LONNIE BUNCH:

Of course. The job of a scholar is to both look back, make sure you interpret the past with different lenses, but also in a museum your job is to make sure the next generation can interpret the world you live in today. So the kinds of things you collect are shaping history. Shaping the way people interpret history. I know as a scholar of African American history there were many times I wanted to do exhibitions and there was nothing in the collections that could tell those stories. That shapes history by omission. So the notion for me is let's give people as many opportunities as possible. They may decide that stories we've collected aren't that important, and that's fine. But I want to make sure that you've got the resources to be able to tell important stories in the future.