Out of Many, One
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A new exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History explores our richly layered national identity.
Visitors who enter The Nation We Build Together, the new wing of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, encounter two notable figures. First, they are greeted by Horatio Greenough’s venerate rendering of George Washington, a 12-foot marble statue evoking democracy, equality and dignity. Adjacent, in the Hall of the American People, lives another personage, equally representative of American ideals: Kat Rodriguez’s Immokalee Statue of Liberty.
Rodriguez’s Liberty was carried 230 miles by agricultural activists during the March for Dignity, Dialogue, and a Fair Wage in 2000.
Rodriguez’s Liberty looks different from classical depictions of the heroine. This Liberty has bronze skin and holds in her arms a basket of tomatoes. She once bore the caption, borrowed from African-American poet Langston Hughes, “I, too, am America.”
The Nation We Build Together invites visitors to explore what John Gray, the Director of the National Museum of American History, calls the “fundamental American ideals and ideas . . . to help us determine what kind of nation we want to be.”
Rodriguez’ Liberty is housed within the exhibition, Many Voices, One Nation. It surveys 500 years of chronological and thematic journeys reflected in that very ideal: E pluribus unum, in Latin, or “Out of many, one.”
There is a “unique, important thread of Latino history throughout the exhibit,” according to Margaret Salazar-Porzio, Curator for the Museum’s Division of Home and Community Life.
The 500 years of material culture features a diverse Latino presence: a helmet thought to have belonged to a Spanish conquistador; a Retablo depicting the Virgin Mary as Our Lady of Guadalupe; a sign from a Mexican-American family bakery in Los Angeles; Cuban-American baseball player Diego Segui’s glove; Carnival costumes from Puerto Rico; the somber backdrop of a 1940s-era 14-foot border fence; and, overlooking all, Rodriguez’s Immokalee Statue of Liberty.
In addition to the cultural artifacts and case studies, the center portion of Many Voices, One Nation features videos that grapple with the complex history of rights and liberties for minorities in the United States. The curators beg the questions: Who is free? Who is included? Who is equal?
Many Voices, One Nation presents a compelling, sometimes contentious chronology of American history, bringing to life often forgotten individuals who endured unequal treatment, and were not even acknowledged as Americans in some quarters before the civil rights movements of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. This exhibition sheds light on the roles they too have played in shaping the nation. Upon entering the Hall of the American People, visitors are welcomed by a collage of faces portraying a diversity of racial and ethnic features, underscoring the diversity of the United States today.
The exhibit’s entrance. Photos by Pavithra Suresh.
“People immediately see themselves” in those faces as they enter the exhibit, says Nancy Davis, Project Director and Curator for the Division of Home and Community Life, which she deems “a very comprehensive approach to how we became us.”
Greenough’s 1840 statue of Washington
In addition to Many Voices, One Nation, the new wing features a number of other exhibitions: American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith; Unity Square, featuring The Greensboro Lunch Counter and hands-on “American Experiments”; Religion in Early America; Within These Walls; and Common Ground: Our American Garden.
Many Voices, One Nation provides a poignant, sweeping chronology of American national identity that invites timely conversation and reflection. The exhibition, along with the others featured in The Nation We Build Together, opens on June 28, 2017 at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Admission is free.
—Pavithra Suresh
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