On Tuesday morning, architect Phil Freelon will watch a symbolic shovel break ground on a five-acre site for a new museum adjacent to the Washington Monument.
It will be the second time in six months that the earth there has moved.
Correction:
An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that the groundbreaking for the Museum for African American History and Culture would be Tuesday, Feb. 21. It is scheduled for Wednesday. It also misspelled the name of Phil Freelon’s wife, Nnenna, and misidentified the university at which his eldest son teaches. It is American University, not the University of Washington. This version has been corrected.
Philip Freelon, architect of record of the Smithsonian’s African American Museum
Bill O'Leary/WASHINGTON POST - Phil Freelon, architect of record for the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, at the National Building Museum.
Explore the new National Museum of African American History and Culture.
August’s 5.8-magnitude quake rattled the historic obelisk all the way up to its aluminum-tipped capstone. Ironically, that capstone had already inspired a key design element for the Smithsonian’s soon-to-be-built Museum for African American History and Culture across 15th Street.
The museum’s design is the result of an intense collaboration among Freelon and two other architects: David Adjaye and the late Max Bond. They came together in 2008 as Freelon Adjaye Bond/SmithGroup to compete for the design. They would prevail over 21 other star-studded teams jampacked with names such as Richard Meier, I.M. Pei and Norman Foster.
Each architect in their group was highly regarded. Each happened also to be black: Freelon and Bond were African Americans, and Adjaye was born in Tanzania and raised in London from age 14 by his Ghanaian parents, both diplomats.
Freelon, now the museum’s architect of record, specializes in designing spaces that weave together the nation’s history, fabric and culture. “He uses his talent for the future of our country,” says South Carolina architect Paul Boney.
A native of Philadelphia, Freelon comes from a highly artistic background. His grandfather was a prominent impressionist painter during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and ’30s. His father, a sales executive, sketched and collected art. His mother was a schoolteacher, engaged in early childhood education.
“My father encouraged painting and drawing,” the 58-year-old says in a telephone interview. “I discovered architecture in high school — I thought it was a perfect blend of art and science.”
His wife, Nnenna, is a six-time Grammy-nominated jazz singer. Their youngest son is a musician who teaches at UNC-Chapel Hill; their daughter, an artist in mixed media with her MFA from Tufts, teaches at Towson University; their oldest son holds a Ph.D. and teaches political communications at American University .
Freelon’s work is, by choice, almost exclusively in the public sphere. “It’s experienced by everyday people,” he says. “I enjoy providing design excellence for people to encounter, in places like libraries and bus stations.”
Wednesday’s groundbreaking looks to the nation’s past as well as its future, underscoring the challenge of interpreting the complex and often appalling narrative arc of the black experience in America — a history of persecution and struggle, to be sure, but one of resiliency and triumph, too.
“The African American story is the quintessential American story, even though it was about a forced migration,” he says. “America is about opportunity for people from other places. You’ll find the best and worst of what the American story is in the African American story.”
Freelon, a graduate of N.C. State’s College of Design in Raleigh with a graduate degree in architecture from MIT, has lived in Durham, N.C., since he received a job offer to return to Carolina from Houston in 1982. He established his own firm there in 1990.
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