USIP opens a multimedia exhibit

“Imagine: Reflections on Peace” comes less than a year after I reported that the U.S. Institute of Peace had not opened what was supposed to be a public museum.

On a rainy day in February 2021, I visited the United States Institute of Peace, hoping to view a basement space which was supposed to be a public museum and to ascend to the president’s office, which someone who used to occupy that office told me was the best view in Washington, if not the world.

I was not permitted to see either during the tour, which was part of my reporting for my Washington Post Magazine feature “The D.C. Peace Museum That Never Happened: A promised public museum at the congressionally chartered U.S. Institute of Peace failed to materialize. Why?”

The new USIP multimedia exhibit “Imagine: Reflections on Peace”—a prepackaged show of printed photographs mounted on temporary walls on USIP’s ground floor (not where the museum was supposed to be)—comes less than a year after Washington Post Magazine published the story.

Whether I ought to take a victory lap is debatable.

My photos

The conversations on-site at USIP in February 2021 were on background, per the institute’s conditions, unfortunately, so I cannot name the USIP officials with whom I met. I also have not heard from any official representative of the institute that my reporting played any role whatsoever in USIP’s decision to host this exhibit. Further, hosting a temporary “multimedia” exhibit is not the same as opening what was supposed to be a very large peace museum, accessible to the public.

But I can share that toward the end of my interviews in 2021, I phrased a question carefully to get a sense of just this sort of thing: Would USIP open a museum if it had the funds? The way I put it, if a donor came forward and offered monies if and only if they were earmarked for opening the public peace museum, would USIP accept them, because it had always wanted a museum but just lacked resources, or would the institute decline politely, since a museum was not part of its mission?

I was told (again, I can’t say by who, although it was a very senior institute official) that exhibitions are not part of USIP’s mission, so it would decline. And now, about a year after the feature ran in the Post, here is an exhibition. Hmmmm.