Wondering about the African-American Museum? Here is a list of 11 African-American Museums that have preserved Black Americans’ art, history, and culture; keep reading to know more.
1. National Museum of African American History and Culture
The site and its design symbolize the history, current, and outlook of the African American practice in symbolic and tangible ways.
2. California African American Museum
The CAAM is situated on the eastern end of Exposition Park, and Downtown L.A. CAAM connects the historical and contemporary creation and healthy society to form a positive future.
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The 44k square-foot complex is located in one of Los Angeles’ most varied neighborhoods, a building block south of the University of Southern California. Across the road from the Metro Expo Line end, the sweet smell of the notable Exposition Park Rose Garden marks the brief walk past the distinguished Natural History Museum and California Science Centermost pleasant.
CAAM mainly focuses on the art in West Coast, Los Angeles, and many other places based on African American history and culture. The aim is to initiate communication and action to create a bridge between generations via board meetings and several other sessions.
3. Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History
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Dr. Charles H. Wright, a brilliant Detroit doctor and civil rights activist, established Detroit’s first global Afro-American Museum in 1965. Enthused by a monument for the Danish World War II heroes, Wright determined that African Americans required a place to document, conserve, become well-informed, and take pride in their history and culture.
Upon partnering with Detroit’s Cultural Center, the museum reopened in 1985, with a new name, the Museum of African American History. It hosted many lectures, exhibits, concerts, and other agendas and cultural procedures, most of which were initiated to teach children about history and advance their outlook.
Detroit’s Cultural Center on Warren Avenue became the final destination of the museum. The museum was then renamed in tribute to its originator, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. It is over 120,000 feet and is distinguished as the largest African American history museum on the earth.
4. DuSable Museum of African American History
This museum in Chicago is devoted to the conservation of African-American culture, art, and history. It was established by Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, her spouse Charles Burroughs and others in the year 1961. The museum has an association with the Smithsonian Institution.
It also provides the city’s chief memorial to du Sable. Highlights of its compilation comprise the Charles Dawson Papers, the desk of protester Ida B. Wells, and the violin of writer Paul Laurence Dunbar. It has a compilation of 13,000 artifacts, volumes, photographs, art items, and memorabilia. The DuSable collection has come largely from personal gifts.
The museum has United States slavery-era relics, 19th and 20th-century artifacts, and archival resources, including the diaries of voyager Captain Harry Dean. It includes workings from academic W. E. B. Du Bois, poet Langston Hughes, and sociologist St. Clair Drake. The museum also possesses prints and illustrations by Richmond Barthé, Henry O. Tanner, and Romare Bearden. It has a wide compilation of manuscripts and records about the history and culture of African-Americans.
5. Reginald F. Lewis Museum
The Lewis Museum’s operation is to assemble, conserve, infer, document, and demonstrate the rich offerings of African American Marylanders using its compilation of over 11,000 documents and substance and assets drawn from across the nation.
The 82,000 sq. ft. museum is an easy two-block stroll from Baltimore’s Inner Harbor in Baltimore, Maryland. The museum was named after Reginald F. Lewis, the first African American to create a billion-dollar corporation, TLC Beatrice International Holdings. In 1993 Forbes listed Lewis amid the 400 richest Americans with a net worth estimated at 0 million.
Eternal exhibits include “Things Hold, Lines Connect,” “The Strength of the Mind,” and “Building Maryland, Building America.” Recent chief exhibitions include the works of artists Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence. Other services include a listening and recording studio, a unique exhibition gallery, a 200-seat theater hall, a classroom, and a reserve hub.
6. New Orleans Museum
The museum in New Orleans, Louisiana, is situated in the notable Tremé neighborhood, the oldest surviving black society in the US. The NOAAM of Art, Culture, and History looks forward to teaching and protecting, interpreting, and endorsing the offerings that have been made for the growth of New Orleans and Louisiana traditions by the people of African descent.
In 2008, the museum took part in Prospect New Orleans, the principal biennial of global contemporary art ever planned in the US and the foremost to be held in New Orleans.
In January 2011, the museum got awarded a $3 million CDBG grant to restore Passebon’s servant quarters and Villa Meilleur, Passebon Cottage (1843). It is marked on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
7. Studio Museum in Harlem
It is an American art museum dedicated to the effort of artists of African descent. The Museum’s galleries are presently closed for a building project that will substitute the current building, situated at 144 West 125th Street. Established in 1968, the museum gathers and displays art shaped by members of the African diaspora and artists from Africa. Its range includes exhibitions, instructive and community programming, artists-in-residence events, and a stable collection.
Due to its location, the Museum has earned acknowledgment for its function in endorsing the creations of artists of Africa and its descent. A wide variety of enlightening and public programs include dialogues, panel pondering, lectures and presentations, and interpretive events for students and teachers. All these helped the literature of African and African-American literature and graduates who have pursued scholarly careers.
8. African American Museum in Philadelphia
The AAMP is distinguished as the first museum financed and created by a municipality to help conserve and exhibit the legacy of African Americans. Founded during the 1976 Bicentennial, the AAMP is situated in historic Philadelphia on Arch Street, only some blocks away from the Liberty Bell.
AAMP presently houses an auditorium and four galleries, each of which presents exhibitions with three dominant topics: The African Diaspora, the Contemporary Narrative, and the Philadelphia Story.
The museum is a shelter to over 750,000 objects, images, and papers that are made accessible for research, for a loan to other museums, educational purposes, and exhibitions.
9. Great Blacks in Wax Museum
The museum is presently placed on 1601 East North Avenue in a refurbished firehouse, a Victorian Mansion, and two earlier apartment dwellings that offer nearly 30,000 sq. ft. of office space and exhibit. The exhibits display more than 100 wax scenes and structures.
10. African American Museum in Iowa
The AAMI is situated along the Cedar River close to downtown Cedar Rapids, Iowa, United States. It has been carrying out its mission to save and teach the public about the African American legacy and ethnicity of Iowa since the year 1994.
It has become the principal instructive source on African American accounts in Iowa. It has two on-site exhibits: an eternal exhibit called Endless Possibilities and the 2017 provisional exhibit – If Objects Could Talk. The AAMI has quite a few exhibits that are accessible free of charge for use by libraries, businesses, schools, and more.
In 2011, the AAMI served more than 52,000 people, contributing tours, educational events for all ages, special events, a summer camp, and much more across Iowa.
The museum has two exhibit galleries on the spot. The first of these holds Endless Possibilities, which was established in 2009. This stable exhibit traces Iowa’s African American inheritance from its beginning in Western Africa through Slavery, the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, the Underground Railroad, and efforts and activities today.
The second exhibit was in the Gale Sayers Gallery, displaying at least one original temporary exhibit each year. The 2017 short-term exhibit was If Objects Could Talk, which allows guests to see part of the Museum’s compilation and see how everyday objects turn into precious historical records.
11. Northwest African American Museum
The museum preserves the relations between the Pacific Northwest and citizens of African fall and investigates and celebrates Black experiences in America through programs and procedures. The museum is situated in Seattle, Washington‘s traditionally African-American Central District area in the former Colman School.
The museum has 17,000 sq. ft. of base space, counting a bookstore/present shop, galleries for impermanent and stable exhibitions, and spaces offered to the public as rentals.
The museum’s opening display featured the effort of Jacob Lawrence and James W. Washington, Jr., two internationally celebrated African American artists who made their homes in Seattle. Among the workings in the show were Lawrence’s series of five panels on the living of George Washington Bush, who was the Washington State’s first African American settler, and Washington’s labor from the year 1956 entitled “The Young Queen of Ethiopia,” engraved from Mexican volcanic stone.
Their art moves us because they were noticeably obliged to do it, to communicate deep social or internal truths. Both Lawrence and Washington did the aching work of finding their true voice as artists, a firm trip that few achieve and which in itself sets them apart. That task was multiplied vastly by the detail that they were black men in a nation with deep racial divides and prejudices.
Are you familiar with any other Black American Museums? Have you visited any Afro-American museums? Let us know in the comment section- AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM.
Last Updated on by Steffy Michael
