Smithsonian

Smithsonian Regents Name Lonnie Bunch 14th Smithsonian Secretary

The Smithsonian Institution’s Board of Regents announced today it elected Lonnie G. Bunch III, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, as the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian, effective June 16. Bunch is the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in September 2016. He oversees the nation’s largest and most comprehensive cultural destination devoted exclusively to exploring, documenting and showcasing the African American story and its impact on American and world history. Bunch’s election is unprecedented for the Smithsonian: He will be the first African American to

Famed for “Immortal” Cells, Henrietta Lacks is Immortalized in Portraiture at National Museum of African American History of Culture and the National Portrait Gallery

Kadir Nelson’s portrait captures the grace and kindness of Henrietta Lacks while nodding to her enduring biomedical legacy. (NPG and NMAAHC, Gift from Kadir Nelson and the JKBN Group LLC) In life, Virginia-born Henrietta Lacks did not aspire to international renown—she didn’t have the luxury. The great-great-granddaughter of a slave, Lacks was left motherless at a young age and deposited at her grandpa’s log cabin by a father who felt unfit to raise her. Never a woman of great means, Lacks wound up marrying a cousin she had grown up with and tending to their children—one of whom was developmentally