History
The museum first opened in 1964 as the Museum of History and Technology. The building was one of the last structures designed by renowned architectural firm McKim Mead & White. In 1980, the museum was renamed The National Museum of American History to better represent a refocused mission: the collection, care, study, and interpretation of objects that reflect the experience of the American people.
The museum announced in May, 2012, that John Gray would serve as director of the museum.
Read more about this topic: National Museum Of American History
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“They are a sort of post-house,where the Fates
Change horses, making history change its tune,
Then spur away o’er empires and o’er states,
Leaving at last not much besides chronology,
Excepting the post-obits of theology.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“The history of medicine is the history of the unusual.”
—Robert M. Fresco, and Jack Arnold. Prof. Gerald Deemer (Leo G. Carroll)