In which year was the National Museum of African History and Culture in the U.S. opened?

In September 2016, in a ceremony led by then U.S. President Barack Obama, the National Museum of African American History and Culture was opened to the public. It is one of the many Smithsonian Institutions, located in Wasington, D.C., at 1400 Constitution Avenue, NW. Currently the history museum has received a collection of over 40,000 objects. By May 2019 about 3,500 itiems are on display to the public.

Interest in establishing a museum dedicated to African American history can be traced to 1915 but repeated attempts did not materialize until the 1970s and 1980s when legislation and a final authorization materialized. A site was then selected and a design developed with construction beginning in 2012.

A sponsored competition in 2008 resulted in a design of a 350,000-square-foot (33,000m2) building with three stories below ground and five stories above-ground. The cost of the building was limited to $550,000,000 ($593,740,340 in 2019 dollars).

In the first three months more than 600,000 people visited the museum and after 6 months, 1.2 million people had visited the museum, making it one of the four most-visited Smithsonian museums. Smithsonian officials announced that in the first full year the museum was opened to the public, it had 3 million visitors.