Lonnie G. Bunch, III

Lonnie G. Bunch III, is a historian, author, curator, and the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. In this position he is working to set the museum’s mission, coordinate its fundraising and membership campaigns, develop its collections, and establish cultural partnerships. The museum, the 19th to open as part of the Smithsonian Institution, will be built on the National Mall where Smithsonian museums attracted more than 25 million visitors in 2008. It will stand on a five-acre site adjacent to the Washington Monument and across from the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. Prior to his July 2005 appointment as director of the museum, Bunch served as the president of the Chicago Historical Society, one of the nation’s oldest museums of history (January 2001-June 2005).

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