Description: [edan-image:id=siris_sic_14623,size=300,left]Born in 1936 in Washington DC, John Robert Edward Kinard would become the first African American director of a Smithsonian museum at the age of 31. Kinard’s circuitous path into museum work took him from development work in Africa to community organizing on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to a dilapidated theater on Nichols Street in DC’s
Description: Lonnie G. Bunch III (b. 1952) became the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution on June 15, 2019.Bunch is the first African American and first historian to be appointed to the role. Best known as founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture from 2005 to 2019, Bunch has had a long career with the Smithsonian. He was raised in New