There are scores of museums in the United States, to educate the public about specific ethnic groups, but not until two years ago was there one devoted to Arab Americans. That is when the Arab American National Museum opened in Dearborn, Michigan, near Detroit. VOA's Mohamed Elshinnawi recently toured the museum and has this report.

The Arab American National Museum is in the heart of Dearborn, Michigan

Museum Director Anan Ameri told us, "When people come and visit the exhibits, they say, if they are Latin Americans or Italian Americans: 'Oh, this is like my father's story, my grandmother's story.' And in the bottom end of it, the Arab American story is really the American story, the story of immigrants coming to this country from all parts of the world to create better lives for themselves and for their children."

Anan Ameri

Celine Taminian is the director of educational programs. "On the second floor we have three major exhibits or galleries: Coming to America, Living in America and Making an Impact,” she says. "Through these exhibits we teach students who live in America about the Arab culture and Arab Americans who live here in the U.S., about their lifestyle, about the work they do, how they came to the U.S. and what their impact is on this culture and on this country."

Celine Taminian

Barbara Aswad is a professor of anthropology at University of California. "Americans absolutely do not know enough about Arabs, and certainly about Arab Americans. They do not know their history, and I hope eventually they will get more history in this museum."

The museum has numerous displays of the contributions of Arab Americans in the arts, sciences, and other aspects of society

Ralph Valdez is the museum's director of cultural programs. He says the museum organizes a multi-cultural music series to demonstrate the common ground that different cultures share. "They can see in the art, similarities of themes of love, family and devotion and very many things that people of all nationalities and ethnicities celebrate in their art,” he said. “They see the commonalities and that helps them to open their understanding and get away from the stereotypes."

Since its opening two years ago, more than 80,000 people have visited the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, and it has become a well known resource for documented information about Arabs and Arab Americans .