The Contemplative Court
Freelon Adjaye Bond SmithGroup · 2016
After the long climb through the History Galleries you come into a tall, dim room where a ring of water falls from a round opening in the ceiling into a pool in the floor. Benches face the water. Around the walls, lit in bronze letters, are quotations from Martin Luther King, Sam Cooke and others, including the line from the Book of Amos that King made famous: until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. This is the Contemplative Court, and it exists so that you can sit down and breathe.
The architects placed it deliberately at the point where the history ends and the present begins. Look up at the oculus, which brings daylight down into a space that is otherwise below ground, and listen to the water, which masks the noise of the galleries and turns conversation into a murmur. The dark bronze walls and the warm light are meant to recall a church or a clearing in the woods, the places where enslaved and free Black communities gathered to pray and to organise. There is nothing to read closely here; the room asks you to feel rather than learn.
Many visitors say this is where the weight of what they have just seen finally lands, and the museum's staff designed the route so that it would. From here, a lift or stairs take you up to the Culture and Community galleries, where the tone changes to celebration. If you have children with you, it is a good place to talk about what you have seen before continuing.
Did You Know? The quotation on the wall, until justice rolls down like waters, comes from the Book of Amos and was used by Martin Luther King in his I Have a Dream speech.
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