Within the coronary heart of Baltimore stands a beacon of sunshine, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American Historical past & Tradition. Inside its partitions, a brand new exhibition known as “TITAN | The Legacy of Reginald F. Lewis” invitations guests to step into the world of the museum’s namesake, a person whose extraordinary life journey from Baltimore to Harvard Regulation Faculty to changing into America’s first Black billionaire via leveraged buyouts challenged the notion that success at that degree was reserved for others.
The exhibition’s curator, Robert Parker, has created greater than a show of artifacts, he’s designed a transformative expertise that enables guests to attach intimately with Lewis’s spirit. “We needed to make sure that story got here out,” Parker explains throughout his dialog with Munson Steed on Design and Dialogue, “as a result of I believe that’s a kind of lesser identified and extra undocumented ones.”
The person behind the museum
For twenty years, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum has advised the tales of Black Marylanders, however unusually, by no means totally explored the lifetime of its personal namesake. Parker noticed this anniversary 12 months as the proper second to right that oversight.
“In that 20-year interval, there’s by no means been a complete kind of examination of the namesake for the establishment,” Parker notes. “We thought it was time. It was overdue really to have fun this legend, and to have the world perceive in higher depth who he was and the way his legacy has this indelible connection on all of us.”
What emerges within the exhibition shouldn’t be a mythologized icon positioned on a pedestal however a totally realized human being whose power, willpower, and household values supply highly effective classes for immediately’s dreamers and doers.
Three takeaways for guests
Parker hopes guests depart with three major insights after experiencing TITAN:
First, Lewis’s unbelievable power of objective. “He was very stick-to-itive in his quest for achievement,” says Parker. “He was early on targeted, and he knew what he needed out of life.” Parker factors to Lewis’s undergraduate declaration that he would develop into “the richest African American on the planet”, a objective he in the end achieved.
Second, his unrelenting willpower. This high quality manifested throughout each facet of Lewis’s life, from his early days as a highschool triathlete excelling in basketball, soccer, and baseball to his faculty years at Virginia State College. When an damage sidelined his athletic profession, Lewis channeled that very same power into lecturers.
“He created this schedule that we really present,” Parker explains. “That handwritten schedule was a really targeted, regimented, methodical method for him to achieve faculty.” This bodily artifact provides guests a tangible connection to Lewis’s disciplined strategy.
Third, the humanization of a enterprise icon. Whereas many know Lewis as a company titan and philanthropist, Parker needed to disclose “the extra or softer facet of Reginald F. Lewis. Reginald F. Lewis as a household man, as a father, as a husband.”
Designing immersion as transformation
What makes TITAN outstanding is its strategy to immersion. Reasonably than merely displaying gadgets in instances, Parker and his workforce have recreated areas from Lewis’s life, his workplace desk, his non-public jet, permitting guests to bodily enter his world.
“I believe it’s vital for each customer to have the ability to have a connection to the tales we’re attempting to inform in a tangible method,” Parker explains. “How can we make that actual for somebody? I believe relevance and provocation helps that.”
The jet set up, which Parker calls “the jet setter,” notably stands out. “This was an African American man within the eighties flying round in a jet,” he notes. Lewis referred to it as “the last word perk.” By recreating this setting and complementing it with pictures of Lewis in his plane, the exhibit transforms summary success into concrete actuality.
This immersive design philosophy extends all through the exhibition. Steed describes the expertise as transformative: “In every house I by no means felt crowded and I felt like I used to be going via one other door. I felt like I used to be taking one other journey.”
Parker confirms this was intentional: “We didn’t desire a linear expertise, and we needed individuals to have the ability to begin in any facet of this exhibit.” The design incorporates geometric shapes harking back to the museum’s structure, creating visible continuity between the constructing and the exhibition whereas permitting guests to get “misplaced within the story.”
A pilgrimage for entrepreneurs
For aspiring enterprise leaders, particularly entrepreneurs of shade, Parker suggests the exhibition provides one thing particular, a chance to see oneself in Lewis’s journey.
“I believe, for individuals to return to the Lewis Museum to expertise the TITAN exhibit is once more a chance for them to see how actual Reginald F. Lewis was,” he says. “I believe, in historical past, usually we prefer to romanticize figures, and we prefer to put people on pedestals, and I believe we’ve achieved the alternative.”
The exhibition doesn’t shrink back from Lewis’s setbacks or struggles. As an alternative, it presents them as important elements of his journey, embracing his philosophy to “hold going, it doesn’t matter what.” Parker explains: “I believe we did our greatest to humanize him in a method the place you’ll be able to see his classes discovered, and you’ll see how he bounced again from failure.”
This strategy makes Lewis’s extraordinary achievements really feel accessible fairly than superhuman. The person who engineered the $985 million leveraged buyout of Beatrice Worldwide Meals in 1987, then the biggest offshore transaction in American historical past, is introduced as somebody whose success got here via persistence and resilience, qualities anybody can domesticate.
An area to replenish
Maybe probably the most highly effective facet of the exhibition is the way it creates what Steed calls “an area to replenish,” room for guests to see themselves in Lewis’s story and picture their very own prospects.
As Steed observes, “For any baby born in Baltimore or Maryland to stroll in there, I believe he provides them a pedigree that they didn’t give themselves. He says it’s yours, so you’ll be able to declare it. It’s in you.”
This sentiment echoes the title of Lewis’s autobiography, “Why Ought to White Guys Have All of the Enjoyable?” — a provocative query that challenged racial obstacles in American enterprise and continues to encourage new generations of entrepreneurs.
By considerate curation and immersive design, Parker has created greater than an exhibition. He’s constructed an area the place guests can uncover, as Steed places it, “that there’s a TITAN ready to be opened in your spirit every day.”
The TITAN exhibition on the Reginald F. Lewis Museum in Baltimore provides that uncommon alternative, an opportunity not simply to find out about historical past, however to step into it, be reworked by it, and emerge with a brand new understanding of what’s attainable.
