Designer Sought for African American Museum - washingtonpost.com: The National Museum of African American History and Culture began the formal process of designing a building yesterday, one that will include a slave cabin and a Jim Crow railroad car.
The museum is not scheduled to open until 2015. But there is a certain urgency to identifying large artifacts that are likely to influence the shape of the exhibit space, said Lonnie G. Bunch III, the founding director of what will be the Smithsonian's 19th museum.
Yesterday, the museum issued a document inviting architectural firms to present their qualifications. The building will be on a five-acre site on Constitution Avenue, within the shadow of the Washington Monument.
The museum will be 350,000 square feet, slightly smaller than the National Museum of the American Indian at 400,000 square feet, and surpassing its cost at $500 million. Half of that figure will come from Congress. For the Native American museum, the federal government paid two-thirds of the cost. For the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, part of the National Air and Space Museum, the Smithsonian covered all expenses.
