NMAAHC

Just this year I finally got to spend time at The National Museum of African American History & Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington DC, and it is as magnificent as I have been lead to believe. Designed by the Ghanaian British architect David Adjaye, the building is a perfect symbiosis of form and content: the steel cladding on the outside nods it head to pan-African weaving and metalwork traditions. After my three-and-a-half hour visit I had barely scratched the surface. The below ground history galleries were harrowing and gut-punching; the culture galleries on the top floor celebrate the arts, sports, culture and the sciences - and the African American communities’ attendant achievements - and they are a total delight. You’ve not lived unless you’ve seen Leadbelly’s guitar; Joe Louis’ boxing glove. JDilla’s drum machine, and on and on and on. It’s laughable to pick out these three objects as for every object there are two hundred more to ponder and opine. These are only a taste of the joyful objects in the museum’s vast holdings. In the basement history galleries there are objects that are much more upsetting: money currencies that slaves would pass between one-another; a guard sentry from Angola prison in Louisiana, manacles and slave auction blocks; the Tuskegee Airmen’s airplane. This museum is a superlative thrill. It is a reminder of both the most negative hate and the positive creativity of which America is capable.

Also — it houses the best museum restaurant I’ve eaten at — tne menu and concept are courtesy of the great Marcus Samuelsson — he of the brilliant Red Rooster in Harlem. (British readers — there is an outpost of RR in Shoreditch! Grits and gravy and shrimp and fried chicken and barbecued ribs can all be yours as well!)

One can legitimately fly to Washington and spend five days exclusively at this wonderment of a museum. It is a wonder-cabinet of the most astonishing variety.