Earlier this month, Secretary of the Smithsonian Lonnie G. Bunch III announced he would retire at the end of 2026, after a year and a half of persistent pressure on the Smithsonian from the Trump administration. The announcement came just before the 10th anniversary of the opening of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, the groundbreaking museum Bunch helped bring into existence.

The “Blacksonian,” as the museum became colloquially known, rode in on a wave of hope when it launched on September 24, 2016. The opening ceremony took place on the museum’s grand “porch,” in the heart of the National Mall. Rising majestically above, the building’s West African-inspired bronze lattice-work façade created a striking juxtaposition with its westward neighbor, the tall, iconic, white-marbled Washington Monument. After a century of dreaming and designing, the world’s largest museum dedicated to African American history and culture was finally open. Then-President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush, who signed the original 2003 law creating the museum, both delivered speeches to mark the occasion.

As a young Black architect watching the media coverage from afar, my body tingled as 99-year-old Ruth Odom Bonner rang the Freedom Bell, which came to the Blacksonian from a Virginia church founded in 1776 by enslaved and free African Americans. The image of a Black elder just one generation removed from slavery, flanked by the first Black president in front of a museum designed by a team led by Black architects, felt emblematic of where we had once been as a country and where I hoped we had arrived.

Fast forward 10 years. Through tiki torches haunting parks in Charlottesville, a police officer’s knee extinguishing George Floyd’s life in Minneapolis, and executive orders to remove “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian museums. While the building hasn’t changed, everything else has. Bunch’s resignation feels like the latest indicator of that reality.

So, what is the role of the Blacksonian now—and moving forward?

Cultural historian, designer, and architectural scholar Mabel O. Wilson notes that museums often function as repositories, containers for tangible remembering. As humans, we rely on stories to help create a shared understanding of who we are: our values, our histories, our hopes.

I first visited Washington, D.C., with my eighth-grade civics class in the early ’90s, touring the National Archives, Lincoln Memorial, and several Smithsonian museums. These places were supposed to tell me about the history and values of this country where I was born and where my immigrant parents—who hailed from what would later be derided as “shithole countries”—had moved to in search of better opportunities. It wasn’t until many years later, well into my adulthood, that I realized how little of that class trip focused on stories of people whose Black skin reflected mine. In the many trips I’ve made to the Blacksonian since it opened, I’ve looked at the kids making their own D.C. pilgrimages. Their experience learning the country’s history is different now that this museum is part of it.

Across 3,000 artifacts, seven floors, and 400 years of the African American experience, the Blacksonian tells an expansive story of America. One that is neither simple, nor only good or bad. Bunch said that the goal of the museum was not to leave the visitor with negative feelings or guilt. But equally important is the museum’s commitment never to shy away from the truth, no matter how complicated. Telling the stories of both “pain and promise” that are embedded in this country’s history is essential work to bridging the gaps that divide us.

There are some who see this wrestling as reveling in despair that keeps us divided. It’s a belief that doesn’t always cut along partisan or racial lines. In a 2023 essay in the Atlantic, Bunch recounted a Black woman who stopped him while the museum was still under development. She expressed thanks but also said, “Whatever you do, don’t talk about slavery.” She saw the museum as a chance to move beyond the uncomfortable chains of history.

As an architect focused on how trauma and grief intersect with the built environment, I’ve heard a version of this plaintive request before. A few years ago, I worked with the city of Akron, Ohio, and its residents on a community vision for a decommissioned highway. Fifty years ago, a vibrant Black neighborhood had been destroyed to make way for the roadway, a familiar American story of the practice euphemistically named “urban renewal.” I learned that many of those who had been displaced in Akron had stopped talking about what had happened long ago. It was too painful. Lost in that silence was a collective wrestling with the tragedy of destruction, and also the ability to celebrate the vibrancy of what had existed before the highway.

What’s past is past. Forgive and forget. We have sayings for what’s required to forge ahead, but they often mean that our grief goes unprocessed and our ability to repair remains insufficient. Collective visioning of the future requires a collective remembering of the past. If we never sit with the discomfort of the hardest truths, can we ever fully understand our brightest moments and our most expansive possibilities?

The Blacksonian’s mission is to help all Americans remember and reconcile, to bridge not only gaps of division but also gaps in “our national memory.” Looking at the news cycle, I suspect we’re still a long way from reconciliation, but reimagining where we could go requires remembering where we’ve been. Secretary Bunch may be leaving the Smithsonian, but the museum he helped shape remains, still committed to deep scholarship and serving as a container for the stories of our complicated history. A place of truth telling even when there’s not complete readiness to be with that truth. It’ll be hard to erase this building, which was designed specifically around this mission and built to last generations.

Recently, I spoke with Wilson, the historian, to discuss what the museum means now and moving forward. I keep returning to one anecdote she shared. Not long ago, she overheard a young Black woman talking on the phone. The woman said, “You hear they’re attacking the Blacksonian? Yeah, ain’t no way we’re not gonna know what’s in there! …There’s no way you’re going to tell us that doesn’t exist and wasn’t true.”

Perhaps the museum’s greatest role in this moment is as a place to practice remembering—using the pain and promise of our shared past to help lay a foundation for a future where reconciliation could be possible.

Liz Ogbu is an architect, spatial justice activist, and community grief worker. She is currently working on a book about the intersection of grief and place.

Primary editor: Sarah Rothbard | Secondary editor: Eryn Brown