Tag Archives: National Museum of African American History and Culture

Digging into our Roots!


NMAAHC -- National Museum of African American History and Culture
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Searching for Your Roots
This event is full. However, please join us via webcast at nmaahc.si.edu/Events/SearchingforYourRoots.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. Photo by Jeffrey Dunn
Thursday, September 12, 2013 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM
We share a basic drive to discover our own personal stories that explain who we are — and where we come from. In the 2012 PBS series, Finding Your Roots, Henry Louis Gates Jr. explored “the DNA of American culture.” Gates enlisted his own corps of discovery — leading genealogists, geneticists, and ancestry genetic testing companies — to uncover the ancestry of celebrities in each episode. This very team has been busy tracing the genetic histories of tonight’s guests, the Smithsonian’s own Lonnie Bunch, director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and Washington Week’s Gwen Ifill. Gates will reveal their ancestral backgrounds, discovered through historical records and genomic data, live on stage. Ifill and Bunch will explore the results and comment on what they’ve learned.
Lonnie Bunch Lonnie Bunch
9-Genome-Gwen-Ifill.jpg Gwen Ifill
After the ancestral reveal, the program continues with a discussion on the promise and limitations of genomic research and ancestral inference genetic testing. Panelists include:
Aravinda Chakravarti, professor, McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, Johns Hopkins University;
Charmaine Royal, faculty, Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, and associate research professor, Department of African and African American Studies, Duke University;
Joanna Mountain, senior director of research, 23andMe.
The panel moderator is Vence Bonham, associate investigator, National Human Genome Research Institute. A question-and-answer session with the audience follows.
Gates is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University, and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research.
For more information, email NMAAHCPROGRAMS@si.edu.
 
Presented in partnership with the National Museum of African American History and Culture, National Museum of Natural History, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, and the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health.

NMAAHC Brings “Treasures​” to Brooklyn on July 20


NMAAHC -- National Museum of African American History and Culture

Brooklyn Museum and Smithsonian Present “Save Our African American Treasures
Saturday, July 20, 2013 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Brooklyn Museum Martha A. and Robert S. Rubin Pavilion and Lobby 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238 Free and open to the public
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The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Brooklyn Museum will co-host “Save Our African American Treasures: A National Collections Initiative of Discovery and Preservation,” a daylong program to help New York-area residents identify and preserve items of historical and cultural significance.
Participants are invited to bring up to three personal items for a 15-minute, professional consultation with experts on how to care for them. The specialists will serve as reviewers, not appraisers, and will not determine an item’s monetary value. Objects such as books, photographs, ceramics, metalwork and textiles no larger than a shopping bag (furniture, carpets, firearms and paintings are excluded) can be reviewed.
“We are extremely proud to bring ‘Save Our African American Treasures’ to New York City and of our partnership with the Brooklyn Museum,” said Lonnie Bunch, director of the Smithsonian museum. “Whether it’s Weeksville, Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers or the Harlem Renaissance, New York City has been steeped in African American history from before the Emancipation. We encourage people to become aware of what they have, to protect it and to preserve it so the story of the African diaspora in this country can be told.”
The “Treasures” program also includes the following activities throughout the day:
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  • Gallery Tour: Kevin Stayton, the Brooklyn Museum’s chief curator, will offer a tour of selected galleries in the building.
  • Preservation Presentations: learn how to preserve clothing and textiles, family photographs and papers. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions.
  • Hands-on Preservation: participants will learn how to properly store letters, pack garments and prepare photographs for preservation storage and presentation.
For more Treasures event information, visit nmaahc.si.edu/Programs/NYTreasures, email treasures@si.edu or call (877) 733-9599.
“Save Our African American Treasures” is made possible with support from the Bank of America Charitable Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
quilt 2011-03071.jpg

NMAAHC Brings “Treasures​” to Brooklyn on July 20


NMAAHC -- National Museum of African American History and Culture

Brooklyn Museum and Smithsonian Present “Save Our African American Treasures

Saturday, July 20, 2013 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Brooklyn Museum Martha A. and Robert S. Rubin Pavilion and Lobby 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11238 Free and open to the public

array of photos 2010-12392.jpg

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Brooklyn Museum will co-host “Save Our African American Treasures: A National Collections Initiative of Discovery and Preservation,” a daylong program to help New York-area residents identify and preserve items of historical and cultural significance.

Participants are invited to bring up to three personal items for a 15-minute, professional consultation with experts on how to care for them. The specialists will serve as reviewers, not appraisers, and will not determine an item’s monetary value. Objects such as books, photographs, ceramics, metalwork and textiles no larger than a shopping bag (furniture, carpets, firearms and paintings are excluded) can be reviewed.

“We are extremely proud to bring ‘Save Our African American Treasures’ to New York City and of our partnership with the Brooklyn Museum,” said Lonnie Bunch, director of the Smithsonian museum. “Whether it’s Weeksville, Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers or the Harlem Renaissance, New York City has been steeped in African American history from before the Emancipation. We encourage people to become aware of what they have, to protect it and to preserve it so the story of the African diaspora in this country can be told.”

The “Treasures” program also includes the following activities throughout the day:

violin or fiddle 2010-12444.jpg
  • Gallery Tour: Kevin Stayton, the Brooklyn Museum’s chief curator, will offer a tour of selected galleries in the building.
  • Preservation Presentations: learn how to preserve clothing and textiles, family photographs and papers. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions.
  • Hands-on Preservation: participants will learn how to properly store letters, pack garments and prepare photographs for preservation storage and presentation.

For more Treasures event information, visit nmaahc.si.edu/Programs/NYTreasures, email treasures@si.edu or call (877) 733-9599.

“Save Our African American Treasures” is made possible with support from the Bank of America Charitable Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

quilt 2011-03071.jpg

NMAAHC — SI folklife Festival 2013 starts June 26


NMAAHC -- National Museum of African American History and Culture

SI folklife Festival 2013 starts June 26

THE WILL TO ADORN: African American Diversity, Style, and Identity

home_slides_05.jpg Congregants from the Alfred Street Baptist church enjoy a Mother’s Day hat fashion show in Washington, D.C., 2012. Photo by Sharon Farmer, courtesy of National Museum of African American History and Culture

What is African American about African American dress and body art and why does it matter?

African American traditions of dress and body adornment are creative expressions grounded in the history of African-descended populations in the United States. Visit the Smithsonian Folklife Festival to learn more!

Smithsonian Folklife Festival June 26 — 30, 2013 & July 03 — 07, 2013 National Mall, Washington DC

To view the full festival program, please visit http://www.festival.si.edu/

The Will to Adorn: African American Diversity, Style, and Identity festival program is produced by the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage in partnership with the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

You Are Invited to a Panel Discussion at National Archives this Thursday


NMAAHC -- National Museum of African American History and Culture

One Hundred Years: From the Emancipation Proclamation to the March on Washington

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Explore the journey from slavery to freedom between the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and the 1963 March on Washington.

Thursday, April 11, 2013, 7:00 pm

National Archives, William G. McGowan Theater 7th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW Washington, DC Metro: Archives-Navy Memorial-Penn Quarter

John Franklin, Community and Constituent Services, National Museum of African American History and Culture, will moderate a panel discussion about the Emancipation Proclamation and the continuing struggle for freedom, justice, and equality during Reconstruction, as well as the Tilden-Hayes Compromise and Jim Crow laws.

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Panelists include:

FREE ADMISSION

For more information, visit www.archives.gov, send an email to public.program@nara.gov or call 202.357.5000.