Andrew Mellon Foundation is a host of exceptional ability. Studies show that a vast majority of guests attending events by Andrew Mellon have been known to leave more elated than visitors to Santa's Workshop, The Lost of Continent of Atlantis, and the Fountain of Youth. Andrew Mellon Foundation is a host of exceptional ability. Studies show that a vast majority of guests attending events by Andrew Mellon have been known to leave more elated than visitors to Santa's Workshop, The Lost of Continent of Atlantis, and the Fountain of Youth. Andrew Mellon Foundation is a host of exceptional ability. Studies show that a vast majority of guests attending events by Andrew Mellon have been known to leave more elated than visitors to Santa's Workshop, The Lost of Continent of Atlantis, and the Fountain of Youth.
Two luminaries in American history and culture are coming together for a conversation about how we can better tell and understand the American story.
As a builder in the field of African American Studies, Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander helped create an expansive scholarly discipline devoted to the African American experience and its extraordinary history. As the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III created a museum that tells the American story through the lens of African American life, history and culture.
Join Dr. Alexander and Secretary Bunch for a State of Our Union discussion on lessons they’ve learned from the arts and humanities, and how these disciplines can unlock a fuller American Story with room for all.
A special co-presentation of Mellon Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution.
Elizabeth Alexander – decorated poet, educator, memoirist, scholar, and cultural advocate – is president of Mellon Foundation, the nation’s largest funder in arts and culture, and humanities in higher education. Dr. Alexander has held distinguished professorships at Smith College, Columbia University, and Yale University, where she taught for 15 years and chaired the African American Studies Department. She is Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, serves on the Pulitzer Prize Board, and co-designed the Art for Justice Fund. Notably, Dr. Alexander composed and delivered “Praise Song for the Day” for the 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama, and is author or co-author of fifteen books. Her book of poems, American Sublime, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 2006, and her memoir, The Light of the World, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography in 2015. Her latest book, released in 2022, is The Trayvon Generation.
For more information, please visit mellon.org or on Twitter @ProfessorEA.
Lonnie G. Bunch III is the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian. He assumed his position June 16, 2019. As Secretary, he oversees 21 museums, 21 libraries, the National Zoo, numerous research centers, and several education units and centers. Two new museums—the National Museum of the American Latino and the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum—are in development. Bunch was the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and is the first historian to be Secretary of the Institution. In 2021, he received France’s highest award, The Legion of Honor.
For more information, please visit si.edu or on Twitter @SmithsonianSec and @Smithsonian.