DuSable Black History Museum gets $1.6 million Illinois grant for building improvements

The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center will receive a $1.6 million state grant for renovations. The first installment was presented earlier this month in a check by Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza.

The funds will go to updating bathrooms, the museum’s Harold Washington wing, and the theater, said CEO Perri Irmer at a press event. The improvements made to the wing and theater will allow the museum to increase revenue via facility rentals, she said.

The state funds and renovation plans come as Black History Month is underway, and the museum extends its February hours of operation to seven days a week.

“I want to be able to welcome folks back to a rejuvenated museum as we enter our 65th year,” Irmer said. “That's really amazing, as the oldest Black history museum in the country, and at … such a critical time when our history and our people are under attack.”

The Trump administration’s move to cancel some grants awarded through the National Endowment for the Arts and end federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs has disrupted American museums, including the DuSable in Chicago and beyond. According to a November report by the American Alliance of Museums, a third of U.S. museums have lost government grants or contracts.

The DuSable has struggled with funding and staff turnover in recent years. In a whistleblower lawsuit filed early December in the Circuit Court of Cook County, a former employee raised numerous questions about the museum’s financial and organizational stability.

The lawsuit filed in December by Kim Dulaney, a retired Chicago State University professor who joined the South Side museum staff in 2021, alleges that she was fired as retaliation for “questioning DuSable’s irregular fiscal practices.”

Several former employees, associates and observers told the Sun-Times they’ve known about issues at the museum for years — and Dulaney is far from the first person to raise them.

Previous attempts to reach Irmer to comment on the lawsuit were unsuccessful. Approached by a reporter at the check presentation ceremony, Irmer said that while she won’t comment on pending litigation, “We're going to tell our positive story. Every business has disgruntled employees that don't like being terminated.”

And with the Obama Presidential Center set to open in June just a mile east of the museum, Irmer wants the DuSable to be a part of the influx of visitors to the neighborhood. “That's another reason why it's so important for us to present a modernized, well-maintained face for all of the visitors that are going to be coming from around the world,” Irmer said.

DuSable’s renovated theater will feature reupholstered seats, new carpets and subflooring and paint, with capacity for up to 450 people.

In November, the museum opened a new exhibition, “Paris In Black,” featuring work and artifacts from Black American artists who lived and created art in Europe from the 1890s and beyond.

DuSable, which belongs to the Chicago Park District’s network of 11 Museums In The Park, is privately run but sits on public land.

It has always faced issues of underfunding, said former CEO Amina Dickerson, who led the museum from 1985 to 1989.

“The museum has always been under-resourced,” she said. “I'm not sure where they would be” without the taxpayer money it receives from being located in the park district, Dickerson added.

And despite the museum’s history, it has never been accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. Sources close to the DuSable Museum’s Board of Trustees told a reporter there is a lot of confusion about the museum’s accreditation status and collections care, some incorrectly believing that the institution has been accredited all along.

Asked at the check presentation ceremony about Dulaney’s lawsuit, Mendoza said: “I don't know any facts about it, really zero. But my contribution is in making sure that museums like this get funded.”

Dulaney’s complaint prompted an investigation by the Chicago Park District Office of Inspector General. In December, the park district, which is the museum’s landlord, said in a statement that it forwarded Dulaney’s complaint to its Office of Inspector General, which is currently conducting its investigation.

“We expect that our cultural partners will abide by all applicable laws and best practices,” the park district’s statement read.

The OIG’s office declined to provide further comment, and there is no timeline for the investigation’s completion.

At the first hearing in Dulaney’s case, held last week at the Circuit Court of Cook County building, lawyers for the DuSable Museum said an internal investigation into the matter was underway.

When the DuSable Black History Museum and Education opened in 1961, it put Chicago on the map as home to the nation’s first independent museum of Black history.

Chicago’s DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center was founded in 1961 by six co-founders, including Dr. Margaret T. Burroughs, who was known as a powerhouse artist and educator who had an outsized influence on Chicago’s South Side.

The idea for the museum was born in the living room of Burroughs’ Bronzeville mansion, which she shared with her husband, Charles. Together, they started the Ebony Museum of Negro History because they were worried about the erasure of Black history in the U.S.

Those close to her said she was a champion of the community and often welcomed homeless Black artists and creatives into her mansion with open arms. Dr. Burroughs died in 2010 at 95.

Today, the DuSable Museum holds more than 15,000 pieces of art and artifacts.