Transforming America's History Museum

James B. Gardner

In 1964, the Smithsonian debuted its new history museum—the Museum of History and Technology. Reflecting its name, the central space featured two icons—the Star-Spangled Banner and a Foucault pendulum—representing, respectively, history and technology. By its fortieth anniversary in 2004, the museum had become the National Museum of American History (NMAH), the flag had been taken down for preservation reasons, the pendulum was gone, and the building had become arguably unwelcoming and challenging to get around in. Designed by the firm of McKim, Mead, and White in a Greek temple form marrying the modern and the classic, stainless steel and marble, the museum had been hailed as a “Contemporary Classic” when it opened. Forty years later that architectural “jewel” no longer sparkled.

Determined to restore some of its lost luster, NMAH in 2006 undertook an ambitious eighty-five million dollar renovation program that has fundamentally changed how the building functions and how visitors engage in and experience the history, collections, and exhibits that are what we are all about. Over the past two years, we have:

1. Updated the building’s infrastructure—heating and air conditioning, elevators, rest rooms, and the like.
2. Refashioned the building architecturally—not the exterior but the interior, linking the first and second floor entrances, opening up new vistas, bringing natural light and new lighting into the dark center core, providing better orientation and wayfinding, and generally enhancing the visitor experience to NMAH.  Leading this effort has been the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill.
3. Constructed a state-of-the art gallery for the Star-Spangled Banner so that we can return that national symbol to the heart of the museum where it belongs. The lead designers for this have been C&G Partners and Chermayeff & Geismar Studio.

The key to the renovation is this last point—creating a new home for the flag is where we began the planning, and the flag’s new home is the dramatic architectural anchor for the museum. That new home also provides a state-of-the-art environment for the flag. With major support from Polo Ralph Lauren, we have been working for the past nine years to ensure its preservation for generations to come, and every design decision has taken that responsibility into account.   But this is not just about architecture and preservation—most importantly, it is about engaging visitors in the story and meaning of the Star-Spangled Banner.

For the past decade, the reinterpretation and contextualization of the museum’s collections has been a top priority—the flag is just the most recent focus. Consider, for example, two other iconic objects installed in the museum when it first opened in 1964—the Ipswich house and the 1401 locomotive. When the museum opened in 1964, the interpretation of the Ipswich house centered on building technology, but the exhibition Within These Walls . . . dramatically shifts the focus to five families who lived in this house over two centuries and whose experiences provide insight into larger historical ideas. For example, the story of the Revolutionary War era couple who lived here with their African American servant, Chance, who was likely a slave during the Revolution, challenges visitors’ assumptions about freedom and equality. Similarly, the 1401 locomotive, a popular part of the rail hall since the museum’s opening in 1964, has now been reinterpreted as part of an exhibit entitled America on the Move. It stands in the same location as it did in 1964, but visitors now find it in a new context, pulled up at a re-creation of the Southern Railway train station in Salisbury, NC. In the waiting room, they encounter the story of Charlotte Hawkins Brown, an African American educator from North Carolina who fought Jim Crow practices on the railroad in the 1920s. We are challenging visitors to think about how the choices we make shape us as a people.

Our goal has been to similarly expand the context and meaning of the Star-Spangled Banner—to engage visitors in the meaning and significance to our history of this flag. This is the actual flag that Francis Scott Key saw flying over Baltimore’s Ft. McHenry on September 14, 1814, and that inspired him to write the song that became the National Anthem. But we argue that its significance is greater—the flag stands for a critical moment in the nation’s history, when its future was uncertain, a moment of which most of our visitors have little knowledge. We know visitors do not fully appreciate what was at stake in the War of 1812, and we use the entrance to the new flag gallery to put them back in the moment, when the nation’s capital had been burned and the fate of the republic was unsure. When they see the flag, it is in a quieter, more subdued space than in the past—a space designed to encourage visitors to think about the meaning of the flag, not only for Key at that moment in 1814, but also for us today. And then, as they leave the exhibition, we encourage visitors to think about the contested meaning of the flag in American life and about the enduring legacy of not only this flag but the American flag.

With the completion of the renovation this month, we have new restrooms, natural light, and all the rest—but it is the flag that is the centerpiece of the renovation. It represents what we stand for as a museum: the repository for the nation’s collections, indeed for the nation’s memory.

James Gardner is the associate director for curatorial affairs at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.