Lonnie Bunch III, the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture and a prominent scholar in the areas of race and racism in American history, will speak at UH West Oʻahu on Wednesday, Feb. 28, from 12:30-1:50 p.m. in the ʻUluʻulu exhibition area.
Bunch will give a talk titled “The Challenge of Building the National Museum of African American History and Culture.” The talk is part of UH West Oʻahu’s Distinguished Visiting Scholar Fund, which is sponsored by the Chancellor’s Office. Bunch will also speak at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa at 6 p.m. on Feb. 27 in the UH Mānoa Art Auditorium. The talk is as part of the UH Mānoa College of Education 2018 Carl and Alice Daeufer Education Lecture series.
National Museum of African American History and Culture
The talks here coincide with Black History Month, which honors the contributions of African Americans in U.S. History. Bunch, who has served in a variety of museum roles, is also an educator, having been a history professor at the University of Maryland, and has earned the earned the NAACP’s President’s Award in addition to an Award of Distinction from the American Association for State and Local History.
Bunch is most famous for his work as the director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, a $540 million project that is the only national museum devoted exclusively to documenting African American life, culture, art, and history. The Smithsonian Institution museum was established by an Act of Congress in 2003, with Bunch coming on board in 2005. The museum opened in September 2016 and has welcomed more than 2.5 million visitors who have come to tour its 85,000 square feet of exhibition space housing a dozen exhibitions.
Among the 400,000-square foot museum’s artifacts are a Jim Crow-era railway car and a prison guard tower from the Louisiana State Penitentiary (known as Angola), Nat Turner’s bible, and Michael Jackson’s fedora. The museum houses cultural and community exhibitions, those on slavery and sports, a center for media arts, and the 350-seat Oprah Winfrey Theater.
Prior to his appointment at the national museum, Bunch was the president of the Chicago Historical Society and had worked at the Smithsonian in the past, holding a number of positions at its National Museum of American History from 1989 through 2000, according to the Smithsonian. Bunch served as the curator of history and program manager for the California Afro-American Museum in Los Angeles from 1983 to 1989.
Bunch has written on topics ranging from the black military experience, the American presidency and all-black towns in the American West to diversity in museum management and the impact of funding and politics on American museums. He has lectured and made presentations both in the U.S. and internationally, and has held numerous teaching positions at universities across the country, including the American University in Washington, D.C., the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth and the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.