A Fool's Errand - Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump (Relié)

When Lonnie G. Bunch III became founding director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2005 he had one staff person, one office (but no key), $250 million dollars promised from Congress (with the need to mise $500 million more), and a driving passion to create museum of which the American people and their ancestors could be proud. There was no collection, no she, and no consensus among the government, the public, or the Smithsonian itself that a museum devoted to the African American experience was necessary.
Fourteen years later, titis iconic building sits as ajewel on the National Mall and is visited by more than 4 million people a year. The staff has grown to 200, Bunch and his team have raised $708 million dollars and counting, and the collection has grown to nearly 40,000 objects. Part memoir, part institutional history, part leadership guide, A Fool's Errand is an engaging and exclusive look at the creation of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture as only the founding director could tell it.
Witty and insightful, Bunch dips beyond the surface of popular media coverage to reveal the joys, challenges, frustrations, pitfalls, and victories that made up the journey from dreaming the museum, to opening the museum, and finally, to running the museum. With more than thirty years of curatorial and museum leadership experience, a deep understanding of the scholarship of African Americans in America, and the tenacity that he credits to his New Jersey roots, Bunch was determined to create a museum that not only reflects the black experience in the United States, but illustrates that African American history is the story of an Americans.
Full of illuminating and varied anecdotes - from acquiring Chuck Beny's candy red. Cadillac, to discovering previously unknown artifacts of Harriet Tubman's, to building museum support with members of Congress, to impromptu interactions with everyday people that served as a touchstone during the shaping of museum content - A Fool's Errand is an engrossing and entertaining read that answers the question, "What does it take to do the impossible ? "