Washington Fixture, Reimagined

For years I made regular visits to the National Geographic Society’s headquarters on M Street in downtown Washington—for lectures, exhibits, and the photo lab where I had prints and slides made. When the campus closed in 2022 for a complete renovation, I missed it more than I expected. On June 27, I finally saw what four years and $300 million had produced.National Geographic, reimagined.The scale of the transformation is hard to overstate. What had been about 20,000 square feet of traditional gallery space—the old Explorers Hall and its largely static displays—is now more than 100,000 square feet of exhibitions, theaters, and immersive experiences, the largest undertaking in the Society’s 137-year history. Rather than demolishing the existing Mid-century Modern buildings, the architects at Hickok Cole restored and repurposed them, recovering 95 percent of campus materials and incorporating sections of the original marble façade into the museum’s new entrance pavilion, framed by the…