African-American Museum Conference Held in Pittsburgh

For three days this week representatives from more than 200 African-American museums are in Pittsburgh for a conference. They are attending sessions on curating and archiving. There were also more specialized sessions on re-interpreting African-American food history and preserving Florida’s African-American civil war heritage.

A museum is defined as an institution that is open to the public, has a collection and does exhibitions. President of the Association of African-American museums Vernon Courtney said although there is a need for such museums, he hopes African-American history and art will work their way into all museums.

"Our history is unique in this country and we hope that at some point in time we work ourselves out of a job when mainstream museums treat African-American history and culture as it does the rest of the history of the nation," he said.

This is the 32nd year the conference has been held. Pittsburgh was selected as the conference host because of the recent opening of the August Wilson Center for African-American Culture.