David Adjaye calls this concept “narrative construction.” It’s a mode of architectural storytelling embodied in the museum’s façade, a three-tiered, trapezoidal structure inspired by the staggered crown of an early 20th century Yoruban sculpture that Adjaye encountered in a book from his personal library. (The same sculpture is currently a centerpiece of the museum’s fourth floor Culture Galleries.) Adjaye calls it “the Corona.” Its edges, he says, also mirror the rake of the neighboring Washington Monument.