“The new museum opens with all the usual tensions already in place. Among its major donors are banks that played a brutal role in predatory loan scandals that targeted African American communities as well as companies that manufacture the cigarettes, food and soft drinks that play such a big part in the plague of diabetes and other health issues that afflict the black population. This doesn’t mean that the museum can’t be independent, or that the scholars and curators who created the exhibitions were in any way compromised by pressure. But it does mean that it could take substantial fortitude to, say, mount an exhibition about racism and professional sports when one of museum’s major funders is the NFL. In the age of the modern, mass-market museum, freedom and independence are never a given; they must be reasserted and defended with every new exhibition.”