Emmy winner Kerry Washington shot to fame playing Olivia Pope in the hit TV show Scandal, giving the world a bold and dynamic portrayal of a Black female lead that shattered barriers. In her 2023 memoir, Thicker than Water, Washington opened up, sharing a deeply personal family secret that reshaped her understanding of identity and belonging. Now, she takes on a different kind of challenge in her latest project, the action-packed film Shadow Force. Playing a skilled special forces operative, Washington brings strength and intensity as she plays a member of an elite special forces group who must go underground to protect her family.
More: Kerry Washington gets us excited to check out her boat driving skills (The Treatment, 2025)
For her Treat, Washington admits she has a heartfelt love for museums, especially for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Natural History in New York. She reminisces about visiting some of the city's iconic institutions with her mom, finding peace in the whale room at the Natural History Museum, and being captivated by the Temple of Dendur at the Met as a teenager. Museums have always played a special role in her life, even hosting her first date with her husband. For Washington, museums aren’t just exhibits – they’re spaces for learning, inspiration, and change.
This segment has been edited and condensed for clarity.
I'm a big museum girl. I was just at the Met Ball on Monday. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of my favorites. But growing up in New York, I used to go to museums all the time. I never missed Museum Mile with my mom. We have the best museums in New York. No offense to the Smithsonian, no offense to the Getty. I mean, I'm a museum lover, but New York museums…
When I was a teenager, the two places that I would go to find peace were the whale room at the Museum of Natural History, that sense of feeling like I could live underwater under that giant whale, just surrounded by all those ocean exhibits, that room was instant peace. It still is for me. When I walk in there, my whole nervous system slows. And then the Temple of Dendur at the Met. You go there, and the world is smaller than you think it is.
They're so important to me that even one of my first dates with my husband was at a museum, and we walked in and I stopped, and he said, “Are you gonna read every poster in this exhibit?” And I was like, “Yeah, isn't that what people do?” He was like, “We are gonna be here all day.” I didn't know that not everybody reads every single thing that the curator has put on the wall!
But I love museums. I think they are one of the finest art forms in our culture. The immersive experience of walking through an exhibit to learn something new and let it change you a little bit is something I'm deeply, deeply grateful for.