The link works for me.... but here is the text if you can't link....
January 31, 2006
Smithsonian Picks Notable Spot for Its Museum of Black History
By LYNETTE CLEMETSON
WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 ? After nearly a century of political infighting and delay, the
Smithsonian Institution on Monday selected a prominent space on the Mall near the
Washington Monument as the site of its National Museum of African-American History and
Culture.
Supporters of the project, including many black cultural, political and academic leaders,
who labored for years to have the museum approved, greeted the selection by the Board of
Regents, the institution's governing body, with elation.
High-profile advocates of the museum, the institution's first dedicated to a comprehensive
study of the black American experience, had told Smithsonian officials that any site off the
Mall would be viewed as a slight to African-Americans.
In September 2004 the National Museum of the American Indian opened to much fanfare
and high visibility on the eastern edge of the Mall near the Capitol.
Some groups responded to the announcement on Monday with disappointment, arguing
that the project would clutter the Mall, the grassy expanse stretching from the Lincoln
Memorial to the Capitol.
Smithsonian officials said the vote on the site was not unanimous but would not give
details. Officials said they hoped to open the new museum within the next decade.
"My first task for tomorrow is to stop smiling," said Lonnie G. Bunch, director of the
museum.
The selection of the five-acre site allows Mr. Bunch to move forward with choosing an
architect, as well as to begin raising money and acquiring collections. Cost estimates for
the museum, the 19th in the Smithsonian complex, range from $300 million to $500
million. Fifty percent of the cost will be paid by the federal government, the other half by
private sources.
The building will probably be at least 350,000 square feet, roughly the same size as the
National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian officials said.
Mr. Bunch, former director of curatorial affairs for the Smithsonian's National Museum of
American History, left a position as president of the Chicago Historical Society in July to
lead the new project. He said it was "quite fitting that the experience of African-Americans
take its place among the museums and monuments that make the National Mall a world-
renowned location."
Fund-raising has already started and will be greatly aided by the site selection, Mr. Bunch
said.
Lawrence M. Small, secretary of the Smithsonian, said the institution was committed to
building "a remarkable museum that will inspire generations of future visitors from around
the world with truly American stories of perseverance, courage, talent and triumph."
Richard D. Parsons, chairman and chief executive of Time Warner Inc. and a co-chairman
of the museum's advisory council, said he planned to use America Online, which Time
Warner owns, to create a virtual connection between the museum and potential donors, by
offering links to the kinds of material and artifacts that the museum will contain.
"We are going to try to hit this at several levels," Mr. Parsons said in a telephone interview
after the announcement. "We will reach out to the entire corporate community and the
philanthropic community, but also just folks at very large levels and at the $5 and $10
level. And you can use online communities to reach these people in new and unique ways."
Supporters said the highly visible spot, adjacent to the Washington Monument across the
street from the National Museum of American History, acknowledged the centrality of the
African-American experience in the country's development.
Efforts to build a national museum of black history began in the early 1900's but were
repeatedly thwarted by political and social opposition well into the 1990's. In 1994 Senator
Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, passionately blocked Senate passage of a bill
authorizing the museum, saying Congress should not have to "pony up" for such efforts.
"Thank God," said Robert L. Wilkins, a Washington lawyer who headed the site selection
committee on a presidential commission formed in 2002 to make recommendations for
the museum to Congress. "Even though the building has not yet been constructed, I feel
like we have finally fulfilled this long quest in an honorable and appropriate way."
Many opponents of the site had lobbied heavily for one south of the Mall, arguing that the
new museum would help bring about a much-needed physical and psychological
expansion of the Mall beyond its current boundaries.
"It is a lost opportunity," said Judy Scott Feldman, chairwoman of the National Coalition to
Save Our Mall, a group founded in 2000 to oppose the location of the World War II
Memorial between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. "We believe that
there was a possibility here to make this museum not the last museum on the 20th-
century Mall, but the first museum on the 21st-century Mall. It could have motivated the
nation to move the Mall into the future."
Detractors said they had long suspected they were waging a difficult battle.
The advisory council ? which includes numerous influential black leaders, including E.
Stanley O'Neal, chairman and chief executive of Merrill Lynch & Company; Robert L.
Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television; and Oprah Winfrey ? recommended
the monument site to the Board of Regents in early December. They based their
recommendation on a review of a 198-page engineering evaluation, commissioned by the
Smithsonian, of four potential sites. Two were on the Mall; two were not.
"We were very clear and unanimous in our recommendation," said Michael L. Lomax,
president and chief executive of the United Negro College Fund and a member of the
advisory council. "The site articulates not just the kind of recognition the museum will
receive, but ultimately what kind of recognition African-Americans will receive for their
contributions to the country."
In an interview, Mr. Johnson said he had told Mr. Small that he would resign from the
advisory council if the board chose a site off the Mall.
"The symbolism of denying African-Americans the same treatment as museums like the
Museum of the American Indian, the Holocaust Museum and all of the great museums on
the Mall would have been too much," he said. "To have relegated this museum to another
site, when people are looking to it to answer everything from the need for an apology for
slavery to reparations, would have been the ultimate dismissal."
The 17-member board includes several politicians, as well as Chief Justice John G. Roberts
Jr. Vice President d*** Cheney was the only member not in attendance for the
announcement, made in a lecture hall near the Castle, the Smithsonian's main
administrative building.
President Bush, who signed the bill authorizing the museum in December 2003, also
endorsed a site on the Mall last February at a Black History Month event at the White
House. "We have a chance to build a fantastic museum, right here in the heart of
Washington, D.C., on the Mall," the president told those in attendance, including Mr. Small.
Mr. Bunch said in an interview that he awoke at 4 a.m. on Monday, the day of the
announcement, in a fit of excitement and anxiety over the vote.
"I have always thought that the honor of creating this museum would make any place that
it is located sacred ground," he said. "My focus has just been let me know what the
decision is, and off to work I will go."
He is quickly hiring staff members to fill his temporary offices, near the site south of the
Mall that the board rejected.
Lakiesha Carr contributed reporting for this article.
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
Jan 31, 2006 @ 09:02:29
