A welcome rebuke to dead white men’: The Smithsonian’s African American museum finally arrives
A century in the making, and now completed by Britain’s David Adjaye, the Smithsonian’s gleeful, gleaming upturned pagoda more than holds its own against the sombre Goliaths of America’s monument heartland
Oliver Wainwright
@ollywainwright
Friday 16 September 2016 02.14 EDT
Standing assertively in the middle of a 15-acre lawn, between the sharp white obelisk of the Washington Monument and the colossal stone shed of the National Museum of American History, the latest arrival to this hallowed parade ground certainly holds its own. The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture erupts from the ground, an inverted pagoda of three angular bronzed tiers on an all-glass base, departing from its neighbours’ sombre palette of limestone and concrete with joyous glee.
“It was tough to convince the planners,” says David Adjaye, the British-Ghanaian lead designer of the museum, who is, shamefully, about the only black architect of international prominence.
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