Kellogg Community College continues its annual celebration of Black History Month this year with a series of online events, initiatives and resources focused on the African American experience. First up is a digital tour of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, located in Washington, D.C.
As noted on the museum’s website, the NMAAHC is “the only national museum devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life, history, and culture.”
The museum houses nearly 40,000 artifacts documenting the African American experience.
The museum, like public institutions around the country, has been closed to the public for the past several months due to COVID, but it offers several resources for interested individuals to explore its offerings online. These include:
- Virtual Exibitions: At the time of this writing, the NMAAHC houses nearly two dozen virtual exhibits on its website, with subjects ranging widely from the African American military experience and civil rights to African American athletes, African American artists, African American musicians and much more.
- Online Collections: The NMAAHC also offers nearly two dozen online collections of museum objects, organized by category. There are collections on topics of interest for just about anyone, ranging from clothing and dress to education, from politics to religion, from hip-hop to LGBTQ+ and much, much more. The museum has also launched an Open Access Initiative through which images of objects in the NMAAHC collection are made available to freely view, download and share through a Creative Commons license.
- Digital Resources: As if all of the above wasn’t enough, the NMAAHC also offers a comprehensive Digital Resource Guide including tools to inspire and guide conversations about race; links to digital initiatives and museum publications; links to NMAAHC social media channels including video archives available on the NMAAHC YouTube channel; and more.
Additional Museum Resources
For more information about the National Museum of African American History and Culture, check out the following links:
- An interactive tour of the NMAAHC building from the Smithsonian Magazine website
- The NMAAHC’s grand opening ceremony held in 2016 (YouTube video)
- A CUNY TV “Black America” presentation highlighting the museum’s grand opening in 2016 (YouTube video)
For more information about the NMAAHC, visit nmaahc.si.edu. For more information about Black History Month initiatives at KCC, visit www.kellogg.edu/blackhistorymonth.
The above photograph of the NMAAHC building in Washington, D.C., is by Alan Karchmer, courtesy of the NMAAHC.