Resources

Our Shared Future: Reckoning with Our Racial Past is engaged in a multi-year collaboration with the Smithsonian’s Digitization Program Office. With support provided by our Leadership Sponsor, Verizon, we are creating high fidelity 3D scans of physical collections centered around race, history, and culture.

The Smithsonian's goal is to make our historic collections accessible to the public and give a behind-the-scenes look at the 3D process of digitizing the Smithsonian’s collections.

Learn more about objects from the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage donated by participants of the Smithsonian’s annual Folklife Festival from Senior Curator and Cultural Heritage Specialist Diana Baird N’Diaye. We look at race and aesthetics and how public representations affect our understandings of race, history, ourselves, and each other.

This video features National Museum of American History curators including Barbara Clark-Smith, Division of Political and Military History; Modupe Labode, Divisions of Political and Military History and Cultural and Community Life; Bonnie Campbell Lilienfeld, Curator of Ceramics and Glass; L. Stephen Velasquez,  Division Cultural and Community Life; and Jane Rogers, Division of Culture and the Arts. Through the stories of the objects, they reflect on the role of racism in creating and sustaining economic inequality and reflect the global realities of racism and international efforts toward truth and reconciliation. 

Featuring National Museum of African Art curator, Kevin D. Dumouchelle, this video highlights the 3D capture of objects from the museum’s collection. Looking at race beyond the U.S., the sculptures’ stories represent the realities of racism and international efforts toward truth and reconciliation. 

National Air and Space Museum curators highlight how formal and informal policies create or worsen racial inequality. Curator of Air Transportation and Special Purpose Aircraft, and a supervisory curator in the Aeronautics Department, F. Robert van der Linden tells the story of Patrice Clarke Washington. In 1994, she became the first woman of African descent to serve as a captain for a major U.S. airline. Museum Specialist and Curator of Art Carolyn Russo highlights African American sculptor Eddie Dixon, who commemorates historical Black figures, Eugene Jacques Bullard (1895–1961), the first and only African American combat pilot in World War I.

Learn the stories behind the collection of National Museum of African American History and Culture from Supervisory Curator of History William Pretzer; Director, Center for the Study of Global Slavery and Supervisory Museum Curator Paul Gardullo; and Museum Curator of Sports Damion L. Thomas. These are objects that tell meaningful stories to help us learn how formal and informal policies create or worsen racial inequality. These objects also reflect the global realities of racism and international efforts toward truth and reconciliation. 

This video features Yao-Fen You, senior curator and head of product design and decorative arts at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, and looks at race and aesthetics and how public representations affect our understandings of race, history, ourselves, and each other.