title: Hank Johnson

text: On July 25, 2016, in a speech in Philadelphia before the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Johnson said that the Israel occupation of the West Bank had created highways to which Palestinians are denied access, and which cut off Palestinian neighborhoods from each other; that walls and Israeli checkpoints restrict Palestinian freedom of movement; that Jewish people take homes when Palestinian residents miss spending a night there, and fly an Israeli flag, while Palestinians are not permitted to fly their own. He was also purported to have said Palestinian homes were stolen or destroyed. He added that "there is a steady [stream], almost like termites" and that "settlement activity has marched forwards with impunity".


title: Hank Johnson

text: The remark was picked up by Adam Kredo for The Washington Free Beacon, who reported Johnson as having likened Jewish Israelis in the West Bank to termites. The Anti-Defamation League cited the words as an example of "demonization, dehumanization of settlers". Dov Wilker of the American Jewish Committee was reported as saying Johnson had compared Jewish Israelis to "vermin" and was using a centuries-old anti-Semitic trope. Rabbi David Wolpe called it an anti-Semitic smear and questioned Johnson's apology, writing, "'I am sorry I said something stupid and anti-Semitic'—that would have been a fitting apology".


title: Hank Johnson

text: Johnson apologized on Twitter for his "poor choice of words" but added that Israeli settlements were undermining the two-state solution. In a statement his office made to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he clarified that his termite metaphor referred to the corrosive process of settlement policies, "not the people". J Street responded to Johnson's clarification by stating there should be no place for slurs, but, in their view, Johnson was speaking of the settlement enterprise, not of individuals. Media coverage, they added, should focus on opposition to settlement growth rather than on the misrepresentations by an irresponsible media outlet.


title: Hank Johnson

text: Wilker held several meetings with Johnson to foster greater understanding and communication. In 2018, Johnson accepted his invitation to attend a vigil at Shearith Israel in the aftermath of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting for a national initiative called #ShowUpForShabbat. In 2019, Johnson appeared at the American Jewish Committee's National Board of Governors Institute "Conversations With Congress" where the group told Johnson: "we were obviously grateful when you apologized for a previous comment a few years back that was unintentionally anti-Semitic and how you handled it so well with the Atlanta Jewish community, how can we better educate members of Congress and others about these problematic tropes."


title: Hank Johnson

text: Johnson has supported legislation aimed at strengthening the U.S. civil justice system. In March 2016, he and Representative John Conyers introduced legislation to protect consumers access to civil courts, the Restoring Statutory Rights Act. The legislation would "ensure that the state, federal, and constitutional rights of Americans are enforceable" and that consumers are not forced into secretive private arbitration hearings.


title: Hank Johnson

text: Johnson voted against the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailout bill in November 2008. He voted for the Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the stimulus package supported by Democrats in Congress and President Obama.


title: Hank Johnson

text: In 2007, Johnson's H.Con.Res.80, a resolution calling for peaceful resolution to the Ugandan civil war between the Government of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army, unanimously passed the House and Senate. His first successful piece of legislation, it was jointly introduced in the Senate by Senators Russ Feingold and Sam Brownback.


title: Hank Johnson

text: In 2009, Johnson demanded censure of Representative Joe Wilson after Wilson shouted "you lie" during Obama's speech to a joint session of the 111th United States Congress on September 9, 2009, about his plan for health care reform; Johnson argued that the comment had an unseen racial undertone and that, if Wilson was not formally rebuked, "we will have people with white hoods running through the countryside again".


title: Hank Johnson

text: During a March 25, 2010, House Armed Services Committee hearing about the U.S. military installation in Guam, Johnson said to Admiral Robert F. Willard, Commander of U.S. Pacific Command, "My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize", to which Willard replied, "We don't anticipate that." The next day, Johnson's office claimed that he was tremendously deadpan and had used a facetious metaphor to draw attention to the potential negative impact of adding 8,000 Marines and dependents to an island of 180,000 people.


title: Hank Johnson

text: In 2014, Johnson was named the 18th most effective Democrat in the 112th Congress according to a study by Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia (UVA). He was also ranked higher than any of his Republican colleagues from Georgia. The study judged effectiveness by looking at a lawmaker's "proven ability to advance a member's agenda items through the legislative process and into law." The scorecard looked at the number of bills a member introduced or sponsored, the bills' significance, and how far each made it in the legislative process.


title: Hank Johnson

text: Johnson was a member of the United States House Judiciary Task Force on Judicial Impeachment, a task force of the House Judiciary Committee created in 2008. The task force carried out impeachment inquiries into Judges Thomas Porteous and Samuel B. Kent. In 2009, Johnson was in the unanimous majority voting to adopt all four articles of impeachment against Kent. All House members participating in the vote voted in favor of each article, with the exception of one member who voted "present" on the fourth article. Johnson was thereafter appointed and served as an impeachment manager (prosecutor) for Kent's impeachment trial. In 2010, he also voted in the unanimous majority that approved all four articles of impeachment against Porteous. He was also appointed and served as an impeachment manager for Porteous's impeachment trial.


title: Hank Johnson

text: On September 24, 2019, Johnson called for the impeachment of President Donald Trump due to the Trump-Ukraine scandal. This was the same day that the related impeachment inquiry was launched. Johnson sat on the House Committee on the Judiciary, which played a significant role in the inquiry. When the committee voted on approving articles of impeachment against Trump to be forwarded to the full House, Johnson voted in favor of approving both articles. In the full House vote on the adoption of the two articles of impeachment against Trump, Johnson voted with the majority to adopt them and thereby approve the first impeachment of Trump. In 2021, he voted for the adoption of sole article of impeachment against Trump in his second impeachment.


title: Hank Johnson

text: On October 5, 2014 "The Washingtonian" published its 15th biennial "Best & Worst of Congress" list. Johnson was voted "Most Clueless" by congressional staffers.


title: Hank Johnson

text: In December 2009, Johnson revealed that he had been battling Hepatitis C (HCV) for over a decade, which resulted in slow speech and a tendency to regularly get "lost in thought in the middle of a discussion". He said he learned he had the disease in 1998 but did not know how he contracted it. HCV-induced liver dysfunction often leads to hepatic encephalopathy, a cause of confusion. Symptoms are often reversible with treatment. The disease damaged his liver and led to thyroid problems. He was treated with a combination of ribavirin and interferon at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In February 2010, Johnson successfully completed an experimental treatment for Hepatitis C, which resulted in restored mental acuity, weight gain and increased energy.


title: Yang Kyoungjong

text: Yang Kyoungjong () is the name of a Korean soldier who, according to some, fought in the Imperial Japanese Army, the Soviet Red Army, and later the German Wehrmacht during World War II. If he exists he is the only soldier in recent history thought to have fought on three sides of a war, and this status has earned him recognition.


title: Yang Kyoungjong

text: Authors Antony Beevor and Steven Zaloga have regarded Yang Kyoungjong's existence as a fact, but both authors do not provide any sources in their books. A 2005 Korean SBS documentary that focused on his case concluded there was no convincing evidence of his existence. The man with Asian features in the famous image is often linked to Yang Kyoungjong but the identity and ethnicity of those in the photo has never been verified. Historical author Martin K. A. Morgan goes further and says that "Yang Kyoungjong is a person who never existed because he certainly never left us any proof that he ever existed."


title: Yang Kyoungjong

text: Author Steven Zaloga in his book "The Devil's Garden: Rommel's Desperate Defense of Omaha Beach on D-Day" provides an unsourced account that Kyoungjong was in Manchuria when he was conscripted into the Kwantung Army of the Imperial Japanese Army to fight against the Soviet Union. At the time, Korea was ruled by Japan.


title: Yang Kyoungjong

text: During the Battle of Khalkhin Gol, he was captured by the Soviet Red Army and sent to a Gulag labor camp. He was sent to the Eastern Front of Europe.


title: Yang Kyoungjong

text: In 1943, he was captured by Wehrmacht soldiers in eastern Ukraine during the Third Battle of Kharkov, and then joined the "Eastern Battalions" to fight for Germany. Yang was sent to Occupied France to serve in a battalion of former Soviet prisoners of war on the Cotentin peninsula in Normandy, close to Utah Beach. After the D-Day landings in northern France by the Allied forces, Yang was captured by paratroopers of the United States Army in June 1944.


title: Yang Kyoungjong

text: The Americans initially believed him to be a Japanese soldier in German uniform; at the time, Lieutenant Robert Brewer of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, reported that his regiment had captured four Asians in German uniform after the Utah Beach landings, and that initially no one was able to communicate with them. Yang was sent to a prison camp in Britain and later transferred to a camp in the United States.


title: Yang Kyoungjong

text: Allegedly, Yang Kyoungjong, was a German prisoner-of-war held by the Allies. Ost-Battalion prisoners were not forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union in 1945-46 and so according to Zaloga he was granted US citizenship.


title: Yang Kyoungjong

text: After the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, a photo was taken of an unidentified man in Wehrmacht attire being processed as a prisoner of war. The official caption does not give his name, and instead refers to him as "young Japanese". The current description on the US National Archives refers to him as a "young Japanese man". In the 1994 book "D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II", historian Stephen E. Ambrose wrote about an interview with Brewer, where Brewer recounted the capture of four Koreans in Wehrmacht uniforms. Ambrose wrote that "it seems they had been conscripted into the Japanese army in 1938—Korea was then a Japanese colony—captured by the Red Army in the border battles with Japan in 1939, forced into the Red Army, captured by the Wehrmacht in December 1941 outside Moscow, forced into the German army, and sent to France." He further notes that their further fate was not known, but speculated that they likely were returned to Korea and fought in the Korean War. However, Brewer's account was not associated with the aforementioned photograph.


title: Yang Kyoungjong

text: In 2002, Brewer's account was reported in Korean media. By 2004, the image was associated with Brewer's account and was circulating on the Internet. In the same year, Korean news site DKBNews reported on the image, said to be found on a "community website," and once again recounted the Brewer story. A reader of DKBNews submitted biographical details about the soldier in the image, including his name (Yang Kyoungjong), date of birth, captures, release and death, along with his settlement in Illinois after the war. However, despite the journalist's request for sources, none was provided. The article also noted that it is impossible to determine if the person in the photo is Yang, since there were four Koreans described by Brewer. In December 2005, in response to the image that was widely circulating on the Internet, the Seoul Broadcasting System aired a documentary on the existence of the Asian soldiers who served Nazi Germany and were captured by Allied forces. The documentary concluded that although there had been Asian soldiers in the German Army during World War II, there was no clear evidence for the existence of Yang Kyoungjong.


title: Yang Kyoungjong

text: The identity of the man continues to be a source of speculation. Author Martin Morgan believes the man is not Yang Kyoungjong, but instead an ethnic Georgian from the 795th Georgian Battalion, which was composed of Georgian Osttruppen troops.


title: Yang Kyoungjong

text: The story of Yang was the basis for the 2011 South Korean film "My Way". The movie follows two characters, a Korean boy named Jun-shik (played by Shin Sang-yeob) and his Japanese pal Tatsuo (played by Sung Yoo-bin). At the time it was billed as the "most expensive Korean film ever", with a budget of around $23 million.


title: Yang Kyoungjong

text: In 2018, a city councillor in St. John's, Newfoundland, used the story of Yang as the basis for an online ad promoting her real estate business, which caused backlash.


The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) is a Smithsonian Institution museum located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It was established in December 2003 and opened its permanent home in September 2016 with a ceremony led by President Barack Obama.


title: National Museum of African American History and Culture

text: Early efforts to establish a federally owned museum featuring African-American history and culture can be traced to 1915, although the modern push for such an organization did not begin until the 1970s. After years of little success, a much more serious legislative push began in 1988 that led to authorization of the museum in 2003. A site was selected in 2006, and a design submitted by Freelon Group/Adjaye Associates/Davis Brody Bond was chosen in 2009. Construction began in 2012 and the museum completed in 2016.


text: The NMAAHC is the world's largest museum dedicated to African-American history and culture. It ranked as the fourth most-visited Smithsonian museum in its first full year of operation. The museum has more than 40,000 objects in its collection, although only about 3,500 items are on display. The , 10 story building (five above and five below ground) and its exhibits have won critical praise.


text: The concept of a national museum dedicated to African-American history and culture can be traced back to the second decade of the 20th century. In 1915, African-American veterans of the Union Army met at the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., for a reunion and parade. Frustrated with the racial discrimination they still faced, the veterans formed a committee to build a memorial to various African-American achievements. Their efforts paid off in 1929, when President Herbert Hoover appointed Mary Church Terrell, Mary McLeod Bethune, and 10 others to a commission charged with building a "National Memorial Building" showcasing African-American achievements in the arts and sciences. But Congress did not back the project, and private fundraising also failed. Although proposals for an African-American history and culture museum would be floated in Congress for the next 40 years, none gained more than minimal support.


text: Proposals for a museum began circulating again in Congress in the early 1970s. In 1981, Congress approved a federal charter for a National Afro-American Museum in Wilberforce, Ohio. The museum, built and funded with private money, opened in 1987. In the early 1980s, Tom Mack (the African-American chairman of Tourmobile, a tourist bus company) founded the National Council of Education and Economic Development (NCEED). Mack's intention was to use the non-profit group to advance his ideas about economic development, education, and the arts in the black community. Emboldened by Congress's action in 1981, Mack began using the NCEED to press for a stand-alone African-American museum in D.C. in 1985. Mack did not collaborate with other black-led cultural foundations that were working to improve the representation of African Americans by Smithsonian and other federal institutions. Mack contacted Representative Mickey Leland about his idea for a national museum focusing on African Americans, and won his support for federal legislation in 1985. Leland sponsored a non-binding resolution (H.R. 666) advocating an African-American museum on the National Mall, which passed the House of Representatives in 1986. The congressional attention motivated the Smithsonian to improve its presentation of African-American history. In 1987, the National Museum of American History sponsored a major exhibit, "Field to Factory," which focused on the black diaspora out of the Deep South in the 1950s.


text: "Field to Factory" encouraged Mack to continue pursuing a museum. In 1987 and 1988, NCEED began lining up support among black members of Congress for legislation that would establish an independent African-American national history museum in Washington, D.C. But NCEED ran into opposition from the African American Museum Association (AAMA), an umbrella group that represented small local African-American art, cultural, and history museums across the United States. John Kinard, president of the AAMA and co-founder of the Anacostia Community Museum (which became part of the Smithsonian in 1967), opposed NCEED's effort. Kinard argued that a national museum would consume donor dollars and out-bid local museums for artifacts and trained staff. Kinard and the AAMA instead advocated that Congress establish a $50 million fund to create a national foundation to support local black history museums as a means of mitigating these problems. Others, pointing to the Smithsonian's long history of discrimination against black employees, questioned whether the white-dominated Smithsonian could properly administer an African-American history museum. Lastly, many local African-American museums worried that they would be forced to become adjuncts of the proposed Smithsonian museum. These institutions had fought for decades for political, financial, and academic independence from white-dominated, sometimes racist local governments. Now they feared losing that hard-won independence.


text: In 1988, Rep. John Lewis and Rep. Leland introduced legislation for a stand-alone African-American history museum within the Smithsonian Institution. But the bill faced significant opposition in Congress due to its cost. Supporters of the African-American museum tried to salvage the proposal by suggesting that the Native Indian museum (then moving through Congress) and African-American museum share the same space. But the compromise did not work and the bill died.


text: Lewis and Leland introduced another bill in 1989. Once more, cost considerations killed the bill. The Smithsonian Institution, however, was moving toward support for a museum. In 1988, an ad hoc group of African-American scholars—most from within the Smithsonian, but some from other museums as well—began debating what an African-American history museum might look like. While the group discussed the issue informally, Smithsonian Secretary Robert McCormick Adams, Jr. publicly suggested in October 1989 that "just a wing" of the National Museum of American History should be devoted to black culture, a pronouncement that generated extensive controversy. The discussions by the ad hoc group prompted the Smithsonian to take a more formal approach to the idea of an African-American heritage museum. In December 1989 the Smithsonian hired nationally respected museum administrator Claudine Brown to conduct a formal study of the museum issue.


text: Brown's group reported six months later that the Smithsonian should form a high-level advisory board to conduct a more thorough study of the issue. The Brown study was blunt in its discussion of the divisions within the African-American community about the advisability of a stand-alone national museum of African-American culture and history, but also forceful in its advocacy of a national museum of national prominence and national visibility with a broad mandate to document the vast sweep of the African-American experience in the United States. The study was also highly critical of the Smithsonian's ability to adequately represent African-American culture and history within an existing institution, and its willingness to appoint African-American staff to high-ranking positions within the museum.


text: The Smithsonian formed a 22-member advisory board, chaired by Mary Schmidt Campbell, in May 1990. The creation of the advisory board was an important step for the Smithsonian. There were many on the Smithsonian's Board of Regents who believed that "African-American culture and history" was indefinable and that not enough artifacts and art of national significance could be found to build a museum. On May 6, 1991, after a year of study, the advisory board issued a report in favor of a national museum, and the Smithsonian Board of Regents voted unanimously to support the idea. However, the proposal the regents adopted only called not for a stand-alone institution but a "museum" housed in the East Hall of the existing Arts and Industries Building. The regents also agreed to keep the Anacostia Community Museum a separate facility; to give the new museum its own governing board, independent of existing museums; and to support the proposal for a grant-making program to help local African-American museums build their collections and train their staff. The regents also approved a "collections identification project" to identify donors who might be willing to donate, sell, or loan their items to the proposed new Smithsonian museum.


text: The Smithsonian Board of Regents agreed in September 1991 to draft museum legislation, and submitted their bill to Congress in February 1992. The bill was criticized by Tom Mack and others for putting the museum in a building that was too small and old to properly house the intended collection, and despite winning approval in both House and Senate committees the bill died once more. In 1994, Senator Jesse Helms refused to allow the legislation to come to the Senate floor (voicing both fiscal and philosophical concerns) despite bipartisan support.


text: In 1995, citing funding issues, the Smithsonian abandoned its support for a new museum and instead proposed a new Center for African American History and Culture within organization. The Smithsonian's new Secretary, Ira Michael Heyman, openly questioned the need for "ethnic" museums on the National Mall. Many, including Mary Campbell Schmidt, saw this as a step backward, a characterization Smithsonian officials strongly disputed. To demonstrate its support for African-American history preservation, the Smithsonian held a fundraiser in March 1998 for the new center which raised $100,000.


text: Heymann left the Smithsonian in January 1999. In the meantime, other cities moved forward with major new African-American museums. The city of Detroit opened a $38.4 million, Museum of African-American History in 1997, and the city of Cincinnati was raising funds for a $90 million, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center (which broke ground in 2002). In 2000, a private group—upset with congressional delays—proposed constructing a $40 million, museum on Poplar Point, a site on the Anacostia River across from the Washington Navy Yard.


text: In 2001, Lewis and Representative J. C. Watts re-introduced legislation for a museum in the House of Representatives. Under the leadership of its new Secretary, Lawrence M. Small, the Smithsonian Board of Regents reversed course yet again in June 2001 and agreed to support a stand-alone National Museum of African American History and Culture. The Smithsonian asked Congress to establish a federally funded study commission. Congress swiftly agreed, and on December 29, President George W. Bush signed legislation establishing a 23-member commission to study the need for a museum, how to raise the funds to build and support it, and where it should be located. At the signing ceremony, the president expressed his opinion that the museum should be located on the National Mall.


text: The study commission's work took nearly two years, not the anticipated nine months. In November 2002, in anticipation of a positive outcome, the insurance company AFLAC donated $1 million to help build the museum. On April 3, 2003, the study commission released its final report. As expected, the commission said a museum was needed, and recommended an extremely high-level site: A plot of land adjacent to the Capitol Reflecting Pool, bounded by Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues NW and 1st and 3rd Streets NW. The commission ruled out establishing the museum within the Arts & Industries Building, concluding renovations to the structure would be too costly. It considered a site just west of the National Museum of American History and a site on the southwest Washington waterfront, but rejected both. The commission considered whether the museum should have an independent board of trustees (similar to that of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) or a board answerable both to the Smithsonian and independent trustees (similar to that of the National Gallery of Art), but rejected these approaches in favor of a board appointed by and answerable only to the Smithsonian Board of Regents. The commission proposed a 350,000 square-foot museum that would cost $360 million to build. Half the construction funds would come from private money, half from the federal government. Legislation to implement the commission's report was sponsored in the Senate by Sam Brownback and in the house by John Lewis.


text: As Congress considered the legislation, the museum's location became the major sticking point. Various members of the public, Congress, and advocacy groups felt the Capitol Hill site was too prominent and made the National Mall look crowded. Alternative proposed sites included the Liberty Loan Federal Building at 401 14th Street SW and Benjamin Banneker Park at the southern end of L'Enfant Promenade. This controversy threatened to kill the legislation. To save the bill, backers of the museum said in mid-November 2003 that they would abandon their push for the Capitol Hill site. The compromise saved the legislation: The House passed the "National Museum of African American History and Culture Act" () on November 19, and the Senate followed suit two days later. President George W. Bush signed the bill into law on December 16. The legislation appropriated $17 million for museum planning and a site selection process, and $15 million for educational programs. The educational programs included grants to African-American museums to help them improve their operations and collections; grants to African-American museums for internships and fellowships; scholarships for individuals pursuing careers African-American studies; grants to promote the study of modern-day slavery throughout the world; and grants to help African-American museums build their endowments. The legislation established a committee to select a site, and required it to report its recommendation within 12 months. The site selection committee was limited to studying four sites: The site just west of the National Museum of American History, the Liberty Loan Federal Building site, Banneker Park, and the Arts and Industries Building.


text: On February 8, 2005, with the site selection committee still deliberating, President Bush again endorsed placing the museum on the National Mall.


text: The site selection committee did not issue its recommendation until January 31, 2006—a full 13 months late. It recommended the site west of the National Museum of American History. The area was part of the Washington Monument grounds, but had been set aside for a museum or other building in the L'Enfant Plan of 1791 and the McMillan Plan of 1902. The United States Department of State originally planned to build its headquarters there in the early 20th century, and the National World War II Memorial Advisory Board had considered the parcel in 1995. On March 15, 2005, the Smithsonian named Dr. Lonnie G. Bunch III to be the Director of the National African American Museum of History and Culture.


text: The National Museum of African American History and Culture Council (the museum's board of trustees) sponsored a competition in 2008 to design a building with three stories below-ground and five stories above-ground. The building was limited to the site chosen by the site selection committee, had to be LEED Gold certified, and had to meet stringent federal security standards. The cost of construction was limited to $500 million ($ in dollars). The competition criteria specified that the winning design had to respect the history and views of the Washington Monument as well as demonstrate an understanding of the African-American experience. The winning design was required to reflect optimism, spirituality, and joy, but also acknowledge and incorporate "the dark corners" of the African-American experience. The museum design was required to function as a museum, but also be able to host cultural events of various kinds. Hundreds of architects and firms were invited to participate in the design competition. Six firms were chosen as finalists:


text: The design submitted by the Freelon Group/Adjaye Associates/Davis Brody Bond won the design competition. The above-ground floors featured an inverted step pyramid surrounded by a bronze architectural scrim, which reflected a crown used in Yoruba culture.


text: Under federal law, the National Capital Planning Commission, the United States Commission of Fine Arts, and the D.C. Historic Preservation Commission all have review and approval rights over construction in the metropolitan D.C. area. As the design went through these agencies for approval, it was slightly revised. The building was moved toward the southern boundary of its plot of land, to give a better view of the Washington Monument from Constitution Avenue. The size of the upper floors were shrunk by 17 percent. Although three upper floors were permitted (instead of just two), the ceiling height of each floor was lowered so that the overall height of the building was lowered. The large, box-like first floor was largely eliminated. Added to the entrance on Constitution Avenue were a pond, garden, and bridge, so that visitors would have to "cross over the water" like slaves did when they came to America.


text: The Smithsonian estimated in February 2012 that museum would to open in 2015. Until then, the museum would occupy a gallery on the second floor of the National Museum of American History.


text: On June 10, 2013, media magnate Oprah Winfrey donated $12 million to the NMAAHC. This was in addition to the $1 million she donated to the museum in 2007. The Smithsonian said it would name the NMAAHC's 350-seat theater after her. The GM Foundation announced a $1 million donation to the museum on January 22, 2014, to fund construction of the building and design and install permanent exhibits.


text: The design of the architectural scrim which surrounds the building was changed in September 2012. The proposed building itself was a box-like structure. The three-part corona of the building's design was created by a structure only minimally attached to the building. The exterior of this structure, whose frames lean outward to create the corona, consisted of a thin screen or "scrim" perforated by geometrical patterns based on historic iron grilles found in African-American communities in Charleston, South Carolina, and New Orleans, Louisiana. The original design proposed that the scrim be made of bronze, which would have made the museum the only one on the National Mall whose exterior was not made of limestone or marble. Cost issues forced the architects to change this to bronze-painted aluminum in September 2012. The change was approved by the Commission of Fine Arts, but the commissioners criticized the change for lacking the warm, reflective qualities of bronze. Noted architect Witold Rybczynski also criticized the change: "The appeal of bronze is its warm golden sheen and the rich patina that it acquires over time, but uniformly painted surfaces lack these attributes, and over time they don't age, they merely flake. ... At the time of this writing, the African American museum risks compromising its original intention. In architecture, beauty sometimes really is only skin-deep."


text: The Smithsonian then radically changed the landscaping of the under-construction museum in summer 2013. The original design for the museum planned a wetland with flowing creek, bridges, and native plants in this area. But cost considerations led the agency to eliminate it. At first, the Smithsonian proposed a low hedge. It brought this design to the Commission of Fine Arts in April 2013, which rejected it. The Commission expressed "great concern about the possible loss of the symbolic meaning that had been skillfully woven into the design of both the landscape and the building". In July, the Smithsonian replaced the hedge with a low dull black granite wall. The Commission of Fine Arts approved that redesign, and the Smithsonian brought it to the National Capital Planning Commission. As of August 2013, the NCPC was anticipated to approve it.


text: Debate over the corona's finish continued into 2014 before being resolved. The Commission of Fine Arts repeatedly urged the architects to use bronze for the scrim, as it created a "shimmering, lustrous effect under many lighting conditions" and "conveyed dignity, permanence and beauty". Duranar paint was the first substitute proposed by the architects, but the commission members rejected it, noting that it had a "putty-like appearance under overcast conditions" and visually fell "far short of the beautiful poetic intention promised by the concept design". A second finish, the sprayable metal LuminOre, was rejected by the commission because it was difficult to produce in the high quality needed, and was prone to flaking and discoloration. Electroless plating and anodized aluminum were rejected because they lacked durability. A physical vapor deposition process involving a nickel-chrome plating was dismissed for not achieving the right color, luster, or warmth. In early 2014, tests were made with polyvinyl difluoride (PVDF). This coating was approved by the Commission of Fine Arts on February 20, 2014, and by the National Capital Planning Commission in April 2014.


text: The museum's groundbreaking ceremony took place on February 22, 2012. President Barack Obama and museum director Bunch were among the speakers at the ceremony. Actress Phylicia Rashād was the Master of Ceremonies for the event, which also featured poetry and music performed by Denyce Graves, Thomas Hampson, and the Heritage Signature Chorale.


text: Clark Construction Group, Smoot Construction, and H.J. Russell & Company won the contract to build the museum. The architectural firm of McKissack & McKissack (which was the first African American-owned architectural firm in the United States) provided project management services on behalf of the Smithsonian, and acted as liaison between the Smithsonian and public utilities and D.C. government agencies. Guy Nordenson and Associates and Robert Silman Associates were the structural engineers for the project.


text: The NAAMHC became the deepest museum on the National Mall. Excavators dug below grade to lay the foundations, although the building itself will be only deep. The museum is located at a low point on the Mall, and groundwater puts on the walls. To compensate, per minute of water were pumped out every day during construction of the foundation and below-grade walls, and a slurry of cement and sand injected into forms to stabilize the site. Lasers continually monitored the walls during construction for any signs of bulging or movement.


text: The first concrete for the foundations was poured in November 2012. As the lower levels were completed, cranes installed a segregated railroad passenger car and a guard tower from the Louisiana State Penitentiary on November 17, 2013. These items were so large that they could not be dismantled and installed at a later date. Instead, the museum had to be built around them. By late December 2013, construction was just weeks from finishing the five basement levels, and above-ground work was scheduled to begin in late January 2014. At that time, the Smithsonian estimated the museum would be finished in November 2015.


text: Guy Nordenson and Associates were the engineers for the superstructure of the museum building and long-span porch. Robert Silman Associates oversaw the engineering of the below-grade structure and exhibit structural support. The steel was fabricated by SteelFab, Inc. While the below-grade floors were made of reinforced concrete, with columns supporting each floor above, the above-grade floors were primarily exhibit space and needed to be kept column-free. To support the upper floors, four massive walls, consisting of steel frames and cast-in-place concrete infill, were constructed. Design and fabrication of the steel members of the above-ground structure required extreme precision, as the steel elements penetrated one another at more than 500 places and some beams had several hundred bolt-holes in them. All structural steel elements also had to work almost perfectly with the rebar and rebar couplers so that elements would not run into one another and yet maintain structural integrity. A system of girders around the fifth above-ground floor supported the corona. Some of these girders were so complex they required more than 180 parts. The long-span porch that covers the main entrance was built of long plate girders and box columns (also made of plate). A long steel camber beam at the midpoint helps support the porch roof. An elliptical monumental staircase runs continually between the above-ground floors. This staircase has no intermediate supports, and weighs in at more than . SteelFab fabricated more than of structural steel for the museum in conjunction with AIW, Inc. who fabricated the architecturally exposed, and ornamental steel and bronze metal work. SteelFab received an award from the Washington Building Congress for its work. ArchDaily has reported that the museum was named the winner for the architecture category and the overall winner for the Beazley Design of the Year award for 2017. According to the award criteria set by the Design Museum in London, the NMAAHC is "further solidified as promoting or delivering change, enabling access, extending design practice, or capturing the spirit of the year." Ozwald Boateng OBE, a jury member, made a statement expressing his thoughts on the NMAAHC: "We couldn't look any further than the Smithsonian for the overall award. It is a project of beautiful design, massive cultural impact, delivers an emotional experience, and has a scale deserve of this major award."


text: Topping out of the museum occurred in October 2014. That same month, the Smithsonian announced that the National Museum of African American History and Culture had received $162 million in donations toward the $250 million cost of constructing its building. To bolster the fundraising, the Smithsonian said it would contribute a portion of its $1.5 billion capital campaign to help complete the structure.


text: The entire steel superstructure and all above-ground concrete pouring was complete in January 2015. Glass for the windows and curtain walls began to be placed that same month, with glass enclosure of the building complete on April 14, 2015. That same day, the first of the structure's 3,600 bronze-colored panels for the building's corona were installed.


text: A worker was severely injured at the construction site on June 3, 2015, when scaffolding on the roof collapsed on top of him. 35-year-old Ivan Smyntyna was rushed to a local hospital, where he later died.


text: In January 2016, the Smithsonian set an opening day of September 24, 2016, for the museum's opening. President Barack Obama would dedicate the museum, which would be followed by a week of special events. The museum would open for extended hours during that week to accommodate crowds and visitors.


text: NMAAHC officials said that construction scaffolding around the exterior of the building should come down in April 2016, at which time some of the more dust-and-humidity resistant artifacts and displays could be installed. Installation of more delicate items would wait until the building's environmental controls had stabilized the interior humidity and removed most of the dust from the air. The museum identified 3,000 items in its collections which would form 11 initial exhibits. More than 130 video and audio installations would be installed as part of these exhibits.


text: In January 2016, the museum announced the receipt of a $10 million gift from David Rubenstein, CEO of The Carlyle Group and a Smithsonian regent, as well as a $1 million donation from Wells Fargo. As of January 30, 2016, the museum still needed to raise $40 million toward its $270 million construction goal.


text: Two unique documents, both signed by President Abraham Lincoln, would be loaned to the museum for its opening. These are commemorative copies of the 13th Amendment and the Emancipation Proclamation, of which only a limited number were printed. Few of these have survived. David Rubenstein purchased both items in 2012.


text: In late March 2016, Microsoft announced a $1 million donation to the museum. On March 27, the museum drew criticism for agreeing to include a small number of items from the career of actor Bill Cosby in a planned exhibit about African Americans in the entertainment industry. Women who have accused Cosby of sexual assault objected to the display. In response to the resulting controversy, the museum added the following sentence to its description of Cosby's career: "In recent years, revelations about alleged sexual misconduct have cast a shadow over Cosby's entertainment career and severely damaged his reputation."


text: Google donated $1 million to the museum in early September 2016. The technology firm had previously worked with the NMAAHC to create a 3D interactive exhibit which allows visitors to see artifacts in a close-up, 360-degree view using their mobile phone. The 3D exhibit was created by designers and engineers from the Black Googler Network.


text: On September 16, 2016, violinist Edward W. Hardy composed and performed "Evolution - Inspired by the Evolution of Black Music" for the Congressional Black Caucus at a Google sponsored event in Howard Theatre. This event was a part of the opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.


text: On September 23, 2016, "The Washington Post" reported that Robert F. Smith, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, had given $20 million to the NMAAHC. The gift was second-largest in the museum's history, exceeded only by the $21 million donated by Oprah Winfrey.


text: Ava DuVernay was commissioned by the museum to create a film which debuted at the museum's opening on September 24, 2016. This film, "August 28: A Day in the Life of a People" (2016), tells of six significant events in African-American history that happened on the same date, August 28. The 22-minute film stars Lupita Nyong'o, Don Cheadle, Regina King, David Oyelowo, Angela Bassett, Michael Ealy, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, André Holland and Glynn Turman. Events depicted include William IV's royal assent to the UK Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, the 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi, the release of Motown's first number-one song, “Please Mr. Postman” by The Marvellettes, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech, the landfall of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the night then-senator Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.


text: On September 24, 2016, President Barack Obama formally opened the new museum along with four generations of the Bonner family, from 99-year-old Ruth Bonner to Ruth's great-granddaughter Christine. Together with the Obamas, Ruth and her family rang the Freedom Bell (rather than cut a ribbon) to officially open the museum. The bell came from the first Baptist church organized by and for African Americans, founded in 1776 in Williamsburg, Virginia, where at the time it was unlawful for blacks to congregate or preach.


text: The total cost of the museum's design, construction, and installation of exhibits was $540 million ($ in dollars). By the time the museum's founding fundraising campaign had ended, the NMAAHC had raised $386 million ($ in dollars), 143 percent more than its goal of $270 million.


text: More than 600,000 people visited the museum in its first three months. The Smithsonian required all visitors to have a ticket to access the museum. At first, the organization used pre-purchased timed-entry tickets, combined with a limited number of same-day tickets released every morning. The timed-entry tickets allowed visitors to enter at a specific time of day, with a shorter wait in line than would be expected if everyone showed up at the same time. Patron traffic proved so heavy that the NMAAHC began offering many fewer same-day tickets, and changed their release from early morning to early afternoon.


text: After six months, 1.2 million people had visited the NMAAHC, making it one of the four most-visited Smithsonian museums. Patrons spent an average of six hours at the museum; twice as long as had been estimated before the museum's opening. The museum's popularity led to some problems. Visitors stood in line in the museum foyer to take an elevator down to the underground level. The exhibits start with the Middle Passage and slavery where the hallway is intentionally designed to be cramped and somewhat claustrophobic. The large number of visitors who stop to read the exhibit's signs caused dangerous overcrowding. Museum officials began to limit the number of people who could take the elevator (and thus enter the exhibit) to mitigate this problem, although this led to still longer lines in the foyer.


text: Smithsonian officials announced that the museum had 3 million visitors in its first full year of operation. An average of 8,000 people a day attended the museum, double the number anticipated. The museum has become an "essential stop" for tourists, and patrons are diverse and international (not just African American and domestic). The heavy attendance has caused wear and tear on the museum.


text: The museum reassessed the use of timed-entry passes in October 2017, and suspended the use of timed-entry ticketing on weekdays in September 2018. Overwhelming demand for entry led the museum to reinstitute the timed-entry ticketing policy for weekdays in October 2018.


text: By the end of 2018, the museum had received just under 5 million visitors since it opened, 1.9 million of whom visited in 2018. It was the organization's sixth most-visited museum, behind the National Portrait Gallery (2.3 million) and ahead of the National Zoo (1.8 million).


text: In 2007, the NMAAHC became the first major museum to open on the Web before completing a physical structure. The web site included the museum's first exhibit, mounted in New York City. The site was also designed to encourage collaboration between scholars and the public. The main feature of the web-based initiative was the Memory Book application, which allowed individuals to contribute to the web site pictures, a story, or an audio application to spotlight unique experiences in African-American culture.


text: In January 2012, the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Museum of American History partnered with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (which owns Jefferson's home, Monticello) to create a major new exhibit, "Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello: Paradox of Liberty." The exhibition opened on January 12, 2012, at the National Museum of American History, and closed on October 14, 2012. The exhibit received nationwide attention, garnering articles from sources such as the Associated Press, Huffington Post, National Public Radio, the "New York Times", United Press International, "USA Today", and the "Washington Post". The exhibit was created by Rex Ellis (an associate director of the NMAAHC) and Elizabeth Chew (a curator at Monticello). It was accompanied by a companion book, "'Those Who Labor for My Happiness': Slavery at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello", by Lucia Stanton. NMAAHC director Lonnie Bunch III said that the exhibit explored one way in which slavery might be presented at the National Museum of African American History and Culture when it opens in 2015.


text: "Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello" also received attention for the striking statue of Jefferson that graced the exhibit entrance. The Smithsonian used a Minolta 3D scanner to create a digital image of a life-size bronze statue of Jefferson which is located at Monticello. RedEye on Demand (a subsidiary of Stratasys) used a fused deposition modeling printer, which laid down tiny layers of molten plastic to slowly build the statue. The statue was "printed" in four sections, which were then put together, detailed, and painted. Smithsonian officials were so pleased with the process that they began laying plans use it to laser image and 3D print a vast number of items in their collection, which they could then share inexpensively with the rest of the world.


text: Other pre-opening exhibitions include "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing: The Apollo Theater and American Entertainment" (2010), "For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights" (2010), "The Scurlock Studio and Black Washington: Picturing The Promise" (2009), and "Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits" (2007).


text: The Smithsonian Institution listed the number of items in the museum collection in 2012 as either more than 18,000 pieces or more than 25,000 pieces. CBS News reported in May 2015 that the collection size had grown to 33,000 objects, although this had risen to more than 40,000 objects by May 2019. About 3,500 items are on display to the public.


text: Items obtained by the museum initially were received, conserved, and stored at the Smithsonian Museum Support Center in Suitland, Maryland. Dozens of permanent curatorial staff and temporary contractors accessed the items, repaired them, and conserved them in a temperature- and humidity-controlled environment. Renée Anderson, the NMAAHC's head of collections, oversaw the effort. After artifacts were selected for display, graphics and labels for each item were manufactured. Display cases for each item were also purchased, and exhibiting mounts or specially designed cases handcrafted for particularly fragile, important, or unusually sized objects. Museum officials said all artifacts and displays will be moved into the new museum in the summer of 2016, along with the museum's 175 full-time employees.


text: In November 2016, NBA player LeBron James donated $2.5 million to support the museum's exhibit on the accomplishments of boxer Muhammad Ali.


text: Lonnie Bunch III was the museum's founding director being appointed in 2005, overseeing collections, traveling exhibitions as well as planning and building. On May 28, 2019, Bunch was elected Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. He became the Smithsonian's first African-American leader. The interim director of NMAAHC was history professor Spencer Crew. Poet and professor Kevin Young was appointed director in September 2020.


text: Sweet Home Café is a 400-seat, luncheon-only restaurant located inside the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Jerome Grant is the executive chef, and the restaurant is managed by Restaurant Associates in association with Thompson Hospitality. Joanne Hyppolite, NMAAHC curator for cultural expressions, oversees the restaurant as well as the museum's exhibits on foodways and cuisine. The cafeteria opened on September 24, 2016. It was named a 2017 semifinalist by the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant.


text: The restaurant features four food stations, where main and side dishes, desserts, and beverages important to the African American experience or developed by African Americans may be purchased. These include the Agricultural South station, the Creole Coast station, the North States, and the Western Range. Each station offers several vegetarian entrees in addition to meat dishes.


text: In designing the museum, the Smithsonian was influenced by the development of the Mitsitam Café at the National Museum of the American Indian. That cafeteria had been established to acquaint museum-goers with the rich food heritage of indigenous peoples of the Americas. Mitsitam Café not only proved popular and won culinary awards, it made a substantial profit. The idea of regional food stations came from Dr. Jessica B. Harris, a food scholar who researched the food of African Americans from the colonial era to the present and presented her research to the museum's scholarly committee in 2013. Albert Lukas, a supervising chef at Sweet Home Café, traveled the United States for two years to find recipes and interview home cooks and professional chefs. A committee of chefs, curators, and historians spent another two years working out the restaurant's concept, visual design, and menu. The final menu was designed by executive chef Grant not only to showcase the kinds of food African Americans of different regions ate at different times in American history, but also to demonstrate the impact African Americans had on both home cooking and haute cuisine in the broader society.


text: Chef Carla Hall, co-host of the television show "The Chew", was named a "culinary ambassador" for the restaurant. She engages in public outreach for the restaurant and museum.


text: In a review for "The New York Times", art critic Holland Cotter wrote, "The extremely complex narrative, with uplift and tragedy seemingly on a fixed collision course, spreads over five floors of galleries", and that it "holds some of the oldest and most disturbing material." Cotter added that "It's great that the museum mixes everything together: It means you can't just select a comfortable version of history." He concluded, "[I] hope, actually — that the museum will never be finished, or consider itself so; that its take on African-American history, which is American history, stays fluid, critical and richly confused: real, in other words."


text: "The Wall Street Journal"'s critic at large, Edward Rothstein, suggested that "even a full day's visit is insufficient for a careful survey. That alone is an imposing achievement". Rothstein wrote that the "museum is illuminating, disturbing, moving—and flawed". He wrote that we "see the evolution of African-American newspapers, businesses, churches and other institutions. Galleries devoted to music and sports make it plain how much African-American history and culture is simply American history and culture." He also wrote that there is a "reluctance, too, to cast doubt on one perspective or another, or to give a nuanced assessment of conflicts. The actual doctrines of Elijah Muhammad, a leader of the Nation of Islam and mentor to Malcolm X, are unmentioned. And, more troubling, the Black Panthers are characterized as if they were defensively armed social workers, a PC view of radicalism that recurs in other contexts.". Museum reviewer Diana Muir, while criticizing the Museum for repeatedly misleading visitors by failing to put facts in "comparative perspective" a deficiency that "misleads curators into making sweeping claims like the assertion in the introductory room that before 1400 "slavery was a temporary status," nevertheless concluded that "Taken as a whole, however, the NMAAHC shows that it is possible to do an identity museum well, to build a museum on a foundation of rigorous scholarship that can inform, excite, and even inspire."


text: The lack of material on Justice Clarence Thomas drew criticism and prompted the introduction of a resolution by six GOP senators which argued that Thomas should have a "prominent place" in the museum.


text: "Los Angeles Times" architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne wrote that the museum is the "most impressive and ambitious public building to go up in Washington in a generation" and that despite "some flaws and unfortunate signs of cost-cutting, the design succeeds almost precisely to the degree that it is enigmatic and even fickle, spanning huge gulfs in the national character without being naive enough to try to close them. The building embraces memory and aspiration, protest and reconciliation, pride and shame."


text: In "The Plain Dealer", Susan Glaser wrote that the museum "is really two museums in one: Its historical exhibits encompasses about 60 percent of the gallery space, while cultural exhibits take up the other 40 percent." She wrote that the museum is "filled with difficult truths", such as a "statue of Thomas Jefferson, author of the words 'All Men Are Created Equal,' who is depicted in front of a brick wall – and on every brick, the name of one of his 609 slaves, including at least six who were his own children." But she wrote that "[i]t was the coffin of Emmett Till that finally got to me." She describes 14-year-old Till, who was lynched for allegedly whistling at a white woman: "Though his body was severely disfigured, his mother insisted on an open casket at his funeral, hoping to show the world the effects of racial injustice. It helped ignite the civil rights movement."


text: Because of its lengthy name and the unpronounceable acronym NMAAHC derived from it, a few journalists, following the trend established on social media, used the nickname "the Blacksonian" for the museum, based on its content and its relationship to the Smithsonian.


text: "The Washington Post" architectural critic Philip Kennicott assessed the museum as its one-year anniversary, concluding that the NMAAHC has "changed the center of gravity on the Mall" and created "energy along 14th Street and Constitution Avenue NW that feels new, and welcome". Generally effusive in his praise, Kennicott found the museum to have an "allusive and mediated" feel, as opposed to the traditional "magisterial and transparent" aesthetic of most museums. He singled out the way the corona cast shadows in the interior, the dramatic way the corona framed nearby monuments and memorials, and the museum's art gallery. Kennicott was unhappy with "the jumble of elevations throughout the history galleries". The problem particularly affected the Contemplative Court (where corrosion was also affecting the ceiling less than a year later). Museum designers correctly concluded that the cramped entrance to the underground galleries would create a powerful and negative emotional reaction, he said, but the side-effect has been to create a "fundamental flaw" in the museum by creating a terrific bottleneck in visitor traffic. A 2018 exhibition review in the "Chicago Tribune" noted the museum is practically — and unexpectedly to the museum's planners — "one of the toughest tickets to get in American culture" and posited that this was "proof that the nation wanted desperately to grapple with some of the thorniest questions about the people it brought here by force".


text: In mid-July 2020, the museum removed a controversial chart from their website titled "Aspects and Assumptions of Whiteness & White Culture in the United States" that had been put up on March 31. Some examples that were claimed to be part of white culture were objectivity; rational, linear thinking; emphasis on the scientific method; hard work being the key to success; delayed gratification; the nuclear family; self-reliance; and being polite. After criticism, museum officials apologized and removed the chart, explaining that it did not contribute to the discussion as planned.


title: Geneviève Castrée

text: Geneviève Elverum ( Gosselin; April 9, 1981 – July 9, 2016), also known as Geneviève Castrée, was a Canadian cartoonist, illustrator, and musician from Quebec. An early admirer of comics, she began creating them at a young age. L'Oie de Cravan published her first book, "Lait Frappé", in 2000. By 2004 she had released three more books—"Die Fabrik, Roulatheque Roulatheque Nicolore" and "Pamplemoussi". The latter is considered her artistic breakthrough.


title: Geneviève Castrée

text: Her 2012 book "Susceptible" gave her international success and was followed by a book of poems in French entitled "Maman Sauvage" in 2015. Her next two works "A Bubble" and "Maman Apprivoisée" were both released posthumously. She also recorded a total of eight albums under the name Woelv and Ô Paon (stylized in all caps).


title: Geneviève Castrée

text: In 2003, Castrée met musician Phil Elverum, and the two married the following year. In 2015, she gave birth to their first child. That same year, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She succumbed to the disease in 2016. Elverum later recorded a series of albums centered around her life and death.


title: Geneviève Castrée

text: Geneviève Gosselin was born in Loretteville, Quebec, in 1981. She grew up reading "Tintin" comics from an early age, so much so that she eventually entered, studied for, and won a "Tintin" competition. From an early age, she was drawing comics influenced by artists she loved, including Hergé, Renée French, Chester Brown, Julie Doucet, and Argentinian artist Quino. Doucet in particular had a significant influence on Castrée, influencing her character design and lettering style.


title: Geneviève Castrée

text: When Gosselin was five, her father left her and her mother. At age fifteen, Gosselin traveled around Canada and reunited with her absentee father. Although their relationship was strained, Gosselin's father did build her a log cabin to live in. In her teens, Gosselin, without formal training, began her cartooning career, publishing minicomics and adopting the name Geneviève Castrée.


title: Geneviève Castrée

text: Gosselin had a troubled relationship with her mother, experiencing both a deep connection and feelings of alienation and belittlement. Her relationship with her father was less contentious but also less intimate.


title: Geneviève Castrée

text: In 2000, Montréal publisher L'Oie de Cravan published her first book, "Lait Frappé", followed by "Die Fabrik" that same year and "Roulatheque Roulatheque Nicolore" in 2001, but it was "Pamplemoussi" in 2004 that served as her artistic breakthrough. The release marked her first major movement to integrate her music and visual art into one cohesive practice.


title: Geneviève Castrée

text: In 2012, Castrée released "Susceptible", a graphic novel that chronicles her childhood growing up in Quebec through the character of Goglu, her childhood nickname. It was released to critical acclaim and saw her achieve international success, as well as helping her feel "unburdened" by her memories of her mother. In 2015, "Maman Sauvage", a book of poems in French detailing Castrée's feelings as a mother, was published by L'Oie de Cravan under the name Geneviève Elverum. Following her death, Castrée was included in "The Best American Comics 2016", edited by Roz Chast.


title: Geneviève Castrée

text: In 2017, her final book, "A Bubble", was posthumously published by Drawn & Quarterly, having been completed by Portland artist Anders Nilsen and Elverum. They were initially wary about finishing it but concluded that it would be better for the book to be in a state of "easy readability rather than burden it with the awkward unfinished look, too cloaked in its context to be functional as a standalone thing." Castrée left instructions for its creation after her death. According to Elverum, she worked on it until her "literal final days". The book was created for her daughter as a gift, although she did intend for it to be published. It centers around their relationship and Castrée's struggle with cancer, which she compares to living in a bubble. It features sparse text and is instead primarily told via an image per page. It concludes with an afterword by Elverum. Elverum noted that its creation was Castrée's way of coping.


title: Geneviève Castrée

text: A book of poems entitled "Maman Apprivoisée" was released in 2018. It consists of 44 poems written in French and English. It deals with her feelings surrounding her giving birth in 2015, and being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer the same year. Elverum has said that he is putting together a book of poems by her as well as a monograph of her illustrations.


title: Geneviève Castrée

text: A self-taught musician, Castrée's first release was an accompanying LP to her 2004 book "Pamplemoussi", recorded and mixed by Thomas Shields and Matt Skillings of the band Run Chico Run. The two artists provided many of the instruments and backing tracks to the album, as well as musical training and financing for the recording.


title: Geneviève Castrée

text: The album was recorded and mixed in Victoria, British Columbia. It is lo-fi in nature, with Castrée singing in French over "childlike" instruments, such as a keyboard and recorder.


title: Geneviève Castrée

text: Under the name Woelv, Castrée released the 2006 EP "Gris" via Elverum's label P.W. Elverum & Sun, Ltd. "Gris" saw her expand on her already-established lo-fi sound. Her final release under the Woelv name came in 2007 as "Tout Seul Dans La Forêt En Plein Jour, Avez-vous Peur?" (English: "Alone in the Forest in the Middle of the Day, Are You Scared?"). The album was recorded in Olympia, Washington, via K Records, with Elverum once again involved.


title: Geneviève Castrée

text: In 2009, Castrée established her own label and began releasing music under the name Ô Paon. In 2010, she released an LP, "Courses", recorded at Hotel2Tango, Montreal, with Thierry Amar, and in 2015 released "Fleuve", recorded with Elverum and featuring Nicholas Krgovich and Lori Goldston.


title: Geneviève Castrée

text: Castrée also made appearances on recordings by Mount Eerie, Thanksgiving, Karl Blau, D+ and Aidan Baker. She and Elverum helped create the What The Heck Fest. She released a total of eight albums under both names.


title: Geneviève Castrée

text: Castrée's literary work often dealt with topics such as loyalty, her relationship with her parents and childhood abuse. They were typically of a discreet nature, and often eschewed typical comics paneling, alongside using negative space and open page layouts, among other techniques. Her work featured a meticulous folk art style that made heavy use of vibrant color. Her characters were often expressive, being described as "fragile" and "broken", and were drawn with "wiggly" arms and "bending" legs. Themes such as sorrow and elation were present throughout her work in a symbiotic manner.


title: Geneviève Castrée

text: Castrée was married to musician Phil Elverum, who has released music as the Microphones and Mount Eerie. They met in 2003 and married in 2004. They originally intended to move to Canada but after searching for residency decided to remain in the United States, in the town of Anacortes, Washington, where Elverum grew up. Castrée was also close friends with musician Lori Goldston and poet Joanne Kyger. French was Castrée's primary language.


title: Geneviève Castrée

text: Castrée was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2015, shortly after the birth of her and Elverum's only child. In June 2016, a GoFundMe account was set up by Elverum to assist with their finances. She died on July 9, 2016, at the age of 35. Her husband soon posted an update: "She died at home with me and her parents holding her, hopefully having reached some last minute peace".


title: Geneviève Castrée

text: Her widower, Phil Elverum, released three albums under his Mount Eerie project – "A Crow Looked at Me", "Now Only" and "Lost Wisdom pt. 2" – which chronicle Castrée's life and mourn her early death. Katherine Paul's debut album "Mother of My Children" was inspired by Castrée's death, whom Paul described as her "mentor". Clyde Petersen was inspired by Castrée's death to release an album he had recorded while briefly house-sitting for Castrée and Elverum. Many other artists paid tribute to her. Anders Nilsen called her "one of my favorite people in the world and one of my favorite artists". Former publisher Chris Oliveros expressed graditude and pride at having worked with her and published her works.


title: Posca

text: Posca was an Ancient Roman drink made by mixing wine vinegar and water. Bracing but less nutritious and palatable than wine, it was typically a drink for soldiers, the lower classes, and slaves.


title: Posca

text: The word "posca" is derived from either the Latin "potor" ("to drink") or from the Greek "epoxos" ("very sharp"). As the Greeks lacked a word for "posca", sources written in Greek, such as Plutarch and the Gospels, use the word οξος ("oxos", "vinegar") in its place (translated as "acetum" in the Vulgate Bible). The word eventually migrated into Greek from about the sixth century AD onwards as the Byzantine army continued the Roman tradition, drinking what they termed "phouska". This word (sometimes rendered "phoukas") may in some contexts mean beer.What it certainly meant originally, like Latin "posca", was vinegar-and-water, the regular beverage of the classical Roman army on bad days. Thus Aetius gives, and Paul of Aegina repeats, a recipe for a "palatable and laxative "phouska"" which includes cumin, fennel seed, pennyroyal, celery seed, anise, thyme, scammony and salt to be added to the basic liquid, which is explicitly called "oxykraton" "vinegar diluted with water."


title: Posca

text: The widespread use of posca is attested by numerous mentions by ancient sources ranging from the "Natural History" of Pliny the Elder to the comedies of Plautus. When on campaign, generals and emperors could show their solidarity with common soldiers by drinking posca, as did Cato the Elder (as recorded by Plutarch) and the emperor Hadrian, who according to the "Historia Augusta" "actually led a soldier’s life […] and, after the example of Scipio Aemilianus, Metellus, and his own adoptive father Trajan, cheerfully ate out of doors such camp-fare as bacon, cheese and vinegar." A decree of AD 360 ordered that lower ranks of the army should drink posca and wine on alternate days.


title: Posca

text: Girolamo Cardano, in his "Encomium Neronis" of 1562, attributed the superiority of the Roman armies to only three factors: the great quantities of levies, their sturdiness and ability to carry heavy weights due to training, and good foods such as salted pork, cheese, and the use of posca as a drink.


title: Wyoming-class battleship

text: The "Wyoming" class was a pair of dreadnought battleships built for the United States Navy. and were authorized in early 1909, and were built between 1910 and 1912. These were the fourth dreadnought design of the US Navy, but only an incremental improvement over the preceding , and the last US battleships to use 12-inch guns. The primary changes were the adoption of a more powerful /50 caliber Mark 7 gun, addition of a sixth twin-gun turret and improved armor protection, including the first use of a torpedo bulkhead on American battleships. The Navy considered using more powerful guns, but this would have caused delays and required larger docks.


title: Wyoming-class battleship

text: The two ships frequently served together, first in the Atlantic Fleet in the 1910s. Both vessels were deployed to British waters after the United States entered World War I in April 1917 to reinforce the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet. They served in the Pacific Fleet in 1919–21, before both returned to the Atlantic Fleet. Much of their time in the Atlantic Fleet was spent conducting peacetime training exercises, along with taking midshipmen from the US Naval Academy on training cruises. "Wyoming" and "Arkansas" were heavily modernized in the mid-1920s, receiving more efficient oil-fired boilers to replace their old coal-fired models, thicker deck armor to protect against plunging fire, anti-torpedo bulges to increase their resistance to underwater damage, and anti-aircraft guns to defend against aerial attacks.


title: Wyoming-class battleship

text: The London Naval Treaty of 1930 mandated that "Wyoming" be demilitarized; she accordingly was converted into a training ship, with half of her main battery turrets, belt armor, and anti-torpedo bulges removed. However, "Arkansas" was permitted to continue in service with the fleet. After the United States entered World War II, "Arkansas" was used to escort convoys to North Africa. By 1944, she served as a coastal bombardment vessel; in this role, she supported Allied landings at Normandy (Operation Overlord) and southern France (Operation Dragoon) before being transferred to the Pacific, where she provided fire support to Marines fighting on Iwo Jima and at Okinawa in 1945. "Wyoming" meanwhile continued as a training ship, being modified further in 1944 to include the various types of anti-aircraft guns that trainees would operate in the fleet. Both ships were decommissioned shortly after the war, with "Arkansas" being expended as a target ship during the 1946 nuclear tests at Operation Crossroads, and "Wyoming" being sold for scrap in 1947.


title: Wyoming-class battleship

text: On 22 July 1908, the Newport Conference was held; this included the General Board, the staff of the Naval War College, President Theodore Roosevelt—who had a keen interest in naval matters—and other officers. This conference examined a series of issues relating to existing battleships and new designs; the first of these new ships would become the "Wyoming" class. The Board on Construction received general instructions from the Newport Conference; those at the conference favored adopting the 14-inch gun, as the British Royal Navy had already traded their 12-inch guns for pieces. The Bureau of Ordnance (BuOrd) estimated that design work on the new gun, production, and testing would take two years. On 26 August, the Secretary of the Navy, Victor Metcalf, issued a request for eight- and ten-gun battleships armed with the 14-inch weapons to the Bureau of Construction and Repair (C&R). Speed was to be at least , with as much armor as could be accommodated.


title: Wyoming-class battleship

text: BuOrd argued that at likely battle ranges, , the 12-inch gun was powerful enough to penetrate existing armor, and so the 14-inch gun was unnecessary. C&R produced three designs to meet Metcalf's request, all based on the preceding design; the first, referred to as design 404, was a battleship armed with eight 14-inch guns. The second, design 502, had an additional twin turret for a total of ten 14-inch guns. The third, design 601, would be fitted with twelve 12-inch guns. The General Board chose 601, since the design work for the 14-inch gun had not begun, and adopting it would have caused the class to be delayed. In addition, the ships' displacement would have increased more dramatically with the larger gun, requiring extensive improvements to harbor facilities; design 502 would have only been able to dock in Pearl Harbor and Puget Sound with the existing facilities. The placement of the secondary battery also proved to be problematic. The cruise of the Great White Fleet in 1907–09 had demonstrated the problems with casemates on the main deck. They were too easily washed out in even moderate seas, making them unusable. Some officers at the Newport Conference had advocated placing them in the superstructure, but the heavy guns used by the Navy would have added excessive top weight. Another alternative was to place them in the forecastle, but the additional weight forward would have strained the ship where the forecastle stepped down to the main deck. The designers ultimately settled on a full-length forecastle, which allowed the casemates to be moved about higher in the hull.


title: Wyoming-class battleship

text: The ships' armor protection was improved over earlier designs. The belt and barbette armor was increased by an inch compared to an earlier version of the twelve-gun battleship. A new protection scheme for the funnels was devised, after the Russian experience at the Battle of Tsushima three years before had highlighted the risk of a destroyed exhaust system. The designers also emphasized the need for improved underwater protection. As a result, the "Wyoming"s design incorporated a torpedo bulkhead, the first time the feature was included on an American battleship design. Congress approved two new battleships, BB-32 and BB-33, on 3 March 1909. Design 502 later proved to be the basis for the subsequent class of battleships, the s.


title: Wyoming-class battleship

text: The ships of the "Wyoming" class were long at the waterline and long overall. They had a beam of and a draft of . The ships displaced as designed and up to at full load. They had a full length flush deck, which improved sea-keeping and the ability to work the secondary guns in heavier seas. Both ships were fitted with lattice masts. Their transverse metacentric height was . Freeboard was forward, amidships, at the aftmost turret, and at the stern. They had a crew of 58 officers and 1,005 enlisted men.


title: Wyoming-class battleship

text: The ships were powered by four-shaft Parsons steam turbines rated at . Steam was provided by twelve mixed oil and coal-fired Babcock & Wilcox boilers, which were trunked into two closely spaced funnels amidships. The engines generated a top speed of , though on speed trials "Arkansas" made from . Fuel capacity was of coal and of oil. This allowed the ships to cruise for at a speed of . At , the range fell considerably, to . Steering was controlled by a single rudder.


title: Wyoming-class battleship

text: The ships were armed with a main battery of twelve 12-inch/50 caliber Mark 7 Mod 0 guns in six Mark IX twin-gun turrets all on the centerline, two of which were placed in a superfiring pair forward. The other four turrets were placed aft of the superstructure in two superfiring pairs. These guns fired a shell with a propellant charge, which produced a muzzle velocity of . "Wyoming" and "Arkansas" were the only ships of the US Navy to receive the gun; earlier dreadnoughts were equipped with the lower-velocity 12-inch/45-caliber Mark 5 gun. The Mark 7 had significantly better armor penetrating capabilities, owing to its higher muzzle velocity (and thus higher striking velocity). At a range of , the gun could penetrate of contemporary face-hardened armor, compared to for the Mark 5. The guns were mounted in the Mark IX gun turret, which allowed for elevation to 15 degrees and depression to −5 degrees. Unlike the turrets used on earlier dreadnoughts, the Mark IX turret required the guns to return to 0 degrees to reload.


title: Wyoming-class battleship

text: The secondary battery consisted of twenty-one 5-inch/51 caliber guns mounted in casemates along the side of the hull. These guns fired a shell with a charge of , at a muzzle velocity of . As was standard for capital ships of the period, they carried a pair of submerged torpedo tubes in the hull on the broadside. They were equipped with the Mark III Bliss-Leavitt design, which carried a warhead and had a range of at a speed of .


title: Wyoming-class battleship

text: The main armored belt, which was high, was thick over the central portion of the ship, where it protected the ammunition magazines and machinery spaces. The belt reduced to toward the stern. On the bottom edge it was reduced to . The forward end of the belt was connected with an 11 in thick transverse bulkhead with the forward-most main battery barbette, while the aft end of the belt was connected with a 9 in bulkhead. The main armored deck was of special treatment steel, reduced to in less critical areas. The conning tower had thick sides and a thick roof.


title: Wyoming-class battleship

text: The gun turrets had thick faces and 3 in thick roofs. Their supporting barbettes had 11 in thick sides where they were exposed; the portions that were masked by the armored belt were reduced to . The lower half of the casemate armor was 11 in thick, and the upper half was reduced to . Inboard of the casemate battery were longitudinal armored bulkheads; these were designed to protect the uptakes to the funnels. These were deemed important because during the Russo-Japanese War, three years before, Russian battleships had had their uptakes damaged, which ducted the boiler smoke into the ship rather than out through the funnels.


title: Wyoming-class battleship

text: Both ships were significantly modified throughout their careers. During and shortly after World War I, the horizontal armor of the ships was improved, including the roofs of the conning tower and the gun turrets. Their deck armor was increased to , and eight /50 caliber anti-aircraft guns were installed. Following the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty in February 1922, modernization work was strictly controlled. The treaty governed what modifications could be made to existing ships, and included restrictions on what could be changed or added. Displacement could rise by no more than and no alterations of any kind could be made to the main battery guns or mounts. The primary areas that could be improved were those that concerned defense against aerial and underwater attack, along with propulsion systems.


title: Wyoming-class battleship

text: The two "Wyoming"s, along with the "Florida"s and "New York"s, were heavily modernized in the 1920s. All six ships were converted to completely oil-fired boilers with equipment taken from the cancelled "South Dakota"-class battleships. The boilers were trunked into a single funnel. These boilers were much more efficient than the coal-fired models the ships had been completed with, and they allowed a significantly greater cruising radius of . The ships were also fitted with anti-torpedo bulges, which improved their underwater defense and also provided additional oil storage capacity. "Wyoming" and "Arkansas" lost their cage main mast, which was replaced by a short tripod mast that carried searchlights and radio antennas. Some of their secondary battery guns were relocated higher in the ship to improve their workability in heavy seas. A sponson for six guns was built into the hull abreast of the conning tower and the eight 3-inch anti-aircraft guns were moved to the top of the sponson. Both ships had their torpedo tubes removed.


title: Wyoming-class battleship

text: Under the terms of the 1930 London Naval Treaty, "Wyoming" was to be demilitarized and converted into a training ship. During the demilitarization process, her anti-torpedo bulges, side armor, and half of her main battery guns were removed. "Wyoming" was modernized at Norfolk Navy Yard from 12 January to 3 April 1944; the reconstruction removed the last of her three 12-inch gun turrets, and replaced them with four twin and two single enclosed mounts for 5-inch/38 caliber guns. New fire control radars were also installed; these modifications allowed "Wyoming" to train anti-aircraft gunners with the most modern equipment they would use while in combat with the fleet. Modifications to "Arkansas" during World War II were kept to a minimum. In 1942, "Arkansas" received a new tripod foremast and bridgework, along with more anti-aircraft guns throughout the war. By 1945, she carried nine quadruple 40 mm Bofors mounts and twenty-eight 20 mm Oerlikons, and the number of 3-inch guns had been increased to ten.


title: Wyoming-class battleship

text: After entering service, both ships were assigned to the Atlantic Fleet. The ships took part in the normal routine of training and fleet maneuvers off the east coast of the United States and in the Caribbean, interspersed with periodic maintenance. Both ships toured the Mediterranean in late 1913, making stops in Italy and France, among others. In April 1914, "Arkansas" was involved in the occupation of Veracruz during the Mexican Revolution, and "Wyoming" arrived later to support the operation. Two men from "Arkansas" earned the Medal of Honor for their actions during the initial occupation of the city. After the United States declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917, "Wyoming", along with the rest of Battleship Division 9 (BatDiv 9), steamed to Britain to reinforce the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet, stationed in Scapa Flow. "Arkansas" initially remained in the United States, training gun crews for the expanding wartime fleet. In July 1918, she too was sent to Britain. Neither ship saw action during the war, though they were present when the German High Seas Fleet surrendered in November 1918.


title: Wyoming-class battleship

text: From mid-1919 to mid-1921, "Arkansas" and "Wyoming" served in the Pacific Fleet, with the latter serving as the flagship of BatDiv 6. During this time, the ships made a tour of Central and South American countries, culminating in a visit to Valparaiso, where they took part in a naval review for the Chilean president. Both battleships returned in service with the Atlantic Fleet in mid-1921. They returned to their peacetime routine of training and maneuvers and periodic maintenance. In the summers, the ships would generally take midshipmen from the US Naval Academy on training cruises. In June 1925, "Arkansas" assisted relief efforts after the 1925 Santa Barbara earthquake. From late 1925 to late 1926, "Arkansas" received her reconstruction, followed by "Wyoming" in 1927. In 1929 and 1930, "Arkansas" visited European waters on midshipmen cruises; she made stops in several countries. "Wyoming" was reduced to a training ship in 1931 in accordance with the London Naval Treaty, and she spent the next decade conducting training cruises for midshipmen and NROTC cadets.


title: Wyoming-class battleship

text: From early 1932 to early 1934, "Arkansas" returned for another stint in the Pacific Fleet, followed by another tour of Europe later in the year. After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, she was assigned to the reserve force for the Neutrality Patrols. She supported the occupation of Iceland in July 1941 as an escort for the troopship convoys. In November, as it became increasingly apparent that the United States would become involved in World War II, "Wyoming" was reassigned as a gunnery training ship, a role she served in for the duration of the war. "Arkansas", meanwhile, continued in front-line service during the war, first as an escort to convoys to North Africa, and then as a shore bombardment vessel. She supported the landings at Normandy in June 1944, shelling German positions at Omaha Beach, before bombarding Cherbourg later in the month. Her next bombardment mission came with Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France, in August that year. She was then transferred to the Pacific Theater of Operations for action against the Japanese. She bombarded Japanese positions on Iwo Jima in February 1945 and on Okinawa in April.


title: Wyoming-class battleship

text: With the end of the war in September 1945, "Arkansas" was employed with Operation Magic Carpet, repatriating American soldiers in the Pacific. "Wyoming" remained in service briefly after the war, though she was decommissioned in August 1947. She was sold for scrap in October and subsequently broken up. "Arkansas" was instead retained for use as a target ship during the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests in mid-1946. She survived the first test, an air-burst code-named ABLE, though the second experiment, an underwater detonation code-named BAKER, sank the ship.


title: Nyckelharpa

text: A nyckelharpa (, "keyed fiddle", or literally "key harp", plural ) is the national musical instrument of Sweden. It is a string instrument or chordophone. Its keys are attached to tangents which, when a key is depressed, serve as frets to change the pitch of the string.


title: Nyckelharpa

text: The nyckelharpa is similar in appearance to a fiddle or the big Sorb geige or viol. Structurally, it is more closely related to the hurdy-gurdy, both employing key-actuated tangents to change the pitch.


title: Nyckelharpa

text: A depiction of two instruments, possibly but not confirmed nyckelharpas, can be found in a relief dating from on one of the gates of Källunge Church in Gotland. Early church paintings are found in Siena, Italy, dating to 1408 and in different churches in Denmark and Sweden, such as Tolfta Church, Sweden, which dates to . Other very early pictures are to be found in Hildesheim, Germany, dating to .


title: Nyckelharpa

text: The (nyckelharpa) is also mentioned in , a famous work written in 1620 by the German organist Michael Praetorius (1571–1621). The Swedish province of Uppland has been a stronghold for nyckelharpa music since the early 17th century, including musicians like Byss-Calle (Carl Ersson Bössa, 1783–1847) from Älvkarleby.


title: Nyckelharpa

text: Changes by August Bohlin (1877–1949) in 1929/1930 made the nyckelharpa a chromatic instrument with a straight bow, making it a more violin-like and no longer a bourdon instrument. Composer, player and maker of nyckelharpor Eric Sahlström (1912–1986) used this new instrument and helped to re-popularize it in the mid-20th century. In spite of this, the nyckelharpa's popularity declined until the 1960s roots revival.


title: Nyckelharpa

text: The 1960s and 1970s saw a resurgence in the popularity of the nyckelharpa, with notable artists such as Marco Ambrosini (Italy and Germany), Sture Sahlström, Gille, Peter Puma Hedlund and Nils Nordström including the nyckelharpa in both early music and contemporary music offerings. Continued refinement of the instrument also contributed to the increase in popularity, with instrument builders like Jean-Claude Condi and Annette Osann bringing innovation to the bow and body.


title: Nyckelharpa

text: In 1990s, the nyckelharpa was recognised as one of the instruments available for study at the folk music department of the Royal College of Music in Stockholm (Kungliga Musikhögskolan). It has also been a prominent part of several revival groups in the later part of the century, including the trio Väsen, the more contemporary group Hedningarna, the Finnish folk music group Hyperborea and the Swedish folk music groups Dråm and Nordman. It has also been used in non-Scandinavian musical contexts, for example by the Spanish player Ana Alcaide, the English singer and multi-instrumentalist Anna Tam, and Sandra Schmitt of Storm Seeker, a Pirate Metal band from Germany.


title: Nyckelharpa

text: The first World Nyckelharpa Day took place on the 26th April 2020 just as the world had gone into lockdown. All the events took place online, either as livestreams or pre-recorded videos in Youtube. This now is a yearly event taking place on the Sunday closest to the 26th April - this being the birthday of the great nyckelharpa player Byss-Calle. The event is co-ordinated by British/Swedish nyckelharpa player Vicki Swan.


title: Nyckelharpa

text: The nyckelharpa is usually played with a strap around the neck, stabilised by the right arm. Didier François, a violinist and nyckelharpist from Belgium, is noted for using an unusual playing posture, holding the nyckelharpa vertically in front of the chest. This allows a wider range of motion for both arms. It also affects the tone and sound of the instrument. Some players may use a violin bracket to keep the nyckelharpa away from the body so that it can swing freely, causing it to sound more "open" as its resonance is not damped.


title: Nyckelharpa

text: There are four common variants of the nyckelharpa still played today, differing in the number and arrangement of keys, number and arrangement of strings, and general body shape. The predominant type is the three-row so-called "chromatic nyckelharpa", with the melody strings tuned A1 - C1 - G, a drone C (from the highest to the lowest string) that is only touched occasionally, and 12 resonance strings (one for each step of the chromatic scale).


title: Nyckelharpa

text: The resonance strings, or sympathetic strings, which were added to the instrument during the 2nd half of the 16th century, are not bowed directly but resonate with the other strings. There can be anywhere from six to twelve of them, depending on the construction and tonality of the instrument.


title: Nyckelharpa

text: Some modern nyckelharpas have been made with four or even five rows of keys, however they have not been popular enough to replace the three-row nyckelharpa as the standard.


title: Trevor Nunn

text: Sir Trevor Robert Nunn (born 14 January 1940) is a British theatre director. He has been the Artistic Director for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal National Theatre, and, currently, the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. He has directed dramas for the stage, like "Macbeth", as well as opera and musicals, such as "Cats" (1981) and "Les Misérables" (1985).


title: Trevor Nunn

text: Nunn has been nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical, the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play, the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical, winning Tonys for "Cats", "Les Misérables", and "Nicholas Nickleby" and the Olivier Awards for productions of "Summerfolk", "The Merchant of Venice", "Troilus and Cressida", and "Nicholas Nickleby". In 2008 "The Telegraph" named him among the most influential people in British culture. He has also directed works for film and television.


title: Trevor Nunn

text: Nunn was born in Ipswich, England, to Robert Alexander Nunn, a cabinetmaker, and Dorothy May Piper. As a small boy he loved reading but his parents had little money for books. However an aunt had more books, including a complete Shakespeare which he read whenever the family visited her. In the end she gave it to him.


title: Trevor Nunn

text: He was educated at Northgate Grammar School, Ipswich and Downing College, Cambridge. At Northgate, he had an inspiring English teacher, Peter Hewett, who also directed the school plays. Hewett encouraged him to sit the scholarship exam in Cambridge in the hope of studying under F. R. Leavis at Downing. Hewett also persuaded the headmaster to help with the cost of Nunn staying in Cambridge to take the exam. Nunn's father could not afford it and the headmaster had refused at first so Nunn was close to giving up. At Downing, Nunn began his stage career and first met contemporaries Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi. In 1962, he directed "Macbeth" for The Marlowe Society and he directed that year's Footlights. He also won a Director's Scholarship, becoming a trainee director at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry.


title: Trevor Nunn

text: In 1964, Nunn joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and in 1968 he was appointed Artistic Director of the RSC, a position he held until 1986 (latterly with Terry Hands from 1978).


title: Trevor Nunn

text: His first wife, Janet Suzman, appeared in many of his productions, such as the 1974 televised version of his "Antony and Cleopatra". Nunn directed the RSC production of "Macbeth" starring Ian McKellen in the title role and Dame Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth in 1976. Nunn staged the action of the drama with not only the paying audience, but also the audience of all of the actors in the production not in the ongoing scene—they sat on wooden crates just beyond the main playing space.


title: Trevor Nunn

text: Nunn became a leading figure in theatrical circles, and was responsible for many significant productions, such as the RSC's version of Dickens's "Nicholas Nickleby", co-directed with John Caird, and a 1976 musical adaptation of the Shakespeare play "The Comedy of Errors".


title: Trevor Nunn

text: A very successful director of musicals, in the non-subsidised sector, Nunn directed the musical "Cats" (1981), formerly the longest running musical in Broadway's history, and the first English production of "Les Misérables" in 1985, also with John Caird, which has been running continuously in London since opening. Nunn also directed the little-known 1986 Webber–Rice musical "Cricket", at Windsor Castle. Besides "Cats" and "Les Misérables" Nunn's other musical credits include "Starlight Express" and "Sunset Boulevard". He became Artistic Director of the Royal National Theatre in September 1997, a position he retained until 2003.


title: Trevor Nunn

text: Later London credits include "My Fair Lady", "South Pacific" (at the Royal National Theatre), "The Woman in White", "Othello" and "" (2005), "The Royal Hunt of the Sun", "Rock 'n' Roll" and "Porgy and Bess" in 2006 at the Savoy Theatre (an abridged version with dialogue instead of recitatives, unlike Nunn's first production of the opera).


title: Trevor Nunn

text: He directed "We Happy Few", a play by his second wife Imogen Stubbs, in 2004. Stubbs often appears in his productions, including the 1996 "Twelfth Night" film. Nunn directed a modern production of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" in 2004, which starred Ben Whishaw in the title role, and Imogen Stubbs as Gertrude, and was staged at the Old Vic Theatre in London.


title: Trevor Nunn

text: In 2007, he directed the RSC productions of "King Lear" and "The Seagull", which played at Stratford before embarking on a world tour (including the Brooklyn Academy of Music) and then playing at the New London Theatre from November 2007. The two plays both starred Ian McKellen, Romola Garai, Frances Barber, Sylvester McCoy, and William Gaunt. Nunn's television production of "King Lear" was screened on Boxing Day, 2008 with McKellen in the title role.