WI Web Staff
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture will open a new exhibition, “Forces for Change: Mary McLeod Bethune and Black Women’s Activism” on Friday.
The 640-square foot exhibition explores the legacy of Bethune and the National Council of Negro Women, as well as the strategies Black women have used to enact change through education, creativity and organizing. The exhibition is a permanent and dynamic space highlighting new stories relating to Black women activists through 35 objects, 75 images and two digital-media pieces.
For more details about the exhibition, visit nmaahc.si.edu/ForcesForChange.
“Against incalculable odds, the women featured in this exhibition-built institutions of learning, ignited social and political movements, formed enduring organizations, and create beauty in multifarious art forms, all while the representing their country nationally and internationally,” said Tulani Salahu-Din, the museum’ specialist on language and literature. “This re-curated space in the museum is solely dedicated to telling their stories of vision, commitment, fortitude, and courage and to celebrating their impact as forces of positive change in the United States and around the world.”
Visitors will engage with the interactive media, infographics and objects connected to Black women, including Bethune’s travel diary, Dorothy Heights’s hat, an antique desk owned by Etta Moten Barnett and a red silk rose worn by Sybrina Fulton. A highlight of the space is an 8-foot-tall plaster sculpture of Bethune, which served as the original model for the final statute carved in marble by artist Nilda Comas for the U.S. Capitol Building’s National Statutory Hall. In 2022, Bethune became the first African American honored with a state-commissioned statute in the U.S. Capitol Building’s National Statuary Hall Collection.
The exhibition represents a dynamic re-envisioning of the “Bethune Room”, a special gallery dedicated to the story of Bethune and the National Council of Negro Women, which first opened in 2016 as part of the “Making a Way Out of No Way” permanent exhibition.
For more information about the museum, visit nmaahc.si.edu, follow @NMAAHC on X, Facebook and Instagram or call Smithsonian information at 202-633-1000.