nmaahc

Content warning: deaths of Emmett Till and people I knew

 I am still in awe of the NMAAHC. I just wish I had more time in it, time to regroup with classmates and talk about what we found, to experience the museum together. There were parts of the museum that I didn’t get to see at all or barely looked at because I was in a hurry. Rushing is not a good way to move through a museum and I think it’s absolutely not the way this museum intended visitors to move through it. I think the deliberation in the curation and artistry is quite obvious at the NMAAHC and it deserves to be savored, slowly and carefully. With time for reflection. 

I ran into Beatrice on the second floor of the museum, where we decided to get out of the historical floors and move on to the more art-centered sections of the museum. We both felt overwhelmed and stressed out by the density of history in the underground parts of the museum. I started at the bottom and worked my way up, and I ended up spending a lot of time on the first and second floors. Beatrice and I talked about how much we wished we had the time to work through, process these floors. I told her I think that I have a hard time moving out of the past because a lot of what I studied and read last year was so focused on historical analysis. (For example, Marxists place a great deal of emphasis on history to assess political events.) I also believe that the political theory classes that I’ve taken have been training me to look deeply in the past, reaching behind me, for connections, trajectories, points of contact, points of conflict, for tensions, resolutions, in order that I might bring those right up to the present and use them to reexamine present conditions. But the layout of the museum encouraged me to go against my inclinations, and to take in the museum not by taking copious notes on historical events, but by pausing to feel, stopping to think laterally. By the time I made it upstairs, I felt energized by the natural light, music, and water incorporated into the exhibits. The exhibit about culture and entertainment was refreshing, light-hearted, and alive with movement. Spending time in the noise and lights released some of the stress the bottom floor put on me.

One of the exhibits that really struck me was the room that was supposed to reconstruct the feeling of being on a slave ship. A museum employee guided the crowd into the room by letting us know we were “get[ting] into the slave ship.” Outside of the room was a projection of waves, which was the “view of the ocean from the perspective of an enslaved person” according to the description. Once inside the room, I felt the temperature drop. I was elevated above the floor, moving along on a small walkway from which I viewed dimly lit pieces of shipwrecked slave ships. The walls were rough to touch, and there were quotes on the wall that were illuminated in a way such that the words seemed to be suspended underwater. A voice came out of a speaker overhead, narrating the words of slaves who spoke about their experience on a slave ship: “iron entered into our souls.” It evoked for me the mental image I came up with for the Beloved exhibit in Anne’s class-I imagined a dark space, with the sound of water beneath the viewer and the voice of Beloved echoing through the room. I imagined a room that simultaneously created the environment of the shed in Beloved and the interior of a slave ship, to connect the dots between Sethe’s trauma with the trauma of the Middle Passage. The room at the NMAAHC reminded me of the one I was envisioning, and it was eerie. I feel as if this museum is a museum that really didn't want to hold back on any of the difficult parts of American history.

I was also shocked to find out that Emmett Till’s casket was on display at the museum. I didn’t see it though, because I felt really uncomfortable doing so and I didn’t think it was right for me to look at that object as a museumgoer. Black death and Black pain was obviously on display in many parts of the MNAAHC but I found it particularly uncomfortable to be able to observe that particular exhibit so casually. I didn’t go in the room where his casket was but I looked at a glass display about the lynching of Emmett Till nearby. There was a long line of people waiting to see his casket stretching up a ramp to the train car. A museum employee repeatedly asked people in line to “move quickly so everyone can see the casket.” I found out that the casket was preserved so that it could be placed in a memorial museum, but that museum was never built. I remember learning about what happened to Emmett Till when I was young (maybe in middle school?) and being horrified, but reading about it again at age 19 was a whole different experience. During the four years I spent in high school, three of my classmates died. They were people I knew well, people I had been friends with, that I grew up with. My memories of high school are marked by death, punctuated by loss. I never saw my classmates’ caskets and I really cannot bring myself to think about that at all…the death of someone so young scares me and the part of the museum that was dedicated to Emmett Till disturbed me. My chest tightened up looking at news clippings that followed his death and I had to leave that part of the museum so as to keep myself from breaking down in tears. I don’t mean to suggest that I have any experiences that parallel the racial violence that Emmett Till was a victim to, but like Rosa and Jody were saying, there are parts of the NMAAHC that speak to us even when they aren’t really about us. 

I had Eve Tuck and C. Ree’s Glossary of Haunting in the back of my mind the whole time I was in the museum. I think the museum occupies a very interesting space in our nation’s capital, built right into colonized land and surrounded by classical architecture whose presences forced the museum to move underground, out of respect for federal land laws and lines of sight. Which is why I liked that the museum seemed conscious of its existence in relation to its surroundings. I liked that holes were cut in the corona so that visitors inside could have clear views of the Washington Monument and other buildings in DC so that they may reflect on the structure of our nation. I read on a display that “the angle of the corona matches the angle on the capstone on the Washington Monument, a monument that adopts its own from ancient Egyptian obelisks.” I liked that and I found it to be an interesting way of forcing the visitor to reimagine an American emblem that was inspired by African art. 

Something I particularly liked was the waterfall/fountain in the room for contemplation. I threw a penny in it with Monique and Beatrice. I was reminded of Luisah Teish’s words, which I want to offer to the people in this 360: “Every time a sister learns that she is not born to live in a world of fear, to be dominated, every time a sister sits down with a glass of water in front of her and understands that she is intimately tied to water and that all life is tied to water, she is gradually building an inner strength that gives her armour to go out and fight the world.” I wish I had more time in the museum but I really wish I had more time to be near that fountain, to be around people, and to be able to use that space’s healing properties to relieve the pressure I feel because of this 360 and because of the museum.