Six hours. That’s how much time a typical visitor spends at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened just six months ago.
“Dwell time,” as it is officially known, has been off the charts since the newest Smithsonian opened its doors last fall. Standard dwell time for a museum is two hours or so, NMAAHC associate director Beverly Morgan-Welch told NPR last November. The six hour stays were a bit of a strain, and with tickets “sold out” through the spring—tickets are free, but reservations have to be made in order to prevent overcrowding—visitors didn’t have the option of leaving after the first couple of floors and swinging by again the next day. “It’s the best, most difficult problem I’ve ever faced in a museum,” she said at the time.
In a recent interview with the Washington Post, founding director Lonnie Bunch said the crowds had yet to abate. “I don’t see the lines getting any shorter. I don’t think we’re going to have those moments when I can bounce a basketball through the museum — at least not for the next three or four or five years.”
The crowds are massive already — over 1.2 million visitors to date, making it one of the four most popular Smithsonians — and, with spring break and summer vacation on the horizon, will only swell in the coming months. As the Post reports, the structure of the museum contributes to some “choke-points”:
For example, the intentionally cramped entrance to the slavery section on the lowest level can’t handle the number of people who can fit into the massive elevator that ferries guests below ground. Museum officials have decided to not fill the elevator to capacity, which causes lines at the elevator two levels above.
Bunch says they predicted visitors getting off the elevator would move more briskly through the area or push beyond the crowds. “But here, people are stopping and reading,” he said.
The timed pass system, which overwhelms the museum’s website and apparently isn’t Bunch’s favorite method of ticket distribution (“I was never the biggest fan of timed passes, so as soon as I can figure out other alternatives, it’s gone.”) may be eliminated once the museum celebrates its first birthday.
It’s been a strange, surreal time for the beginning days of the NMAAHC. President Obama dedicated the museum with a speech on its opening day last September, expressing his hope that “this museum can help us talk to each other, and more importantly listen to each other, and most importantly see each other.”
President Bush spoke as well, acknowledging that “even today, the journey towards justice is not compete. But this museum will inspire us to go farther and get there faster.”
The dedication took place on the morning of September 24, 2016. That night, during a presidential debate, then-GOP-nominee Donald Trump responded to a question about healing race relations by saying that “[in] our inner cities, African-Americans, Hispanics, are living in hell, because it’s so dangerous,” Trump said. “You walk down the street, you get shot.”
The weekend of inauguration, the NMAAHC was home to the Peace Ball, a black tie gala where all the speakers and performers insisted the election of Trump was a call to action, art, and resistance. And in February, one month after his inauguration, President Trump visited the NMAAHC for the first time.
“It’s amazing to see,” he said, and he promised to come back. Hope he can score a ticket! I hear they’re hard to come by.