Museums

The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago was the first American fair to feature anthropology. The new discipline had its own building, supervised by Frederic Putnam, then director of Harvard University’s Peabody Museum.It competed, however, with...

In A Fool’s Errand (Smithsonian, 2019), Lonnie Bunch shares the vision and leadership he brought to the realization of the National Museum of African American History and Culture—a dream shared by many generations of Americans. Bunch’s deeply personal...

The United States was in the early stages of Reconstruction when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, mandating that “all persons born in the United States” with the exception of American Indians be declared citizens. That December, the tension...

Manifest: Thirteen Colonies is a photographic project and journey through the repositories of African-American material culture found in libraries, museums, and archives of the original thirteen English colonies. Conceived by photographer Wendel White...

For seven seasons, award-winning Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. has uncovered the ancestral stories of celebrity guests on his hit-television series, Finding Your Roots. In this program, Gates Jr. is joined by Dr. Gregg Hecimovich to discuss the...

As museums have acknowledged their legacy as colonial institutions, many have reimagined their mission as agents of decolonization and social justice. The pandemic disruption, the Black Lives Matter movement, and other community issues are driving still...