African American Smithsonian Sets a New Standard for Museums as Destinations
Photo Credit: The newest Smithsonian offers visitors an immersive, all-day, multifaceted experience on African American history. Skift
Skift Take
Museums can be powerful drivers of tourism and the newest Smithsonian, which quickly became a black American mecca, sets the bar high. Case in point -- how many museums have a line to get into the gift shop?
Today’s successful museum isn’t a stuffy old gallery fit for groups of bored schoolchildren — it’s a world-class attraction that visitors clamor to share on Instagram. A modern museum is expected to offer an acclaimed restaurant, a design-centric boutique with a lot more than branded pencils, and an immersive, photogenic experience in the galleries.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. sets the bar high. (The acronym NMAAHC is both clunky and unpronounceable, and doesn’t do the museum, which is the newest under the Smithsonian umbrella, any branding favors, so it's referred to here as “the African American museum.”)
The museum opened to great fanfare in September 2016 at the end of America’s first black presidency under Barack Obama, after 13 years of planning with $540 million in funding. The building’s bronze architecture recalls a Yoruba crown; the theater bears Oprah Winfrey’s name; the grand opening saw Stevi
