After four years of work and $38.4 million from the city government, Detroit, the nation's largest city with a black majority, is opening the nation's largest museum of African-American history on Saturday. It is an ambitious survey of the black experience in the United States.
At the center of the Museum of African-American History is a model slave ship with 40 life-size figures of slaves in its hold. Surrounding the vessel are nine room-size exhibits, each using a dozen or more artifacts to illustrate subjects from 14th-century African history to contemporary black culture in the United States. Arrayed around that core are two galleries for temporary exhibitions, a 317-seat theater, an indoor amphitheater for school groups and collections of documents for researchers.
The museum has gained influence since the Smithsonian Institution decided two years ago not to build an African-American history museum in Washington, choosing instead to put its exhibits in existing buildings. The Detroit museum is also financially strong, with backing from corporations led by Ford Motor Company and Chrysler as well as from the city. The combination of physical size and financial strength is likely to give it a strong influence over curators at similar institutions elsewhere, said Juanita Moore, president of the African-American Museums Association in Wilberforce, Ohio.
''Most museums will be looking to that museum for collaboration on projects, like exhibitions that travel,'' she said.
The most powerful image in the new building is the slave ship model. During a recent preview, 10-year-old Lenita Savinon of Detroit stood on a metal grating over the ship's hold. The floor of the hold was littered with empty shackles, symbols of the many slaves who died while being transported. Each of the life-size slave figures was modeled on a Detroit resident, and Lenita pointed to one lying on its side and propped on one elbow, for which she was the model.
Lenita said she didn't find the museum depressing. ''It's uplifting,'' she said, standing a few feet from the figure of herself in chains. ''It gives me a lot of information about the people in the past, your brothers and sisters and ancestors.''
The uplifting tone is also purposeful. The permanent exhibition seeks to survey not only the travails of blacks in the United States but also their many contributions to society and the strength of their families, said Kimberly Camp, the museum's executive director.
There is a case full of inventions by African-Americans, like the stoplight and the gas mask. Visitors can listen to music by black composers ranging from symphonic compositions to jazz. There is the flight suit worn by Dr. Mae Jemison, the nation's first black female astronaut.
And the statues of Lenita and other youths are displayed in casual rather than anguished poses. 'We wanted to make sure this is not just a sorrow song,'' Ms. Camp said. ''We also included those things that are celebratory.''
The optimistic tone reflects the wishes of Dr. Charles Wright, a Detroit physician who started up the museum in a private house in 1965. Inspired by a visit to a memorial celebrating Danish heroes of World War II, he decided that American blacks should be honored and celebrated. The museum remains a private nonprofit institution, although the city paid for the new building.
The main exhibition has been designed to avoid exposing very young children to the more shocking abuses of blacks in American history. Graphic photographs of lynchings, for example, lie flat on shelves nearly five feet above the floor.