"The Washington Post" architectural critic Philip Kennicott assessed the museum as its one-year anniversary, concluding that the NMAAHC has "changed the center of gravity on the Mall" and created "energy along 14th Street and Constitution Avenue NW that feels new, and welcome". Generally effusive in his praise, Kennicott found the museum to have an "allusive and mediated" feel, as opposed to the traditional "magisterial and transparent" aesthetic of most museums. He singled out the way the cornona cast shadows in the interior, the dramatic way the corona framed nearby monuments and memorials, and the museum's art gallery. Kennicott was unhappy with "the jumble of elevations throughout the history galleries". The problem particularly affected the Contemplative Court (where corrosion was also affecting the ceiling less than a year later). Museum designers correctly concluded that the cramped entrance to the underground galleries would create a powerful and negative emotional reaction, he said, but the side-effect has been to create a "fundamental flaw" in the museum by creating a terrific bottleneck in visitor traffic. A 2018 exhibition review in the "Chicago Tribune" noted the museum is practically — and unexpectedly to the museum's planners — "one of the toughest tickets to get in American culture" and posited that this was "proof that the nation wanted desperately to grapple with some of the thorniest questions about the people it brought here by force".