The Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture is marking a major milestone this week - celebrating its 10-year anniversary. Photojournalist Parrish Smith looks back at when the doors opened, takes us inside to see some current exhibitions, and makes a stop at the museum's Sweet Home Cafe.
Page B1From§Eachthe matinee edition — 26 September 2026
Museum turns 10 days after its founder's retirement under pressure from an adviser exposed as a fake historian.
As it ran on the front
The National Museum of African American History and Culture turned ten years old this week, the kind of anniversary institutions mark when nobody upstairs wants a fuss made of it: a photojournalist walks the halls, someone buys a sandwich at the Sweet Home Cafe, the doors that opened in 2016 stay open in 2026. Ten years is not a long life for a museum. It is barely long enough to outlast the man who founded it.
Lonnie Bunch III built that museum before he was Secretary of anything. He went on to run all nineteen Smithsonian museums, the zoo, the libraries, a $1.5 billion budget — first historian, first Black man, to hold the Secretary's chair. On September 8th, at 73, he announced he was stepping down, amid what The Hill called, with admirable restraint, "Trump administration disputes with the museum complex over how it presents American history." CBS, a few weeks later, supplied the noun The Hill left polite: pressure from the White House questioning the patriotism of Smithsonian staff.…
…(cont) Patriotism is a serious charge to level at the people who run the zoo, so it is worth asking who was doing the leveling. Not stretched. Invented — flat malarkey, laundered into a policy directive.
The Smithsonian has weathered shit administrations before; this one just came with better signage. Bunch's museum did not ask permission to open in 2016, and it did not ask permission to turn ten this week either.
Lonnie Bunch III, 73, retiring. First historian, first Black man, to run the Institution; sole founder of the wing that marks a decade this week without him at the top of the org chart. Survived by nineteen museums, twenty-one libraries, a zoo, and a budget someone else now inherits the arguing over. In lieu of flowers, read a book the fake historian never wrote.
“This is the con in one move: put a guy who lied about being a historian in charge of grading the real ones, then act surprised when the Black man who built the actual museum decides he's done. Nobody fired Bunch on paper — they just made the job unbearable and called it a retirement. The museum's stood ten years; the fake credentials didn't survive one news cycle.”
“Nobody's questioning anyone's patriotism here, we're questioning accuracy — the signs are about getting the history right, full stop, that's the whole policy. And the advisor's credentials, I mean, did I say "fake historian"? That's the media's phrase, not mine — moving on.”
The receipts
In 2019, Lonnie G. Bunch III became both the first historian and the first African American to serve as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Now 73, Bunch has announced he is retiring.
· Smithsonian leader Lonnie Bunch to retire as Trump targets institution from the morgue, 8 Sep 2026
· The fake historian advising Trump's anti-Smithsonian crusade from the morgue, 29 Jul 2026
· The Smithsonian's Lonnie Bunch: Learning from history from the morgue, 29 Sep 2019
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.