Building redemption

THE skyline of Washington, DC, has never seen the like of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which will be opened in September by Barack Obama. The museum marches upwards in three sharp-angled tiers that, its architects say, pay homage to wood carvings found across west Africa at the time of the Atlantic slave trade. Its outer skin of dark, bronze-coloured, cast-aluminium panels is at once handsome and a shock on a National Mall dominated by monuments in cool, white marble.

Further surprises lurk below. Most of the 400,000-square-foot museum—the founding of which was first proposed more than 100 years ago by black veterans of the civil war—lies underground. Visits begin with a ride down into the earth, emerging into a large history gallery. With its towering walls of rough, clay-coloured cement, the gallery offers an unexpected sensation of standing at the bottom of a freshly dug trench.