I’m going to level with you. Getting inside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture is hard. “Advanced timed passes for April 2017 Available on January 4th,” the website laughs.
So with all due respect to the buckets of cash raised to fix Dorothy’s ruby shoes, the opening of the Blacksonian is the museum event of the year — probably the century. (Yes, “the Blacksonian,” because no one is going to say that whole name; and no one’s going to say “NMAAHC,” either, because no one wants to hear “God bless you” every time somebody does.)
The wait to create a national museum of black history and culture was decades long. And the result amounts to a major bureaucratic, academic and emotional achievement. Now everybody wants in. So some of us have to wait.