New museum prepared for emotions
Pain, tribulations of black experience will be on display
WASHINGTON — America’s newest museum brings to life all the pain and tribulations of the black experience and its creators expect many visitors will be shaken by what they see and hear.
Slave shackles sit ominously in a glass case, surrounded by whispering hymns of past pains. Nearby are artifacts from a slave ship which carried black men, women and children to lifetimes of servitude in a land not their own and a whip used to punish the backs of those whom survived the ocean voyage by cruel white masters.
In preparation, the new Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture has been training more than 250 docents to help visitors process their emotions. They’re being taught what to do if someone gets angry, distraught or depressed by the exhibits — to offer tissues to help dry tears, or to direct those who need to collect themselves to the museum’s Contemplative Court.
There, a circular waterfall — symbolizing the water path that many enslaved African-Americans took to freedom — cascades down the center of the room from an oculus, or circular window, which will allow sunlight to diffuse underground onto benches strategically located around the calming waters. Spread throughout the museum also are “recording booths” where visitors inspired by what they’ve seen unburden themselves and share their own stories with the Smithsonian to collect and store for future generations. In addition, it will serve as a catharsis for some.
“People get to leave behind their thoughts,” said Lonnie Bunch, the museum’s founding director.
When the museum opens on Saturday, thousands will be transported back to the time of slavery, a time of horrors few know outside of history books and sanitized images from television and movies. But technology and the museum’s environment combine to provide a more “intimate” experience, officials said, and hopefully greater understanding and reconciliation with the past.
Everything in the “Slavery and Freedom” gallery, the first place visitors are directed in the museum, is designed to attack the senses and draw out emotion: The ceilings are low, the rooms are dark and oppressive, and the walls are covered with quotes from the slavers and the enslaved, whose voices have been reproduced and are broadcast through the exhibits.
Scattered throughout the exhibit space are heart-rending exhibits like the slave manacles used on a child, the auction block from a slave auction site, and ballast blocks from a Portuguese slave ship that sank in 1794 carrying hundreds of African slaves.
“You’ll really be thinking of the people who experienced this and hear it through their own voices,” said Nancy Bercaw, curator of that gallery. Added Bunch: “This is really almost like a kind of commemorative memorial space that you can go in and pay homage to those who were lost and those who survive.”