Architecture and activism co-existed for designer of African American museum
Phil Freelon, who has died aged 66, was an architect who led a design team that gave shape to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened to critical acclaim in Washington in 2016 as a monument to black struggle and triumph.
Since 1990, Freelon had led an architectural firm that specialised in designing public buildings, including other cultural centres devoted to black life in Baltimore, Atlanta, Charlotte, San Francisco and Greensboro, North Carolina.
He led a consortium of several architectural firms that won the design competition for the National Museum of African History in 2009. The proposal was chosen, in a unanimous vote, over submissions from such renowned architects as Richard Meier, I M Pei and Norman Foster.
As lead architect, Freelon helped with the design and oversaw the technical aspects of the project, which included negotiating the thickets of bureaucratic Washington. One of the other two principal architects in the group, David Adjaye, described him in 2010 as a ‘‘steady rock’’.
Over a seven-year period, and at a cost of more than US$500 million, Freelon and his group designed and built the 400,000-squarefoot (37,000sqm) museum, which is beside the Washington Monument. President Barack Obama was present for the museum’s groundbreaking in 2012 and when its doors opened four years later. Since then, nearly 5 million people have visited the museum.
New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman pronounced it ‘‘the first really fine major public building of the century to rise in the nation’s capital’’.
With its filigreed bronze-colour exterior and its three-tiered corona, derived from a Yoruban architectural element from West Africa, the museum stands in striking – and deliberate – contrast to the white-marble edifices of so much of official Washington.
‘‘We wanted the design to be meaningful beyond just a handsome building or a wraparound the exhibits,’’ Freelon told the Duke University Chronicle in 2016. ‘‘We felt it was appropriate to have something linked to the motherland. This is an African American museum, so the African aspect of it seemed appropriate.’’
Every part of the museum’s design had cultural meaning, even the 17.5-degree angle of the edges of the three levels of the corona – exactly the same angle at the top of the
Washington Monument, only inverted. The patterns in the metal exterior are based on ironwork that black workers designed and forged for buildings in the South.
More than an upside-down pyramid, the three-level corona represents ‘‘a crown that signifies the status of the person wearing it’’, he said. ‘‘It’s part of the celebratory nature of the building – an architectural form that’s uplifting and dignified.’’
The museum’s five levels of galleries begin in dark subterranean chambers, telling the story of Africans transported in cargo holds across the Atlantic to enslavement in the New World. Galleries on higher floors depict the path to emancipation, the sorrows and successes of the civil rights movement, and black contributions to the nation’s culture.
‘‘The African American story is the quintessential American story, even though it was about a forced migration,’’ Freelon told the Washington Post in 2012. ‘‘America is about opportunity for people from other places. You’ll find the best and worst of what the American story is in the African American story.’’
Philip Goodwin Freelon was born in 1953, in Philadelphia. His father sold medical equipment, and his mother was a teacher.
Freelon discovered architecture in high school and considered it ‘‘a perfect blend of art and science’’.
After attending Hampton University in Virginia, he graduated in 1975 from North Carolina State University. He received a master’s degree in architecture in 1977 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he said he was often the only black student in his classes.
He worked at architecture firms in North Carolina and Houston before opening Freelon Group in Durham in 1990. The firm grew from a staff of one – Freelon – to more than 60.
Following his belief that architecture could be a quiet form of activism and education, Freelon and his firm designed several museums of black history and culture throughout the United States, including the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco and the National Centre for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta.
In 1979, Freelon married Chinyere Nnenna Pierce, better known as Grammy-nominated jazz singer Nnenna Freelon. She and three children survive him.
‘‘Each of us has our own perspective on history, and mine is formed by my family, in stories of not just difficulties, but also triumph and joy,’’ Freelon told the Durham Herald-Sun in 2009, when he received the commission for the National Museum of African American History and Culture. ‘‘This museum is about the heroes that are familiar names, but it’s also about everyday people who’ve made an impact on this country, one person at a time.’’ – Washington Post