Storyteller of black America

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By Deborah K. Dietsch

Black history has intrigued Lonnie G. Bunch III since his days growing up in Belleville, N.J. He remembers being old enough at age 12 or 13 to join the men at family barbecues while they reminisced about Jackie Robinson and Duke Ellington. "They told these stories in such a way that I really wanted to know more about them," he says.

As the founding director of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, Mr. Bunch wants visitors to this future Smithsonian Institution venue to feel like they, too, are listening to his elders. "The challenge is not to make it so grand that the experience washes over you," he says. "It is to bring issues like slavery and segregation down to a human scale so you feel like you are in somebody's backyard hearing personal stories of the past."

Appointed in 2005, the director is still planning the $500 million museum on the northern side of the Mall near the Washington Monument. This 350,000-square-foot building is scheduled to open in 2015 on a prominent five-acre parcel bounded by Constitution Avenue, Madison Drive, 14th and 15th streets Northwest.

In April, the architectural team Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup was chosen for the project from six firms short-listed in a design competition. Contract agreements between the architects and the Smithsonian are due to be finalized in October, but Mr. Bunch has wasted no time thinking about the ways in which the building design will be fine-tuned for exhibitions and staff.

"There are things that I hope won't change like the corona and strong color," he says, pointing to the copper-colored crown atop the architectural model. "But questions still remain over the size of the plinth, the placement of the offices. I am champing at the bit to hash out the design."

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A larger priority for the 56-year-old director has been figuring out the museum's mission. "Part of what a national museum has to do is to tell a quintessentially American story that appeals to everybody, not just African-Americans," he says. "The notions of resiliency, optimism and spirituality that are so key to defining America come from the African-American experience."

From the local perspective of Juanita Moore, who leads one of the nation's largest black-history venues, Detroit's Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History, "The national museum has to broaden the impact of the stories that we tell already. It has to show African-American history is American history."

So far, Mr. Bunch anticipates a third of the museum will be devoted to the sweep of history, from slavery to the present day; another third to black cultural themes involving music, theater, film and sports; and the last third to life in communities across the nation.

The museum leader, who is black, admits the vision is rooted in his own experiences. "It is personal because I am inspired almost every day by history, by the people I meet who tell me their stories," he says. "I want the visitor to understand there is not a single black experience, that my growing up in New Jersey was a different experience than my cousins growing up in North Carolina."