American History Museum Reopens

WASHINGTON—It may not be hanging anymore, but the Star-Spangled Banner is back on display in the newly-renovated Smithsonian American History Museum after a decade hiatus.

After two years and $85 million dollars spent modernizing the museum of America’s past, the flag returned this month in a new, dimly-lit exhibit unlike any that has housed the famous banner before.

Encased in a low-oxygen, climate-controlled vault to prevent any potential for fire damage, curators say the new display conveys “dawn’s early light” on the flag that inspired the national anthem.

Museum director Brent D. Glass called the exhibit, which rests the 30-foot by 34-foot banner horizontally, tilted up at a 10 degree angle, a “new interpretation of a very familiar object.”

“We also wanted to give the visitor a contemplative experience, an inspirational experience of seeing the flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the national anthem,” Glass said.

The museum’s reopening, in time for holiday season tourism, includes more prominent displaying of some of the museum collection’s icons and its new acquisitions.

An 1865 telescope -- the first used by a female astronomer -- now marks the entryway to a wing of exhibits on science and technology.

The lunch counter from the F.W. Woolworth diner in Greensboro, N.C., where civil rights activists once stood for equality by simply sitting on stools, receives a more prominent display.

And between now and Jan. 4, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, in his own handwriting, is being exhibited – the first time the document has left the White House.

The most obvious change at the museum that has been closed for two years is the lighting. While some exhibits are kept dim for historic preservation -- particularly the Star-Spangled Banner – the atrium entrance is now filled with natural light and modern, glass staircases.

“We’re shining new light on American history, figuratively and literally,” Glass said.

The “more welcoming, more open” design, including a 15-foot by 30-foot skylight, was in part response to criticism of the past complex, which visitors had labeled “dark, confusing and not inviting,” Glass said.

The atrium, which housed the Star-Spangled Banner from 1964 to 1998, is now home to 960 metal tiles configured to resemble a waving flag. The artwork is displayed above the entryway to the flag’s exhibit, where more than 30 people recently waited to see the flag for the first time in a decade.

Part of the new exhibit includes a life-size digital replica of the flag on a touch screen display. Patrons can pull the flag to more closely examine its various parts and touch it to see more information about a spot on the flag or learn the story behind a patch or hole in the relic. In the 1870’s some parts of the flag had been given away as souvenirs.

For the last ten years, museum patrons could only see the flag by peering into the conservation laboratory, where it was being preserved.

“It’s great,” said Stacie Steinke of the new exhibit. “It’s what they needed to do.”

But Steinke, of McLean, Va., said the low light projected on the banner made the stars and stripes look less “real.”

Other museum-goers, like Paula Botero of Sterling, Va., recalled seeing the flag hanging in the atrium and thought the new exhibit “made it more important.”

The exhibit includes music and display cases telling the story of the flag’s survival during the 1814 Battle of Baltimore against the British.

“It’s good for the kids,” Botero said.

Despite the new display for the flag and about 25 new exhibits open now or in coming months, some visitors were sad to see their favorite spots still closed.

“I was … looking forward to the First Ladies stuff, but that’s not open yet,” said Crystal Kimbro. The popular exhibit with its glamorous gowns does not open until mid-December.

Other wings housing African American history and a special collection of Lincoln’s documents also remain under construction. The African American exhibit is due to open Jan. 30.

Lincoln’s papers are to be displayed for two months starting Jan. 16, marking the bicentennial of the president’s birth.

(Contact Neil H. Simon at nsimon@mediageneral.com.)