Culture & Life · Washington, D.C. · Sept. 11, 2026
Smithsonian’s Latino museum finally has a home
The 145-year-old Arts and Industries Building is no longer just a historic shell between museums. It is now the permanent site of the National Museum of the American Latino — a decision that changes the architecture, the politics of place and the practical path to opening.
For decades, the National Museum of the American Latino was an institution with a mandate, a director, exhibitions, donors and a national audience — but without a permanent front door of its own. That changed on Aug. 31, when the Smithsonian Board of Regents designated the Arts and Industries Building as the museum’s permanent site on the National Mall.
The choice sounds simple: take an existing Smithsonian building and give it a new purpose. In reality, it rewrites a long-running plan. The museum had previously been pointed toward an undeveloped site near the Tidal Basin, a location that would have required congressional action before the Smithsonian could finalize it. The new decision uses a building the Smithsonian already controls, ending the site-selection process and moving the project from a debate over where to build toward the harder questions of how to transform a national historic landmark into a modern museum.
The timing is unusually visible. The Arts and Industries Building, known around Washington as AIB, reopened temporarily this summer as part of the Smithsonian’s programming for the United States’ 250th anniversary. It closed to the public again on Sept. 7. Four days later, the building is in a kind of civic intermission: its summer role is over, its future identity is set, but the design, construction schedule and final public opening date for the Latino museum have not yet been announced.
The decision
A permanent address changes more than the mailing label
The Smithsonian’s Aug. 31 statement was brief but consequential. The Board of Regents designated AIB as the permanent site of the National Museum of the American Latino, saying the action superseded the board’s initial 2022 recommendation and concluded the site-selection process. Congress created the museum in December 2020 and directed the Smithsonian to conduct a site review that included AIB among the options.
In 2022, the Regents had identified two undeveloped National Park Service-controlled parcels — the South Monument site and the Tidal Basin site — as the strongest options for the two new Smithsonian museums then under development: the Latino museum and the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum. The Latino museum later focused on the Tidal Basin site. Because that land was outside the Smithsonian’s direct control, legislative action was needed before a final designation could be made.
The 2026 turn back toward AIB therefore removes one of the project’s biggest dependencies. The Smithsonian is no longer waiting to secure a separate piece of federal land for the Latino museum. The tradeoff is that the institution now inherits the obligations of a 19th-century building whose historic fabric, engineering systems, public circulation and exhibition capacity must all be reconciled with the expectations of a 21st-century national museum.
Why this building matters
The “mother of museums” is being asked to give birth to one more
AIB is not a neutral container. It opened in 1881 as the country’s first U.S. National Museum, the Smithsonian’s second-oldest building after the Castle. President James Garfield’s inaugural ball was its first major event. In later decades, its halls introduced visitors to objects and research that eventually migrated into separate Smithsonian institutions. The Smithsonian describes it as an incubator for collections that grew into museums devoted to natural history, American history, air and space and other fields.
That lineage gives the new use a strong symbolic fit. A building once designed to gather the national collections under one roof will now become a dedicated place for the histories, arts, communities and experiences of U.S. Latinos. The museum’s own mission frames Latino history not as a side story but as part of the American story. Putting the institution in a building at the physical center of the Smithsonian complex makes that argument spatial as well as curatorial.
It also gives visitors a familiar piece of Washington architecture to reinterpret. The building sits immediately east of the Smithsonian Castle and west of the Hirshhorn Museum, with the National Mall to the north. Its polychrome brick, corner pavilions and central rotunda make it one of the most visually distinctive structures in the Smithsonian’s historic core. For a museum still years from a full opening, that visibility matters: the project now has an address that people can point to.
“Places the U.S. Latino story at the heart of the National Mall and the American story.”
Jorge Zamanillo, founding director of the National Museum of the American Latino, in the museum’s announcement of the permanent site.From empty lot to adaptive reuse
A new building promised freedom. An old building offers control.
The Tidal Basin concept would have allowed the Smithsonian to imagine a purpose-built museum from the ground up. A new structure can be designed around contemporary galleries, loading docks, conservation labs, education rooms, event spaces, climate systems and accessibility from the first sketch. It can also use architecture itself to make a statement about identity and national memory.
AIB offers a different advantage: control of the site. The Smithsonian owns the building and does not need a new land transfer to establish the museum there. That is why the decision has been described by outside reporting as a way to break a political and procedural logjam around Mall space. The museum’s existence is not newly authorized — Congress already created it — but its permanent location had remained unsettled.
Adaptive reuse also carries cultural logic. Museums increasingly face questions about the cost and carbon impact of major new construction. Reusing an existing landmark can preserve embodied history while avoiding the need to claim another open parcel of the National Mall. But reuse is not automatically cheaper or faster. A historic building may require complex structural, mechanical and accessibility work, and AIB’s past offers a warning against assuming the shell is ready for ordinary museum operations.
What the project gains
A Smithsonian-controlled site, an unmistakable National Mall address, a building already embedded in the institution’s visitor network and an architectural story that can become part of the museum experience.
What the project inherits
A landmark structure with preservation constraints, a need for modern building systems and the challenge of fitting large-scale galleries, collections work and visitor services into an existing geometry.
A building with scars
AIB has spent much of this century being repaired, reopened and reconsidered
The building’s current condition is the product of a long preservation campaign. The Smithsonian says AIB closed to the public in 2004 after a severe snowstorm intensified concerns about the structure. A major stabilization project later restored the exterior, including its roughly 2.5-acre roof and more than 900 windows. By 2016, the building had reopened for special events rather than as a full-time museum.
In 2021 and 2022, the building hosted FUTURES, a building-wide Smithsonian exhibition that treated the old halls as a laboratory for ideas about science, society and what might come next. This summer, AIB opened again from June 16 through Sept. 7 for the nation’s 250th-anniversary season, hosting exhibitions, public conversations and Smithsonian Folklife programming. The temporary reopening let visitors experience the building at a moment when its long-term role was still unresolved.
Now the uncertainty about purpose is gone. What remains uncertain is the construction path. The Smithsonian has not announced a final renovation budget or a public opening date for the Latino museum in AIB. That distinction matters. A permanent site is a decisive milestone, but it is not the same thing as a completed design, funded construction package or scheduled ribbon cutting.
The building opens as the United States National Museum, becoming the Smithsonian’s main exhibition home.
AIB closes to the public amid structural concerns after decades of wear.
Exterior stabilization and restoration make limited reopening and events possible.
FUTURES uses the whole building as a temporary exhibition about possible futures.
AIB opens daily for America’s 250th-anniversary programming, then closes again Sept. 7.
The Board of Regents designates AIB as the permanent site of the National Museum of the American Latino.
The money question
The law sets a 50–50 cost-sharing model
The museum’s authorizing framework calls for the Smithsonian Board of Regents to cover 50 percent of the costs of planning, design and construction from federal funds and 50 percent from nonfederal sources. That means fundraising is not an accessory to the building plan; it is part of the statutory financing structure.
The museum has been building that private side for years. Its founding-donor roster includes foundations, corporations and families, with major commitments from organizations such as Lilly Endowment, Target, Walmart, General Motors, Bank of America, Ford, the Mellon Foundation and others. The museum also runs a national membership and advancement campaign intended to support the building and future operations.
What the public does not yet have is a final AIB conversion price tag. Historic rehabilitation can produce very different costs depending on structural work, mechanical systems, collection requirements and the amount of new below-grade or back-of-house space needed. Until the Smithsonian releases a design and budget, any single headline number should be treated as an estimate rather than the museum’s settled construction cost.
The museum already exists
Visitors do not have to wait for the permanent building to see the work
One easy misconception is that the Latino museum is only a future construction project. It is already operating as a Smithsonian museum organization. Since June 2022, its main physical public presence has been the Molina Family Latino Gallery inside the National Museum of American History. The 4,500-square-foot gallery was created as a place to test stories, exhibition methods and visitor experiences while the permanent museum develops.
The gallery’s current exhibition, ¡Puro Ritmo! The Musical Journey of Salsa, is scheduled to remain on view through 2028. The museum also runs digital projects, educational programs, collection-building work and community outreach around the country. In other words, the permanent building will expand an institution that already has a program, not create a museum from nothing.
That ongoing work could be especially important during the AIB conversion. Major museum projects can take years between site selection and opening, and the Smithsonian has not promised a short timeline here. The Molina gallery gives the public a place to encounter the museum’s curatorial voice while architects, conservators, engineers, fundraisers and community partners work through the larger building.
Design challenge
The best renovation will have to make history visible without letting the building overpower the stories
AIB’s architecture is theatrical. Its central rotunda and crossing halls can create dramatic sightlines, but a national museum needs more than spectacle. Exhibition designers will have to control light for sensitive objects, create flexible galleries for changing media, build quiet places for oral histories, provide robust digital infrastructure and make circulation intuitive for school groups, families, tourists and visitors with disabilities.
Accessibility will be especially consequential. A 19th-century landmark was not designed around today’s expectations for step-free movement, sensory access, family facilities or inclusive interpretation. The goal is not simply to meet code at the edges of the plan; a museum that presents the breadth of Latino life in the United States will be judged by whether people with different bodies, languages, ages and learning styles can participate fully in the experience.
There is also a curatorial scale question. Latino history in the United States stretches across centuries and across regions — from Indigenous and colonial histories to migration, labor, civil rights, military service, food, music, faith, art, business, politics and everyday family life. No building can contain every story at once. The permanent museum will need a strong organizing idea that helps visitors understand connections without flattening different communities into a single narrative.
Collections and community
A permanent building also changes what the museum can preserve
National museums are not only places to display finished exhibitions. Behind the galleries are collections storage, conservation labs, research work, registration, photography, preparation and lending operations. The Latino museum has been acquiring objects while operating without its own permanent building. AIB’s conversion will have to account for how much of that behind-the-scenes work can happen on site and how much will depend on shared Smithsonian facilities elsewhere.
The stakes are larger than square footage. The museum has emphasized community listening and national outreach, visiting communities around the country to hear what people want represented and to build relationships around stories and objects. A permanent home can turn those conversations into long-term collecting and research programs, but the building should not narrow a national institution into a Washington-only experience.
That is why the museum’s digital and traveling work will remain important even after the doors eventually open. The vast majority of Americans will never visit the National Mall in a given year. A museum of national scope succeeds when its research, collections and teaching move outward — into classrooms, local museums, libraries, community organizations and online spaces — rather than treating a D.C. visit as the only meaningful encounter.
What to watch next
Site selection is finished. The next milestones will show how fast the museum can become real.
The first milestone to watch is design. The Smithsonian will need to explain how it intends to adapt AIB, which parts of the historic interior will remain visibly intact and what new construction is required for galleries, collections, visitor services and building systems. Architectural choices will reveal whether the project treats AIB mainly as a shell, as an exhibit in its own right, or as both.
The second is money. Because the project uses a federal–nonfederal cost-sharing model, a mature design and cost estimate will shape both congressional appropriations and private fundraising. The museum has already assembled major donors, but a permanent building typically requires a long capital campaign, especially when historic restoration is involved.
The third is schedule. Until the Smithsonian publishes a construction sequence and opening target, visitors should resist assuming that “permanent site selected” means “opening soon.” Major Smithsonian museums have historically taken years to move from authorization through design, fundraising, construction and installation. The current Molina gallery remains the most reliable public-facing home in the meantime.
The fourth is what happens to the building’s identity during that wait. AIB closed Sept. 7 after its temporary summer season. The Smithsonian’s own webpages now describe it as closed to the public and identify it as the permanent site of the Latino museum. That quiet shift in language is the clearest sign of the transition: a building that spent years waiting for a durable mission finally has one.
For visitors right now
- Arts and Industries Building: closed to the public after the temporary summer 2026 opening.
- Molina Family Latino Gallery: open inside the National Museum of American History, subject to that museum’s current operating schedule.
- Current exhibition: ¡Puro Ritmo! The Musical Journey of Salsa, scheduled through 2028.
- Permanent museum opening: no public date has been announced.
The important change is not that a museum idea found a building. It is that a building at the center of America’s national museum landscape finally has a mission large enough to define its next century.
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