa and spread throughout our planet.
Taking place along a 29-year path starting with the roots of the revolution from 1760 to 1776, the museum traces the war until its end at Yorktown in 1781. It then depicts the ensuing struggle to create a lasting government based on principles of democracy, freedom and liberty culminating with the adoption of the US Constitution in 1789. Central to our nation's narrative, this overall story will also be incorporated into the NMAP's story.
In other nations, story-telling museums about their people are among the most visited museums in those countries:
Located in Mexico City, this museum is the largest and most visited museum in Mexico. Along its pathway visitors learn the story of the Mexican People from First Peoples and the pre-Columbian era through the Mexican colonial period.
Located directly across the Ottawa River from Canada's Parliament Building in Ottawa, this museum features a path through the story of First Peoples covering thousands of years of Aboriginal history before European contact. Other exhibits focus on overall Canadian immigration history featuring different ethnic groups and places they settled. It is the most visited museum in Canada's capital region.
In Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), this museum presents the history of the Vietnamese People from the Stone Age through 1945.
In Helsinki, this museum tells the story about the Finnish People from the Stone Age through today.
In Tel Aviv, this museum tells the story of the Jewish People from ancient times to the present.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which opened in 1993, was one of the first . . . and the best . . . story-telling museums until the National Museum of African American History and Culture opened in September 2016. Both museums shared the great museum exhibition designer, Ralph Appelbaum, who also designed the Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History.
In the case of the Holocaust Museum, its director, Shaike Weinberg, made one simple and brilliant move: He teamed Appelbaum with a British filmmaker, Martin Smith, who had made documentaries about a variety of World War II subjects. They were the perfect choices to address the huge task of presenting the Holocaust to a diverse audience. Smith was 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 then the aftermath of the Holocaust.
Smith and Appelbaum worked so closely that each would often finish the other's sentences at early presentations. They took the history of the Holocaust, drawn from a range of scholars and witnesses, and wove a path through that history for the museum's nearly 50 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 National Museum of African American History and Culture's path starts with the beginning of slavery by Europeans in Africa in the 1500s, through the terrible history of enslavement of Africans in the US, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement through today. After finishing the history path, visitors can visit a rich trove of African American-related artifacts in its collection reflecting some of their many achievements. The director of that museum, Lonnie Bunch, now the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, is a historian and quintessential storyteller.
The architects of both the Holocaust and African American museums, James Ingo Freed and David Adjaye respectively, worked with the exhibition designer to reflect and amplify the storytelling 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 mid-construction and the rest of the museum was built around them.
The effectiveness of this storytelling approach can be seen in two symbiotic ways, the number 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 to two hours. 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 visitors spending five or more hours. The same has turned out to be true at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. In both cases the visitors are caught up in the incredible story being told and in 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 the world to tell their stories. The stories dictated the content; the artifacts helped bring the stories to life.
The effectiveness of this approach is also seen in the word-of-mouth recommendations generated by visitors to true story-telling museums. In the case of the USHMM, timed tickets were instituted when the museum opened in April, 1993, assuming they wouldn’t need them after that first summer. Today, more than 30 years later, the museum 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.
Now, it's time for a third great story-telling museum in our nation's capital, the National Museum of the American People.
The NMAP's story about the making of the American People will use the same elements and processes that made those two other great institutions so popular. It starts with eminent scholars and a great architect. Then a premier museum exhibition designer will be teamed with a visionary filmmaker or storyteller. They would all work under the direction of a distinguished museum director with the singular goal to tell the history of the making of the American People.
The National Museum of the American People's permanent exhibition will tell the 20-millennia dramatic story about the making of the American People in a powerful, interactive, documentary format from the first humans in the Western Hemisphere up to the present. It will be accessible, attractive, evidenced based, exciting, clear and engaging on many levels.
The NMAP's story will be developed and vetted by teams of scholars, including historians, anthropologists, archeologists, ethnologists, human geographers, sociologists, demographers, geneticists, linguists and others.
The story would reflect their scholarship. As scientific and historic scholarship evolves, appropriate changes would be made in the museum’s permanent exhibition. With force and clarity, the NMAP would examine unpleasant truths and avoid mythology.
The museum would present the story in the exhibition using a variety of media, including artifacts, film, visuals, sound, dioramas, graphics, text, computer technology and models, in a framework that would encourage reflection as visitors absorb the story. With advice from educators, text and visuals in the exhibition would be geared for school children as well as adults.
As exemplified by the USHMM, the wall text could be in three sizes allowing visitors to engage the story at different depths of their choosing. The museum's permanent exhibition could leave an indelible impression of knowledge and understanding as visitors learn and come to know the full story about the making of the American People, including the story of their own ancestors.