March 7, 2025
Walker’s African American Museum is reportedly excluded from Nevada’s new Hundred Plan in Motion, however she plans to reopen inside six months.
Gwen Walker, proprietor of the Walker African American Museum and Analysis Heart, Nevada’s first African American historical past museum, desires the town to assist reopen her museum as an alternative of going via with plans to construct one other one.
After the town of Las Vegas introduced plans for an African American museum within the Historic Westside years in the past, the information left Walker in utter shock. In keeping with the Las Vegas Assessment-Journal, the proposed museum is a part of the Historic City Neighborhood Design Redevelopment Plan, which commenced in 2016 in collaboration with the UNLV Downtown Design Heart. Walker, who was pressured to shut her museum down in 2017 because of structural points, break-ins, and her mom’s prognosis with dementia, mentioned Cedric Crear, former council member for Ward 5, by no means communicated along with her concerning the metropolis’s plans to determine a brand new museum within the Historic Westside.
The Walker African American Museum and Analysis Heart was situated in a 1,000-square-foot house at 705 W. Van Buren Ave. The 68-year-old lady stuffed the museum with Black historical past memorabilia she had collected since she was 13.
“I most likely have the most important assortment of Black historical past memorabilia for Black folks right here in Nevada,” she mentioned. The gathering contains artifacts, books, enterprise playing cards, flyers, dolls, collectible figurines, garments, magazines and newspaper articles on notable Black legislators and change-makers which date again to the 1800s.”
She opened the museum in 1991 to promote the historical past of African People domestically, nationally, and internationally.
Nevertheless, the museum proprietor has hit a roadblock after over 50 years of preserving Black historical past. She doesn’t perceive why, after a number of conversations with Crear a few reopening for her museum, the town is transferring ahead with plans to assemble a brand new one.
“I’ve been right here doing the work. My mom and I, we’ve been in our group,” mentioned Walker, who at the moment holds over 50,000 artifacts in her Westside house. “Why not be part of with us and assist make us world-class?”
An authentic 2018 doc for the Hundred Plan included Walker’s blueprints from KME Architects and plans to design and assemble the Walker African American Museum. Her developed plans proposed a ten,000-square-foot house, however she wants cash to satisfy the imaginative and prescient, which incorporates buying two surrounding parcels owned by the town and three private-owned parcels. Mates, college students and group members have prolonged help to Walker.
In 2021, the Metropolis Council permitted a $45,000 grant for Walker to make use of towards the museum. Nevertheless, she denied the provide because of a last-minute reimbursement clause added by the town legal professional.
A proposal request for a grasp plan for the town’s African American group was permitted by the town council in 2022 following a proper report in 2023. Plans included over an acre of land for a $60 million to $90 million museum campus. The brand new Hundred Plan in Motion, which was permitted by the town in 2024, excluded Walker’s museum. Town mentioned in a brand new assertion that because it continues to “discover a possible African American Museum,” council members are hopeful that Walker “will wish to be a part of these future plans.”
Walker plans to reopen her institution inside the subsequent six months. Town nonetheless has not decided a location for its new African American museum, but it surely plans to launch a case examine exhibit at Civic Plaza in February 2026.
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