Volume 2, No. 2 (Winter 1998) -- Black History Month Issue

The Museum of African American History (MAAH), whose mission is to document, preserve and educate the public on the history, life and culture of African Americans opened a new facility in April 1997 making it the largest black historical and cultural museum in the world.

The new facility quadrupled the museum's previous space, producing a total gallery space of 25,000 square feet. The new MAAH has three exhibition galleries, a domed lobby and unique rotunda floor, 317 seat theater, amphitheater, classrooms, two multi-purpose rooms, state-of-the-art research library, Museum Store, on-premise restaurant, and climate-controlled storage areas.

"This is the culmination of a dream that began in 1992," said Kimberly Camp, president of the Museum. "We have long awaited the day when the museum would have the capacity to share, educate and preserve, on a grand scale, the rich heritage of African Americans with the local and national communities."

Exhibits

This year the MAAH also gained bragging rights for housing the largest exhibition ever created about African and African American people. Our exhibition, Of the People: The African American Experience covers over 600 years of African and African American history. The exhibit, designed by the New York firm of Ralph Appelbaum Associates, depicts the Middle Passage of the transatlantic slave trade, Enslavement, Reconstruction, Political Empowerment, the African American Renaissance, and ensuing African American struggles and achievements. Exhibit artifacts include: Mae Jemison's NASA flight suit, a replica of Dr. King's Birmingham jailhouse door, a re-created slave ship; eight "stations" focusing on images, quotes, facts, and statistics, and 50 life-size body molds depicting enslaved Africans on board a replica of a 80-foot slave ship.

The core exhibition space is complemented by two changing exhibition galleries devoted to the arts, history and technology. Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, organized by the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, closed at the end of 1997. Sacred Arts is the first major traveling exhibition ever to explore the ritual arts produced within the vibrant Afro-Caribbean religion of Vodou. It features more than 500 art objects—sequined flags, votive altars, bound medicine packets, dolls and contemporary paintings.

A Communion of the Spirits: African-American Quilters, Preservers, and Their Stories, opens in January. In this exhibit, folklorist and collector, Roland Freeman, documents the world of African American quiltmakers throughout the country. Building on Freeman's childhood experiences with quilts, it focuses on the people who make or preserve the quilts, and documents through interviews and photographs the stories surrounding the quilts that are intertwined with their lives. The MAAH, also houses a collection of the personal memoirs and effects of Detroit’s former mayor, entitled, Coleman A. Young: A Glimpse of the Man, installed as an exhibit in the archival space named in his honor.

Programming

Community service, the key to the Museum’s mission, means providing educational and cultural enrichment activities, children’s programming, tours, work.shops, festivals and concerts. Saturday workshops and lectures enhance the visitors’ learning experience while complementing the traveling exhibits. Annual programs include: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Black History Month, Black Music Month, Children’s Day, African World Festival, Ancestors’ Night and Kwanzaa.

Special Events offered during extended hours include exhibit previews and receptions. This has generated such special events as, the Tribute to Dr. Betty Shabazz, Debbie Allen’s introduction of her film, Amistad, the premier of major motion pictures, Eve's Bayou and Amistad, and the Soul Food book signing.

HISTORY Originally called the International Afro-American Museum of Detroit, the MAAH was founded in 1965 by Dr. Charles H. Wright, a Detroit obstetrician/gynecologist, who formed the idea to preserve black history after visiting a memorial to Danish World War II heroes. It moved to its second home, in the Cultural Center on Frederick Douglass Street in 1987 and closed in September 1996. The new facility is located only one block away at 315 E. Warren in Detroit's Cultural Center. MUSEUM TOURS Guided tours are by reservation only on Tuesday-Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Make request 3 weeks in advance. Admission: $3 for adults and $2 for children. Members are free. Student memberships are $5. Members receive a quarterly newsletter and 10% discount in the Museum Store. For more information, please contact the Museum of African American History at (313) 494-5800.

Image 3: Detroit sutdents age 8-17 posed for the casting figures of enslaved Africans which are exhibited in MAAH's Prologue Theatre.