US plans to establish Latin American museum and women's history museum

After five months of intense negotiations, Democrats and Republicans in the US Congress agreed, on the night of Monday to Tuesday, December 22, to adopt a 2021 stimulus plan amounting to $ 908 billion (or $ 742 billion euros).

If Donald Trump is blocking the signing of this plan today, this new bill, which fits in a 5593-page document, provides for the establishment of two new national museums, created within the Smithsonian Institution.

As a reminder, it already has nine research centers, nineteen museums as well as botanical gardens and a zoo.

Among them, the National Museum of American History, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Design Museum.

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Many of its establishments are located along the National Mall in Washington, a long green corridor bordered by the most beautiful monuments of the city.

This is the case with the National Museum of African American History and Culture, designed by architect David Adjaye, the last infant of the Smithsonian Institution created in 2016. The new museums will also come to settle there.

One, called the Smithsonian Women's History Museum Act, will be dedicated to the history of women in the United States.

The other, the National Museum of the American Latino dedicated to the history of Latin Americans.

If now, the two projects are well installed in the recovery plan, it remains to obtain the signature of Donald Trump to finalize them.

In the meantime, Congress has nevertheless granted the Smithsonian Institution to initiate the first proceedings.

It can already hire staff, develop its collections and its programming.

One of the buildings of the Smithsonian Institution, nicknamed "the Castle, in Washington DC ANDBZ / ABACA

"

Americans deserve to be inspired by remarkable women

"

For both of them, the two museums have been eagerly awaited across the Atlantic for years.

For Latin American supporters, this new establishment has been the subject of many requests since the publication of a 1994 report by the Smithsonian Institution.

The latter criticized the

systematic

“willful neglect”

suffered by these people within museum institutions.

As reported by the Journal des Arts, the National Museum of the American Latino Act will therefore aim to

"highlight the contributions of Latin Americans to the history of the United States"

, in order to become a reference on the scale global.

As for the museum on the history of women, the complaints are more recent and date back to 2016. That year, Republican Senator Carolyn B. Maloney, called, during a bipartisan committee of Congress, for the creation of a place that reflects women and their history.

Noting its too low representation in memorials, monuments and museums.

Read also: The Prado Museum exhibits the misogynistic past of Spanish art

In an interview with the

Washington Post

on December 22, the latter said:

“For too long, women have been excluded from the history of our Nation.

We are starting to rectify this.

"And to conclude:"

Americans deserve to see and be inspired by remarkable women who have helped to make this country "

.