Category: Smithsonian History
Fifty Years and Many More to Come!
Friday, September 15th, 2017 marks the 50th Anniversary of the opening of the Anacostia Community Museum. Originally named the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum, Secretary Ripley envisioned this as a place to reach out to black residents of Washington, DC who were not seeing themselves in the museums on the Mall. Reporting on the opening of the museum, Secretary Ripley writes that his vision is deep involvement of the local community and “involvement can be created only if it really is their museum. It must be on the spot, participated in by the people who live there.” He believed that “for of all our people these are the ones who most deserve the fun of being in a museum.”
Anacostia was selected because there was an “instant enthusiasm” amongst the local residents, and they were already organized into the Greater Anacostia Peoples corporation. The corporation became an integral part of the museum’s advisory committee. Marion Conover Hope, a member of the Greater Anacostia Peoples Corporation, an activist, and a social worker, handpicked founding director John Kinard for the museum. As he tells it, Ms. Hope invited Kinard over for dinner and grilled him over dinner. After having all of her questions answered, she said “Listen, Mr. Kinard, we have decided that we are going to develop a museum out here in Anacostia, and we want you 
to be the director of it." At the time, he did not know anything about museums, but Ms. Hope had her mind made up. By the end of the evening, Kinard had agreed to see Charles Blitzer of the Smithsonian. It took a couple of weeks to set up that meeting, and while Kinard was waiting, Ms. Hope was working away. When Kinard finally walked into that meeting, Charles Blitzer, Assistant Secretary for History and Art, welcomed him with, “Thank you for taking the job, Mr. Kinard.” In his oral history, Kinard reflected, “So I said, ‘All right.’ I don’t know why I said it, but I said, ‘All right.’”
On July 5th 1967, Charles Blitzer gave John Kinard the keys to the old run-down Carver Theater and the mad race to turn it into a museum began. When the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum opened on September 15th 1967, it featured an array of exhibits from across the Smithsonian: a Mercury space capsule, natural history collections in a shoebox display, an indoor zoo, and Uncle Beazley – a fiberglass Triceratops – spent some time at the Museum.
But as the neighborhood and the museum advisory committee figured out just what they could do, their focus quickly turned to how the museum could grapple with the problems the community saw in their neighborhood. Urban history and black American history quickly took center stage. The 1969 exhibition The Rat: Man’s Invited Affliction highlighted this shift. Instigated by Anacostia children, John Kinard and Zora Martin Felton started researching rats. After research trips to the NIH with neighborhood children, and presenting their findings to the neighborhood advisory committee, the museum created an exhibit that explored rodent infestation and reflected the interests of an urban neighborhood battling an increasing problem.
As it has grown and changed over the years, the Anacostia Community Museum has made space for a planning site for the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and refocused on highlighting stories of the Anacostia community, and urban history as National Museum of African American History and Culture has carried the national mantle of black American history forward.
The grand opening on September 15 included an eighty-four piece band and a block party with speeches. This Friday’s events will be no less celebratory, with many musical and dance performances, the Garfield Elementary School Band, and a program honoring John Kinard, the museum’s founding director along with a new exhibition: Your Community, Your Story: Celebrating Five Decades of the Anacostia Community Museum, 1967–2017.
Related Collections
- Anacostia Community Museum records at the Smithsonian Institution Archives.
- Historic images of the Anacostia Community Museum from the Smithsonian Institution Archives.
Related Resources
- It Takes a Village: Opening the Anacostia Neighborhood Museum, The Bigger Picture, Smithsonian Institution Archives.
- Design in Archives: Anacostia Community Museum, The Bigger Picture, Smithsonian Institution Archives.
- Louise Daniel Hutchinson, The Bigger Picture, Smithsonian Institution Archives.
- John Kinard: African-Americans at the Smithsonian.
- History of the Anacostia Community Museum.
Archives on View: National Portrait Gallery’s 50th Anniversary Exhibition
The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (NPG) will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2018. Ahead of next year’s festivities, NPG unveiled an exhibition commemorating its May 1968 opening. The Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA) provided several pieces for this gallery, including a photo of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s dedication speech on May 3rd. Check out the full exhibition, and a scale model of the building before the installation of the Kogod Courtyard’s renowned glass ceiling, on NPG’s second floor.
The Smithsonian Institution Archives collects, preserves, and shares the history of the Smithsonian as part of its mission. In tandem with NPG’s exhibition requests for items related to the May 1968 opening, our Preservation Coordinator Alison has been working with NPG records in a seven-box series titled “National Museum of American Art and Portrait Gallery (U.S.) Library, Records, 1916, 1922, 1929-1930, 1946-1984.” This record unit documents the simultaneous public opening of NPG and the National Collection of Fine Arts (later renamed Smithsonian American Art Museum). I used to work at NPG in their department of exhibitions, so I could not resist a chance to take a peek inside Box 01…
There were correspondences galore, plus media contacts, programs, and newspaper clippings. Several folders of black and white photos show the opening reception – lots of fancy clothes, and for some reason hairstyles that alternated between Jacqueline Kennedy and William H. Macy in Pleasantville. (Men’s hair: 1868 = long, 1968 = short, 2068 = TBD).
But it was in the original exhibition notes that I found a hidden gem. NPG headlined its inauguration with an exhibition titled This New Man, an exploration of the American identity in the New World. As with all exhibitions, the final list of which famous faces go on which walls is a collaborative effort that goes through many drafts. I found an early version of this list complete with cross-outs and handwritten notes (source unknown - possibly Robert G. Steward who was the first NPG curator of paintings and sculpture, but this is pure speculation). Some instantly recognizable names jumped off the page; Robert E. Lee, George Washington Carver, Clara Barton, Benjamin Franklin, etc. But digging deeper, there were three names that caught my eye, each with its own unique story to tell:
Dorothea Dix, 1802-1887, bio: Gallery 9, “Liberators and Crusaders”
I come to present the strong claims of suffering humanity. I come to place before the Legislature of Massachusetts the condition of the miserable, the desolate, the outcast. I come as the advocate of helpless, forgotten, insane men and women; of beings sunk to a condition from which the unconcerned world would start with real horror. (Dorothea Dix, Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts, 1843)
The above quote is pulled from NPG’s classroom resource page. It describes in its words and in its tone the mission and the resolve of Dorothea Dix, a woman who committed much of her life to improving the treatment of mental illnesses in both the United States and Europe. She pioneered efforts to build new hospitals and to refit existing mental health facilities at a time when medical practice traditionally locked away “insane” individuals in prisons instead of providing care. Her advocacy helped to lay the foundation for modern fields of psychiatry and psychology.
Carrie Nation, 1846-1911, bio: Gallery 16, “Humorists and Hyperbolists”
The Temperance Movement to moderate or prohibit alcohol consumption seemed like ancient history in the United States – until I looked up Prohibition and saw the ban on alcoholic beverages ended only 84 years ago (I need to call my grandfather about this). Carrie Amelia Moore Nation was a key figure in this movement. Her actions may have upset many Temperance supporters. Nation pushed back against alcohol consumption unreservedly, directly, and even aggressively, using vandalism and intimidation when needed. As one curator wrote, “Most famously, Nation stormed into barrooms wielding a hatchet that she used to break bottles and disrupt business. Often arrested and fined, she attracted national attention to the temperance cause.”
Zebulon Pike, 1779-1813, bio: Gallery 17, “The Inquisitive”
Have you ever been to Pike’s Peak? Zebulon Montgomery Pike may have beaten you to it, but he never quite made it to the summit. A military man, Pike led several expeditions to the West, first to the upper Mississippi River. Ordered to find the origin of the mighty waterway, he and 20 men started in Missouri and traveled 2,000 miles before (incorrectly) identifying Leech Lake in Minnesota as the river’s source. On a second expedition beginning 1806, Pike led his men along the Red and Arkansas rivers. He reached Colorado where he fell short of his goal to scale the peak that would eventually bear his name. These setbacks aside, however, Pike’s maps and notes from his expeditions were the first written records of the Louisiana Purchase territory, the famous land acquisition of 1803 during the administration of Thomas Jefferson. Pike's efforts were instrumental in the early identification of what would become the Midwestern United States.
NPG's 50th anniversary exhibition is on view through next year. If you can come downtown D.C., be sure to visit the gallery, meet some new faces, and help celebrate the anniversary of this unique collection.
Related Collections
- Mary Henry Diary Entries on Dorothea Dix and Fort Sumter Attack, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 7001, Box 51, Folder 3.
- Henderson Family, Henderson Family Papers, 1868-1923 [Temperance movement], Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 7075.
- Pike, Zebulon (1779-1813). Biographical sketch, 1913, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 7320, Box 13, Folder 17.
Related Resources
- “Dorothea Dix: Mental Health Reformer and Civil War Nurse,” The Bigger Picture, Smithsonian Institution Archives.
- 1 of 92
- next ›
Produced by the Smithsonian Institution Archives. For copyright questions, please see the Terms of Use.
