sions biggest night the annual gala for the metropolitan museum of art there are plenty of extravagant and wacky costumes enjoy. cut. cut cut. cut cut cut. cut. cut. you're up to the big idea. but what's become of it. will it look like tomorrow. hoping for a better future isn't enough europe requires a power cut as a patient. years in the elections twenty nineteen may twenty sixth on

t.w. . it's a first time get back people have a history that other people can see people need to understand like what happened to tell just a whole range of the most. sadness to. you know happened. it

really brings you. to focus on what i think we have been through. and yes we have made strides but we have along with it really. it's astonishing you still can get a ticket i still get e-mails us you know that says tickets are now available for january and you know this is in october so clearly there's an insane demand. we didn't realize that it would become a symbol for people who want to believe in an america that lives up to its stated ideals but also has become a kind of metaphor for all that's going on in the country today one way.

i saw a picture. of a black woman in sort of an excellent haitian and prayer hands were at this angle. and as we talked about it david r.j. and fill in the designers said we know that's also an angle that you see in some you room a sculpture in your room a pose. i started to kind of think about the museum is this crown form. it became very clear that this triple header. was actually

a beautiful weapon capsulated. i really love the idea even just the she was in. a sort of. i have an unusual sort of relationship with the history because i have been writing about the history of an effort to to build a national museum in my dissertation so i've been very carefully following sort of what had been going on in congress various sort of public and private initiatives to start start the museum. this is a museum. containing. hundreds here it was demanded dismissed. site no collection no money.

today it stands. in the middle of washington d.c. the national museum of african-american history and culture. slavery in freedom is a very large exhibition as you can tell. where it's a large time period that we address. fifteenth century looking at africa and europe going all the way to the development of the nation and by the time we get to reconstruction around eight hundred seventy seven so it's very important for people to understand that african-americans have always been pushing this notion of freedom against a backdrop of a nation that was coming into being based on the notion of liberty but in slavery. directly behind me is the display that speaks to the paradox of liberty on the platform we have several voices of freedom so there thomas jefferson of course

president of the united states still maintaining enslaved men women and children while he was putting together the document for the declaration of the constitution so when we talk about equality it's a very important think about african-americans pushed not only by the definition of freedom and push for how this nation of coming into being but equality is also at the core of that equality freedom. and so that's important think about today. in essence african-americans have always done one thing really well and that is they have forced america to live up to its stated ideals busy african american experiences says if you really want to treat all people equally let us push you to make sure you do that and in some ways my expectation is this museum wall ways be at the heart of pushing in america to fulfill

a stream for phillis promise. that. slavery was. an engine that drove the global economy from the fifteenth through the nineteenth century in a very real ways in very tangible ways that created the foundation for our notions of race today back created a foundation for economic wealth for nations for corporations. around the world around the world. and we're living with the afterlives of that. when you think about the store. and how it unfolds in the museum you go down. and sixty feet and you start the year fourteen hundred and slave trade and the national

slave trade begins they are you know in it and the exhibit is dark it's the ceilings are lower you know and so the whole lobby off of the space is appropriate for that time in history where the slave trade began and then you ascend and you move up and that story line really does work well with the building i mean it's an integrated. by the ante bellum period the u.s. is an economic powerhouse based on cotton that was cultivated by inflated african-american men women and children during the transatlantic slave trade here

you see the same thing. and so it's not just an american story because again transatlantic trade period as you see an arts edition we look at the nation states in europe we look at denmark we look at great britain we look at france we look at spain we look at portugal. are first complete we're into this history has been the discovery of a ship off the coast of south africa the size as a it was a ship owned by portuguese owners last lisbon and seven hundred ninety four so we're decades after the american revolution in the midst of the haitian revolution for independence and it traveled for liz. been to mozambique on the east coast of africa. there was loaded with five hundred

twelve wasn't beacons for enslaved me. what's left of the ship is very bottom of the ship wreck site that's been battered and pounded on the coastline of south africa in very cold waters in turbulent waters nearly one hundred yards from shore. so what's left is small pieces of timber. so what were once are in shackles. so very few objects but very put in the context of what this ship did and the enormity of the trade very powerful engines. and these iron bars for instance. slave traders for hundreds of years to be used to help create ballast in the bottoms of ships of all kinds. and slave ships they became

a way of helping to countermeasure their cargo that was living. is something you know that the museum dollars which i think is really profoundly powerful which is that when he spoke about wanting to make sure that all the artifacts were real i was so happy because we forget about the aura of real things emmett till's coffin or the real a real bow of a ship which has been taken from the bottom of the ocean and book back to you. and there's an extraordinary i think to man to really understand the history that really has not been been told and i think it's. remarkable that that lonnie and everyone involved there not only had to build a museum they had to build a collection and that was one of the really big challenges that the museum in this

was recognized even in the one nine hundred sixty s. and seventy's i think that had its descendants that but how are you going to establish a black museum where there's an interesting collection and so we began to then sort of identify broad subject areas that we want to do explore you want to explore the civil rights or you want to explore the role of rhythm and blues music in the one nine hundred fifty s. and sixty's so we had that broad circle then i would encourage curators to go out and say ok how do we fill in that circle so then the question was why the fun so we can with the strategy most of the twentieth century in the nineteenth century even a piece of the eighteenth century would still be in basements trunks and attics in people's homes so we created the you know we stole the idea from antique roadshow and we basically went around the country and i would say that you know. maybe an eight year period being really active we collected over forty five thousand

artifacts of which probably seventy percent came out of basements trunks in attics the current museum really tells everything the good the bad the failures the struggles the disappointments the absences you know the violence the debts i mean it's all it's all there to to reckon with and to think about. after a worldwide competition the architects phil freelon max bond and david j. well awarded the contract for the design and construction of the museum in two thousand and nine. i first got wind of the project somewhere around two thousand and four two thousand and five when george w. bush the president of the united states at that time established a commission. simply to study the possibility of the potential of a museum being located somewhere in d.c. a museum dedicated to african-american history and culture.

it's one of those incredible projects really it's sort of a lot of weight but also a lot of pride for me i'm really. just thrilled to be an architect of this time to be able to gauge in that this is a very useful picture that i always use which really gets you to understand where you are in the you know this is the last to build build plot which is this red highlights this is the white house here and this is obviously washington's one that lincoln is here but this is the motion to moral grounds and this is the mall coming here saloon really at this hinge moments the knuckle of the whole thing.

this project was beyond just one one firm and one person and then it would take it you know an allegiance and collaborative effort and you know as an african-american i feel that i can bring a certain authenticity to that effort having grown up during the civil rights era and experiencing firsthand some of these seminal moments in our history. what. the. museum owes its most striking design feature the so-called corona to the canadian british architects the david j. . as an architect i draw inspiration from a lot of things but i have a deep interest in africa and africa's diaspora so the u.s. or wherever it may be the sort of trajectory of history. i'm interested in it

because i simply am africa i was born in the government i grew up in europe and i have a deep connection also to where my family is from and where my roots are. i don't see any conflict i'm not at all. but also i'm just from a creative point of view. completely fascinated by the creative arts of the continent and i think that. there's a lot in it which teaches about the way in which to navigate the complexity of the contemporary world which i just think is not referenced or used i think the coronas the unique sort of signature because it is the one thing that you see from a distance it's. you know it's the thing that you know that people engage with from all sides as they're coming to the to the building and it's quite unique because when you look at the the assembly of all of the buildings around the national among the national mall a lot of them are very neoclassical and even the american history museum which is

the next door neighbor is still a kind of abstraction that the classicism and they're sort of a large white boxes that sit on pedestals and so this sort of deconstructs i think you know that the design that you know that david david alger as the lead designer of the team sort of came up with really begins to unpack and deconstruct that and gives it a different sort of presence on the mall. and. this is one of the first sketches just to find the front. of the building. this is this was called options. which was looking at the notion of the pavilion building on the landscape so this is really explaining this idea of this upward force and lights filtering and this building within a building that's a shape that you don't often see in western architecture and i'm hard pressed to think of another building that has that explicit a shape that is moving upward and is aspirational. celebre traore above ground

so these are the early studies which looked at how we were kind of controlling the program as you can see from the project to me and there's a lot on the. around and in the beginning we were trying to bring quite a bit of the program above ground to try and reduce costs so we were looking at how that could work as landscape and how the corona would sit on top but what the final scheme started to become so this one of the early studies was that we started to look at reducing that base and really starting to think about bringing most of the building on the ground until we started to get to this for what starts to come up is just then the corona and the corona is the main form of the building. i mean thinking about the materiality of the building we we realize that of course family came and problems with them into the workplace so the beginning we even try to make it a real blow this is a piece of real brains it's really. the farm with this is not it's not construction

a very proper. way to shape a what was clipped youthful is the tonality the texture the way in which it collects of light so we started to look at the material where the it was really out of many but also coated with a bronze liquid bronze coating that's been polished and burnt and subsume realize that this was starting to give us the modeling that we really really enjoy it's sort of the catch the light very beautifully you just that it is light you could lift it up very easily and you could see the sunlight how it just picked up believe and also c.e.o. of the light and the nuances and the shadow even in darkness that has a hostage quality the notion of bronze being this this ancient material that. that suggests jeopardy and permanence and quality. really historical way that goes back centuries you know that that was an i.q. as well.

and then there's also it's just the story of the pattern that that it has and and why it produces this kind of dappled light on the inside and that's a reference to the tradition of african-american males enslaved in free blacksmiths who made a lot of the screens that you see in places like charleston and new orleans. lonnie bunch says something like it's history hiding in plain sight which is something we should be reminded. of. so once we understood the form and we realized that we wanted to make a cube form we realized that the front of the mall the front entrance is south so it's really the hottest part of the building and we wanted to make a welcome porch which would mediate the climate from the outside to the inside of

the building and that's when we conceptualize this idea of the large porch which would be a device with a water pool which would clue and start to bring you into the climate of the building. the porch is another element sort of like that corona that is making references to. sort of by cultural forms of of architecture essentially it is a new transceiver steel and concrete structure held on two columns and it's kind sleeping fifty feet out and it's two hundred ten feet across and when you're under it you really feel like this is a home run plane like a floating pop it because the structure is. something big and generic feet. but some historians that said it actually comes from western africa migrates to places the caribbean like haiti. and in terms of it a two room form that has

a kind of around on that with the haitian revolution and there are a number of of the in slave that are taken by their masters to new orleans in the form that migrates to new orleans and so the porch then becomes a sort of space that mediates between the house and and the street because it's very hot and you know and so you could sit out there you could you could converse with people so becomes a very very very important social space. if you want to understand american notions of resiliency or optimism or spirituality you've got to look to the african-american community but even more importantly the met african-american experience has shaped the founding of the country shaped the writing of the constitution shaped politics shaped culture shaped education

became the sort of battlegrounds in the one nine hundred fifty s. and sixty's on how america should be seen in the world so you had many push and pulls it out of the sort of right right of african-americans to be able to tell their own story and deal with difficult history is. already. the idea for a museum dedicated to african-americans was first put forward in one nine hundred fifteen by black letter ends of the civil war years later the call was picked up and put. by members of the civil rights generation was on a monday similar sixty two thousand three president george w. bush authorized the legislation the prettiest devilish avenue smithsonian museum

the national museum of african-american history and culture. thank you thank you thank you but this place is more than the building. on september twenty fourth two thousand and sixteen all those who contribution to the realisation of the project celebrate the fulfillment of the doing for the century. is a moment in the west of the others almost broke a mistake ninety nine year old ruth bona and her great granddaughter will ring the bell of the oldest black baptist church in the usa and officially opened the museum . through finding a spot of god was born a slave in mississippi only a few generations separate the present from history.

and. a few weeks after the opening america and today a new president who was. on life. was a historian i really believe that history is this amazing tool that give you guidance and tools to live your life and so i think that by helping people first of all understand how the construction of. blackness and how that really did was create a false sense of difference between people and help people understand how in many ways that notion of calling somebody the other really allowed people to brutalize

people and treat them in our ways so we think that if we can help people understand the roots of that and begin to see these people as individuals rather than as a group we begin to have a kind of conversation. through one hundred thousand square feet of exhibition space spread across eight levels the museum explores america's history through the lens of the african-american experience. the changing america exhibition is the third of the history exhibitions so it followed on the exhibition about slavery and freedom and then the era of segregation we wanted to have this exhibition take the notion of

a series of changes that have happened leading from the civil rights movement and especially the black power movement through the last five decades of american history and. we allow people literally to create we are their memory with images with artifacts but we allow them to think through their own reactions and create their own most recent history rather than us trying to interpret their history for them. telling the story what's happening in the black power era it's really enter to find where the plaque art some of that in fact some of the leaders. the black arts movement that black power and black arts are sister concepts and so there's a cultural revolution happening at the same time that there's a kind of political revolution for example within the black power era one of the things that is really is the changing notions of how black people are represented

whether it's in television how black authors are writing about black communities black filmmakers are really looking at the ways that african-americans in that period are really rejecting stereotypes they're rejecting the ways that their identity has been codified by sort of kind of racist and racial undertones and are choosing for themselves how to write in this case we're looking at a pin that says black is beautiful we're also looking at the two afro picks the one with the black power this one afro because when it's from god and the other one is plastic but it has a black power right at the top and so you see. black is beautiful. i think one of the things we're really talking about and a changing america is that african-americans have really been at the center of how the nation has developed you see it through the slavery and. segregation and when

you get to the one nine hundred sixty s. and there's really. a new day in terms of how african-americans are picturing themselves and identifying and the culture that comes out of. being american popular culture and. the building it's really conceived as a tower it's very much seen as a journey. to cover. being a tree. there are lights i. feel every and there's a sense of movement and. america

would not have the culture that it has today without the contribution of african americans and that museum tells the story. a lot of times people look at art by african-americans a separate american art and they refer to it as african-american art we refer to all of the pieces in this gallery as american art. so we collect all known artists and we collect artists that we feel should be well

known and artist that were actually well known within an african-american community of artists and collectors and used and have always been considered very important but are just now being recognized in the larger art world. the piece behind me is called the mothership and it's by contemporary artists named jefferson pender and jefferson is a huge site so he's interested in this idea of afro futurism and afro futurism really reflects the idea that in the future will be a time when all people are equal in race won't be an issue gender won't be an issue . the peace intersects with other. areas of the museum so in the music gallery we have a seminal piece called the mothership which was a prop that george clinton used during his performances he was also sort of one of the first effort futurism in the united states and the piece would come down from

the stage and it was really very influential in the music industry. while the museum we were in the formative stages it was really about looking back how do we find the stuff of history well once we opened i said it's important to look forward to see if you're a curator or director fifty years from now. what stories what artifacts what material would help you understand twenty seventeen. we have what we call robert response collecting or i call it contemporary collecting and i thought about how do we collect contemporary history in the same way that we might collect contemporary art so you look at those moments of paradigmatic ships right so you have an artifact that represents a chains a shift in the way people see themselves the way they see the world the way they express themselves.

this is a photograph by devon allen it was taken in april two thousand and fifteen and it's really emblematic of the kinds of collecting we do around the rapid response or contemporary collecting shortly after her death now and took this photograph it went viral on the internet and it becomes a part of the twitter net and people are just like reanna and jay z. and beyonce and ice cube they're also sharing this image online and other images by devon allen who lives in baltimore but with even within a week two weeks or so after this image goes viral and it's all over the world seen

all over the world and makes the cover of time magazine so this image here and it being on time magazine and the fact that it's being shared all over the world like instantaneously all of that represents the apparent the magic shift that i was talking about. so those moments in history looking back hindsight are those my. it's that changed things for us so our collecting say around black lives matter movement were present at that because we saw things changing in terms of how the message was shared with people how quickly communities mobilize how mobilization sayings they didn't need the media they didn't need the church they didn't need any of those old forms of mobilizing the community and so overnight you can bring an entire nation together around a cause after black lives matter after social media social justice and community

mobilization can never be the same again. in some ways the museums first year transcended all we can hope you know while we've built a place that we hope would be important we didn't realize it would become this pilgrimage site. in the first year with a three million visitors we had hoped for about four thousand visitors a day we're getting seven to eight thousand visitors a day. it has become one of the hardest tickets to get in america.

but there were also many people who really felt that the vote this was racist if we created this museum there were a lot of people a lot of white supremacists who attack the museum there were web sites attacking us . even when i write op beds in the newspapers around athletes in protest or suddenly you get paid. as much as you get support for us one of the saddest moments was when somebody left a noose in the museum. and the noose is a symbol of the violence that african-americans have experienced throughout their career and to be able to sort of have somebody leave a noose really reminded me in her mind of the stand that's exactly why this museum is here when you think of the brutality of slavery. and then you think of the evolution and the achievement and the

progress despite those struggles and the ability to have a vision. and the ability to in fact. create something that was unique. to the american culture. it was not emotional it was emotional coming from the basement where with things started and it coming up to the top and seeing that so much stuff is still going on you know racism is still there are talented still you know it's to make this today it was emotional. an experience that i think not only does every african americans need to see they think every human needs to see this because this kind of gets you into thinking again why do we do the things we do why are we in the positions we are in what can we do to change the status quo education i think education is key

to everything a lot of people are misinformed by that's the main point of the museum itself it shows you how pictures and media can distort something to look a certain way and the story has not been told that not only not been told but if you did friends family. you so many. writers and. had. they're going to this there are a couple instances where they took things that were in the american history museum artifacts and then put them in a different context you know like oh it has all these like really awful historical competitions the way they totally don't tell you about in the american history. the building seems to have kind of created a kind of galvanizing quality it's sort of become a sort of a sort of rallying cry a sort of place. a sort of protest as well which was not kind of what i thought about but i find this. in the end the last time i.

tell you some of. the things like trying to come back to where. we started but i. thought he. was rather like my cooking. was my dad's. so i would leave it till staying up but i would thank you i'll go on to say it was. so complex that. when you go back i. during you know civil rights you start to wonder. what i have that much courage. as a lot of those other people you know where would i be if it was me and that's how i

am. who would i be. the power of seeing for me people gathered under it under the porch gathered around it is is deeply it's i mean it's deeply moving and so for me it's almost you know like tearful because you see. to feel like you have made something that has resonated with people and gives them the agency that they require to deal with something which is so complicated. we were eight years in power is the title of the latest book by ten a hassy cults one of the main contributors to the discourse on a conflict ridden relationship between black and white americans. the eight years in power and maybe elsewhere in the new museum the dialogue is more

powerful than ever. i think of this museum long after i'm gone or to be the place that becomes that safe ground for people to come and grapple with what separated them that this sort of be the place that tells the candid truth the unvarnished truth so that you deal with things that are painful but it also ought to be the place that allows us not just to see african-americans as people who struggle but african-americans as people who loved who lived who built and so what you really hope is that in the future this will help people see a more complete fuller notion of black america and invites tension a fuller sense of what america can mean. and

a lot of folks just want to be right. they just want to be right you know i mean it's like you know everything i say and the whole authority is in be a right and i have always felt like my authority is in being honest you know i'll be straight with you i don't mean ima be right but i will be straight. i'm excited about how. the telling of our stories continues. you know on end to the deep into the twenty first century you know the story is not over it's not complete and the smithsonian and body bunch and the staff have anticipated that and left. anough rome both programatic lee and physically for the story to evolve and continue to be told and i'm looking forward to being a part of that. i . am.

not going to. leave. that was. it is important that no sign is left on tintin to get to the bottom of how the sect of terrorism a coup the attorneys on christ church crimes of hate in a peaceful country speaking names of those who were lost rather than the name of

the man who took the new zealand life up to the terrace. close up thirty minutes w. . because. their goal is goal but everything still crams. even after the third to last matchup understood business and. the german champions. will qualify for europe. and who will get. it. done. how about taking a few risks could even take a chance on love. don't

expect a happy ending. to the churchill. german. this is the. million mom freeze to reuters journalists jailed for their reporting. and clouseau reunited with their families after spending more than five hundred days in prison despite their ordeal looking forward to getting back to work also coming up operations in turkey order drawn up istanbul's election after president.

party complained about losing the votes that feel for this.