If you love history you’ve likely been to the DC hotspot where John Gray reigns.

Since July 2012, he’s been the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where he oversees 234 employees, a budget of more than $34 million, and the renewal of the museum’s 120,000-square-foot west exhibition wing.

For the previous decade, Gray was the director of the Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Los Angeles. There, he enlarged the museum’s mission and scope, and in 2002, merged the museum with Colorado’s Women of the West Museum and, in 2004, with Los Angeles’ oldest museum, the Southwest Museum of the American Indian.

So it was an honor for Grateful American™ Foundation directors David Bruce Smith and Hope Katz Gibbs to sit down with Gray in his office at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

In this podcast, you’ll learn:

1. What the Smithsonian Institution is doing to help people get more interested in American history.
2. Gray’s goals for the future of the museum.
3. Whether or not the attendance is on an upward trend at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History — and what else can be done to get more people interested in American history.
4. What initially got Gray hooked on history.
5. Insights into his favorite era and historical figures.

Plus much more!

Watch the video now. And click here to learn more about the Grateful American™ Foundation.

Disclaimer: Certain photographs and images included in this video have been reproduced and displayed with expressed permission of the authors, historians, presidential, and/or historic places, homes, and museums that own the applicable legal rights. Those permissions are reflected below. Other photographs or images have been reproduced and displayed on the understanding that they are in the public domain.