Everyone is invited to come one, come all Saturday to the big free day at the National Building Museum for the “Big Draw” for children of all ages to learn more about drawing to (adults hope) better understand our world today.
It’s a great way to spend a spring day with the family at the museum which hosts its third annual “Big Draw” with new exhibitions upstairs on specialized schools of the 1930s and the rebuilding of a university chapel.
The Building Museum is hosting the event with other D.C. museums and institutions in sessions of interactive storytelling, songs, drawing and more.
Tomasz Wiktor, a multi-media artist from Paris and native son of Poland will demonstrate his techniques of virtual reality drawings, while illustrator Trap Bob will show off her new four-foot-tall coloring book.
David Macaulay, the Caldecott Medal-winning author and illustrator of the classic, The Way Things Work, will demonstrate how he works and he will lead small workshops. (Sign up at nbm.org/event/the-big-draw/)
And, as long as they last, free copies of his Rome Antics (1997) will be given out.
The grownups in the crowd can truck on upstairs to see “A Better Life for Their Children: Julius Rosenwald, Booker. T Washington and the 4,978 Schools that Changed America,” and “The Tuskegee Chapel,” which was destroyed by fire in 1957.
In 1912 philanthropist Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington, the founder and president of Tuskegee University, joined interests and money to begin building schools for Black children in 15 Southern and border states.
To avoid drawing attention and possibly arson from surrounding communities, the schools were designed in modest, plain styles with lots of windows for natural heating in winter and air flow in hot summers. Heat, supplied by the communities which agreed to “buy in,” was not always affordable.
A short video runs adjacent to a portion of a recreated Rosenwald classroom with desks of the period, a lunch tray, a globe and copies of books which were later distributed to high schools, too, including White schools.
An interactive map shows original school locations, photographs and their uses today, some which still stand in Maryland and Virginia. (D.C. had no Rosenwald schools.)
Photographer and curator Andrew Feiler traveled more than 25,000 miles, visited 105 schools and interviewed dozens of former students, teachers, preservationists, and community leaders to document and tell this story of the schools which made a difference in the lives of Black school children like Maya Angelou, John Lewis and Medgar Evers and many more who are listed.
Some 500 of the schools still remain and have been renovated as community centers, senior centers, churches, private residences and even a truck rental sales office.
But some are near collapse and a movement to create a national historical park to commemorate the Rosenwald schools is underway.
The schools and chapel exhibitions are presented jointly in a series of photographs, artifacts, models and drawings.
The cause of the fire at the Tuskegee Chapel was originally thought to be lightning, but recent debate has focused on arson, according to the exhibition. After it burned, Tuskegee students built it back from 1967-1969 using 1.2 million bricks of Alabama clay.
For the “Big Draw,” visitors may bring their own materials or use those at the Building Museum. Other museums and institutions participating in the festival are the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Postal Museum, the Maryland Institute College of Art, the D.C. Public Library, and the Embassy of Poland whose representatives will present stories of culture, history, and international connections to Poland.
The National Building Museum, 401 F St., NW, Washington, DC 20001, on the Red Line at Judiciary Square, four blocks from the National Mall with one of the best gift shops in all of D.C. Open 10 am – 5 pm, Thursday – Monday. Info@nbm.org; 202-272-2448. Regular admission is $10, adults; $7, seniors and students, but free all day this Saturday for all.
