Nancy Pelosi Donation Ceremony: John Gray Bio

March 7, 2018
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John L. Gray
Director, National Museum of American History

With a background in banking, small business and museums, John Gray brings deep experience and a unique vision for unlocking the transformational power of history museums. Gray is leading the physical and programmatic reinvention of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The museum is pairing its unparalleled collection of national treasures with a thematic focus around fundamental American ideals and ideas to share the value of American history to visitors’ daily lives and inspiring a more humane future for the nation.

Under Gray’s leadership, the museum is boldly reimagining its three-floor, 120,000-square-foot West Wing. Recently opened, the first floor is devoted to the themes of innovation and American enterprise. The second floor presents the ideas of democracy and the peopling of America, and the third floor will explore America’s democratic identity and culture. As steward of the nation’s national collection of more than 3 million artifacts and documents, including the iconic Star-Spangled Banner, the Greensboro Lunch Counter, President Abraham Lincoln’s top hat, Dizzy Gillespie’s trumpet and Dorothy’s ruby slippers, Gray intends to use these objects to tell an inclusive, respectful, instructive and compassionate story of all the peoples of America.

Before becoming the museum’s ninth director, he was the founding president of the Autry National Center of the American West, a successful merging of three cultural organizations: the Autry, Colorado’s Women of the West Museum in Denver and Los Angeles’ oldest museum, the Southwest Museum of the American Indian. Commercial banking was the foundation of Gray’s previous career. He served as executive vice president of First Interstate Bank of California in Los Angeles from 1987 until 1996. Gray has a bachelor’s degree from C.W. Post College at Long Island University and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Colorado. He serves on the board of St. John’s College in Annapolis and Santa Fe, where he continues to study the Great Books, and received an honorary degree from Occidental College in Los Angeles. 

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