The American Girls’s Historical past Museum—considered one of a number of new Smithsonian Establishment museums within the works in Washington, DC—introduced this week a serious donation to help its growth: $1m from the reinsurance supplier Swiss Re. The present represents the primary company donation to the museum, a big milestone in a undertaking that took place by means of decades-long campaigns.
In a press release on “Giving Tuesday” (29 November), the museum’s interim director Lisa Sasaki mentioned the donation will help the museum “as we carry up instructed and untold tales of ladies who helped form our nation, society and tradition.” She added: “The historical past of American ladies is significant to a complete understanding of who we’re as a nation.”
Congress accredited the creation of the museum in December 2020, almost twenty years after senators launched a invoice for it in 2003. It additionally voted to authorise a Nationwide Museum of the American Latino. The Smithsonian Establishment has since carried out a seek for areas to construct each establishments and is required to pick out the ultimate websites by this month. Potential websites embrace the historic Adolf Cluss and Paul Schulze-designed Arts and Industries Constructing; the Division of Agriculture Administration Constructing; and the FBI headquarters, or the J. Edgar Hoover Constructing, which could possibly be demolished to make room for both museum.
The Congressional Funds Workplace estimated in 2019 that the American Girls’s Historical past Museum would price $375m over the following decade. The Smithsonian has obtained $4m in Congressional funding to develop exhibitions and programming, and has additionally privately raised about $10m. The museum goals to doc, analysis, acquire and exhibit tales on ladies’s contributions to US historical past.
“Its mission aligns with our values, and we’re comfortable to be part of one thing a lot greater that can assist amplify the contributions and accomplishments of ladies in American historical past,” Jonathan Isherwood, chief government of Reinsurance Americas for Swiss Re, mentioned in a press release.
The Zurich-based firm, which has been a Smithsonian supporter since 2016, has been outspoken about its dedication to and transparency on gender equality. Since 2019, it has been included on the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index, which acknowledges public corporations for his or her efforts to succeed in gender parity.
