Making the dream real in 2008

The African American presence in the Northwest is framed by the development of territories that include Washington, Oregon, Idaho and parts of Canada. Through exhibits, installations and programs, the Museum will create a vision of the world the earliest Blacks encountered as they moved into this landscape. Using the past as an anchor, the Museum will explore youth culture and illuminate how the past both supports and influences contemporary life. The Northwest African American Museum will present exhibits and programs that feature historic and contemporary narratives that include the visual arts, crafts, music, literary and culinary culture of African Americans in the Northwest as it has developed from the 1840s to the present.

To tell this story the Museum will draw on regional and national collections as well as create its own exhibitions and programs from local resources. NAAM’s planning process includes extensive community involvement and will generate a multi-year exhibition and program plan. The Museum will present the key elements of Northwest African American history and culture that are now missing from public knowledge in general. It will make a link between African Americans whose route to the new world was through slavery as well as more recent immigrants arriving from such places as Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia.