Finally a Date for Reopening of National Museum of American History
The National Museum of American History will reopen on November 21, 2008, just in time for those visiting D.C. for Thanksgiving and the winter holidays. Part of the reopening includes a rare chance to see the White House copy of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address on display. This is not a new permanent part of the museum, but it will stay on display until January 4, 2009.
The museum has been closed for 2 years for a $85 million renovation of the building. The main renovation was the redesign of the museum core making it into an atrium. The museum has also been reorganized to give it a fresh feel (I know history and fresh may sound contradictory to some, but that is how I thought it was best to describe it).
Part of the new exhibit space created is a new housing for the recently restored Star Spangled Banner. The entrance to the exhibit has a waving flag made out of polycarbonate reflective tiles. The room the historic flag is kept in is climate controlled and made to give the feel of it being dawn’s early light all the time in the exhibit. The exhibit will still have the extra object and history about the flag and the National Anthem, which I am sure has been improved and will have multimedia aspects.
A major aspect of the reorganization of the museum is related to the incorporation of landmark objects for the six wings of the museum. The six landmark objects are a Dumbo ride vehicle, the Greensboro lunch counter, Clara Barton’s Red Cross Ambulance, the John Bull locomotive, Horatio Greenough’s George Washington statue, and a telescope used by America’s first woman astronomer. Read more about the landmark objects in this blog post I posted in June.
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