Time USA-October 3-2016

49

‘FUQUA’S MAGNIFICENT SEVEN ARE MERELY SO-SO, A BUNCH OF DUDES WE SETTLE FOR WITH A SIGH.’—PAGE 52

ARCHITECTURE

A museum

embraces

the triumph

and struggle

of black

America

By Richard Lacayo

The museum’s saw-toothed

exterior, inspired by a Yoruban

design motif, provides

lively contrast to the nearby

Washington Monument

Any history museum is A

storytelling machine. But the

newest one in Washington, D.C.,

starts telling its story before you

even enter. The very silhouette of

the National Museum of African

American History and Culture

has embedded meanings. Above a

glass-enclosed lobby, the building

rises in three inverted trapezoids.

That multitiered exterior is

borrowed from a crown motif

of the Yoruba, the West African

people who established one of the

most important civilizations in

sub-Saharan Africa and who also

made up a sizable part of the U.S.

slave population. So in its outlines,

the building remembers the

continent that was the homeland

of most American slaves. But it

also refers to the American side of

the African-American experience,

because that saw-toothed frame is

covered by a perforated lattice of

bronze-coated aluminum meant

to recall the ornamental ironwork

produced by slaves and freedmen

in New Orleans. It says that Africa

may have been the place most

black Americans came from, but

PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW MOORE FOR TIME