She’s Not President (Yet), But Oprah Winfrey Has Already Taken Over DC—as an Art Exhibition
The National Museum of African American History and Culture is celebrating the life and legacy of Oprah Winfrey. The celebrated talk show host, who became the world’s first self-made African American woman billionaire, is now the subject of a new 4,300-square-foot exhibition that opened on Friday and will be on view for the next year. The show highlights Winfrey’s career accomplishments and contributions to American culture, as well as her work as an activist for African American rights.
Ahead of the opening, an emotional Winfrey walked through the show, at the institution she was instrumental in bringing to life—her gift of $21 million made her the museum’s largest individual donor. She moved to tears after reading notes of praise in the exhibition guest book, such as one message claiming that “watching Oprah every day is the reason I love myself so fiercely.”
“What it does is allow me to actually have affirmed for me what an astounding life this is,” Winfrey told the Smithsonian. “You know, I thought it was in my own head, but when you see it laid out in a scholarly fashion, organized in terms of the influence and impact that my life and the life of the show has had, it’s pretty profound.”
This isn’t the first time that Winfrey has been featured at the museum: The institution’s inaugural exhibition, “A Changing America: 1968 and Beyond,” still on long-term view, includes a couch from the set of The Oprah Winfrey Show at Chicago’s Harpo Studios as well as several other items she donated to the museum.
More than 240 other artifacts, including the talk show host’s desk, a golden microphone from the set, and a costume from The Color Purple: The Musical, produced by Winfrey in 2005, are on view in the new show.
Born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, in 1954, the same year that the US Supreme Court outlawed segregation in schools in Brown v. Board of Education, Winfrey, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, rose to fame from the unlikeliest of circumstances. She was demoted from a news anchor job in Baltimore in 1977, which led to a job at a daytime program in 1977. There, Winfrey found what was to be her true calling.
The first part of the exhibition, “America Shapes Oprah, 1950s–1980s,” pairs her childhood photographs with artifacts relating to the civil rights movement, and prominent African American women who influenced Winfrey’s early years—a dress Diana Ross wore performing with the Supremes, and a photograph of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm.
“Just as Oprah Winfrey watched TV coverage of the civil rights movement and was shaped by the era in which she was born and raised, she has gone on to have a profound effect on how Americans view themselves and each other in the tumultuous decades that followed,” said museum director Lonnie G Bunch III in a statement. “She has a place in the museum with a long line of women who did extraordinary things in their time—Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Maya Angelou—women who worked to redeem the soul of America.”
Next up are The Oprah Winfrey Show years—over its 25-year run, from 1986 to 2011, Winfrey filmed 4,561 episodes and interviewed an estimated 35,000 guests. The program won 48 Daytime Emmys and remains the highest-rated talk show of all time.
That made for plenty of memorable television, with Winfrey addressing hot-button topics such as substance abuse, sexuality, and the OJ Simpson trial. In one unforgettable 2004 episode, she gave away new cars to her entire studio audience, a moment that lives on as an internet meme. One of the bright red bows placed on the roof of each car is now on view at the Smithsonian.
Winfrey also conducted an infamous 2005 interview with Tom Cruise, who jumped up and down on the couch proclaiming his love for then-girlfriend Katie Holmes. The exhibition includes her note cards from Cruise’s 2008 return visit, showing that she planned to ask if he had regrets about the star’s strange behavior, such as his controversial comments about Brooke Shields’s postpartum depression and his bizarre debate over psychiatry with Matt Lauer.
The show’s final section, “Oprah Shapes America,” examines Winfrey as a worldwide phenomenon—think the so-called “Oprah Effect,” which leads to increased sales of any product she endorses, such as books recommended by her wildly popular book club. Winfrey transcended the television medium to become a brand unto herself. Objects in this section include the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which President Barack Obama presented to Winfrey in 2013.
“We’re providing a context for understanding not only who she is, but how she became a global figure, and how she is connected to broader stories and themes,” said Kathleen Kendrick, who curated the show with Rhea L. Combs, to the Washington Post. By telling Winfrey’s story, the museum aims to tap into larger themes about race, gender, the media, and opportunity in the US.
Museum officials planned the exhibition, titled “Watching Oprah: The Oprah Winfrey Show and American Culture,” to coincide with an anticipated drop in attendance at the nearly two-year-old museum. Demand, however, remains as strong as ever, with advanced timed entry passes already booked up through the end of September. (The hit museum is offering walk-up tickets for weekdays in September.)