Museums

The spirit of innovation, survival, and black creative expression has been preserved for more than a century through a range of research libraries, archives, and museums. Devoted to the black experience in the Americas and throughout the globe, these institutions document the history of struggle and achievement that are the hallmarks of African-American life and culture. Since the founding of the College Museum at Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia, in 1868, material culture—household artifacts, photographs, diaries and letters, and other memorabilia, as well as sculpture, paintings, and more contemporary media such as films and videos—has been vigorously collected and interpreted to enhance public awareness and appreciation. Today, this tradition of cultural presentation is maintained by nearly 140 institutions and galleries throughout the United States.

Hampton's College Museum (now Hampton University Museum) was truly a pioneer in this effort. Established to enrich vocational and academic instruction and to provide the broader community with otherwise unavailable cultural experiences, the museum was the brainchild of Colonel Samuel Chapman Armstrong. Today, the Hampton University Museum is noted for its important collection of African artworks, acquired by a black nineteenth-century missionary to Africa. Its holdings also include significant works of African-American and Native American artists (the latter group a reflection of the student body at the time of the museum's establishment) and a major bequest from the Harmon Foundation, which sponsored a prestigious national competition for African-American artists from 1926 until 1933.

Black cultural preservation was also advanced through the formation of literary societies and church archives. Beginning with the Bethel Literary and Historical Association (founded circa 1880) and the Negro Historical Society (1887), and, following the turn of the century, the Negro Society for Historical Research, these organizations were, in many ways, precursors to African-American museums.

Early research collections were often formed from materials lovingly accumulated by race-conscious bibliographies and lay historians. Such was the case for Howard University's Library of Negro Life in Washington, D.C., which received a 1,600-volume library from former abolitionist Lewis Tappan in 1873 and a gift of 3,000 books and historical ephemera from Reverend Jesse Moorland in 1914. The collection was augmented in 1946 by a donation of the considerable library of famed civil rights attorney Arthur Spingarn, becoming in the process the Moorland-Spingarn Library (now the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center). In New York, Arthur Alfonso Schomburg, a black Puerto Rican immigrant, responded to a teacher's comment that "the Negro has no history" by exhaustively seeking information on Africans and their descendants throughout the world. He began seriously collecting in 1910 and rapidly developed diverse holdings of manuscripts, rare books, pamphlets, sheet music, and artworks. By 1926, the magnitude of the Schomburg Collection led to its purchase by the Carnegie Foundation for the Harlem branch of the New York Public Library. Today, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is considered the foremost research facility of its kind in the world, with holdings in excess of five million items detailing the histories of blacks in Africa, the Americas, and elsewhere.

With the racial pride and interest in Africa that emerged in the 1920s, the campuses of historically black colleges and universities aimed to enhance teaching generally for the black academic community and to make works of art available to the general public. Howard University began the trend in 1928, soon followed by Fisk (Nashville), Lincoln (Pennsylvania), Tuskegee (Alabama), Morgan State (Baltimore), and Talladega (Florida) universities, among others. The galleries at these schools provided one of the few sources for exhibition and criticism for a generation of black artists and performed a major service to contemporary African-American art history by preserving a body of artwork and related historical documents that might otherwise have been dispersed, lost, or destroyed. The significant outpouring of black creative expression that resulted from the Harlem Renaissance, and, later, the large number of works commissioned through the Federal Arts Project of the Works Project Administration (WPA) during the Depression era, make up the primary holdings of many of these institutions.

Assisted by the WPA in the 1940s, organizations such as the Uptown Art Center in New York (founded in sculptor Augusta Savage's garage studio), Cleveland's Karamu House, and Chicago's South Side Community Art Center provided free art instruction for local residents and aspiring artists and in many ways performed museum-like functions. Major artists, including Charles White, Archibald Motley, Romare Bearden, and Jacob Lawrence, received early training through these centers. In a similar fashion, the Barnett-Aden Gallery in Washington, D.C., which opened in 1940, provided a focal point for artistic activity in that city by mounting numerous exhibitions of black artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in addition to hosting public lectures and gallery talks.

The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s created a new black cultural renaissance. The museums established during this period moved awareness of African-American history to a new plateau. In their expression of a black perspective and through their efforts to preserve black history, these institutions sought to use their collections to motivate African Americans to "define themselves, their future and their understanding of their past" (Harding, 1967, p. 40). This came at a time when information about black achievements was generally excluded from common history texts and from other museums. Black history was seen, says Vincent Harding, "as a weapon for the Civil Rights Movement." Responding to the void of available information, the San Francisco African American Historical and Cultural Society was founded in 1955, soon followed by the DuSable Museum of African American History (originally the Ebony Museum) in 1961 in Chicago and the Afro-American Museum of Detroit in 1965.

During this period, a unique effort involving students, scouts, local scholars, and government agencies in an urban-archaeology project in Brooklyn, New York, uncovered a black settlement dating back to the nineteenth century, which led to the formation of the Society for the Preservation of Historic Weeksville. Today it continues its archaeological research on a forgotten early black community. The efforts of the Museum of Afro-American History in Boston during this period were instrumental in the preservation of the oldest existing black church building, the African Meeting House. The restored building serves as the centerpiece of the fourteen-site Black Heritage Trail, which explores Boston's rich nineteenth-century African-American community. Also in Boston, the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists was created to provide a leading showcase for artists of the African diaspora.

The Smithsonian Institution created the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum (now the Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture) in 1967 in Washington, D.C., as a "storefront" model for museum outreach. Its goal was to "enliven the community and enlighten the people it serves" (American Association of Museums, 1972, p. 6). Such an outreach was invaluable in the wake of the civil unrest that followed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s April 1968 assassination. Although the Smithsonian Institution provided funding support and technical expertise, exhibition planning, public programs, and overall administration were determined by the surrounding community. As a result, exhibition themes addressed community issues and urban problems as much as historical events. Other mainstream museums, often in response to confrontations with angry artists, were forced to reevaluate their relationships with urban communities and initiated outreach programs. Thus, the Junior Council of the Museum of Modern Art in New York played an important role in the creation of the Studio Museum of Harlem (1968), now the nation's foremost showcase for African-American artists. The Brooklyn Museum replicated the Smithsonian's effort by establishing an outreach center known as the New Muse.

The most noteworthy points of contention between mainstream museums and African-American artists and museum professionals regarded the exclusion of African-American artists in museum exhibitions. Two exhibitions in New York forced the issue of institutional discrimination: the Whitney Museum of American Art's "The 1930's: Painting and Sculpture in America" (1968) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–1968" (1969).

With the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s, African-American museums were founded with increasing frequency with the view that such institutions fostered "a way of empowerment" and a method of moving black history to a new plateau of public awareness. To provide space for these expressions and to serve greatly heightened interest, museums were formed throughout the country. The Afro-American Historical Society in New Haven, Connecticut, was founded as a research library with an estimated 250,000 volumes; and in Providence, the Rhode Island Black Heritage Society instituted pioneering techniques to involve black audiences in the actual collection and cataloging of artifacts. The Black Archives of Mid-America, based in both Kansas and Missouri, collects black cultural information from the midwestern region. To preserve the experience of blacks in the West, the Black America West Museum and Heritage Center in Denver was established. The United States bicentennial led to the creation of Philadelphia's Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum and led the way for tapping municipal, state, and federal support for African-American museums.

Between 1975 and 1990, black museums were formed in California, Texas, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Colorado, Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, and Virginia, including new institutions devoted to the civil rights movement. In 1991 the National Civil Rights Museum opened in Memphis at the site of the Lorraine Motel where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. In addition, nearly twenty museums dedicated to exploring the history of African Americans and the African diaspora were founded in the 1990s in such states as Iowa, Louisiana, California, Washington, Florida, Maryland, and Indiana. Struggling with limited economic and human resources, these institutions nonetheless serve the broadest possible mandate—cultural, educative, political, social, and civic. Their tradition of service forges a vital historical link between past and future.

In 2003 President George W. Bush signed legislation to establish the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Slated to open in 2012, this museum will gain national prominence on the mall in Washington, D.C., as part of the Smithsonian Institution. The symbolism of the prestigious location has already fulfilled the dreams of many African Americans who have sought the national recognition of African-American contributions through an institution in the nation's capital.

See also Archival Collections; Art Collections; Historians/Historiography; Music Museums and Historical Sites; Schomburg, Arthur

Bibliography

American Association of Museums. Museums: Their New Audience. Washington, D.C.: Author, 1972.

Austin, Joy Ford. "Their Face to the Rising Sun: Trends in the Development of African American Museums." Museum News 6 (1986): 30–32.

Collier-Thomas, Bettye. "An Historical Overview of Black Museums and Institutions with Museums' Functions: 1800–1980." Negro History Bulletin 44, no. 3 (1981): 56–58.

Dickerson, Amina. "Afro-American Museums: A Future Full of Promise." Roundtable Reports 9, nos. 2 and 3 (1984): 14–18.

Harding, Vincent. "Power from Our People: The Source of the Modern Revival of Black History." Black Scholar 18 (1967): 40.

Horton, James Oliver, and Spencer R. Crew. "Afro-Americans and Museums: Towards a Policy of Inclusion." In History Museums in the United States: A Critical Assessment, edited by Warren Leon and Roy Rosenzweig. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989.

Reynolds, Gary A. and Beryl J. Wright. Against the Odds: African-American Artists and the Harmon Foundation. Newark, N.J.: The Newark Museum, 1989.

Roach, Ronald. "One Step Closer." Black Issues in Higher Education 21, no. 26 (2005). Available from <http://www.blackissues.com/Archives.asp>.

Trescott, Jacqueline. "Museums on the Move." American Visions 1, no. 2 (1986): 24–34.

amina dickerson (1996)

bridget r. cooks (2005)