Expansion at the National Archives Means More Focus on Human Rights The National Archives in Washington, D.C., a vast repository of documents related to the country's history, will significantly expand in November with a new permanent exhibition called "Records of Rights," depicting the struggles of women, African-Americans and immigrants for human rights. The documents, photographs, videos and other items will be showcased in the new David M. Rubenstein Gallery, which along with a new visitor plaza adds more than 7,000 square feet of public space to the archives, officials said Monday. Currently, there are 12,000 square feet of exhibition space, in addition to an education center with a theater. The roughly gallery and plaza were made possible by $13.5 million in government money and a $13.5 million gift to the Foundation for the National Archives from Mr. Rubenstein, co-chief executive of the Carlyle Group, a private equity concern that he helped found in 1987. "This is big," David S. Ferriero, the archivist of the United States said in a telephone interview on Monday. There hasn't been anything this big for 10 years. The archives contain about 12 billion pieces of paper so there are lots of stories to be told but not the space to tell them. It's an opportunity to tell the stories and the stories are amazing. The focus on women, immigrants and African-Americans was "based on our own understanding of records that have not had the attention they need and by looking at user research interest," Mr. Ferriero said. The chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and a regent of the Smithsonian Institution, Mr. Rubenstein is well-known for his cultural philanthropy. Among other acts, Mr. Rubenstein has loaned a signed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation to the Oval Office. After he gave $10 million to the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the center's new visitors" and ticket space on Broadway, opened in 2009, was named the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center The entrance to the Rubenstein gallery features a copy of the Magna Carta from 1297, on permanent loan from Mr. Rubenstein. Among the documents from the archives included in the gallery will be the original discharge papers of a formerly enslaved man who fought in the Revolutionary War in order to gain his freedom; letters to President Harry Truman from children who questioned the morality of segregation; petitions related to women's right to vote; an 1860 census of Irish and Canadian textile workers in Lowell, Mass.; and the case files of Wong Kim Ark, an American citizen and resident of San Francisco who traveled to China and was denied re-entry to the United States in 1895 because of his ethnicity. The exhibition will also showcase records from the Freedmen's Bureau, with inventories of clothing, food and money given to formerly enslaved people to help them get on their feet. The bureau was established at the end of the Civil War. There is a 1917 letter from an anti-women's suffrage leader in New York urging her congressman to vote against suffrage, calling it "a national endorsement of nagging." The visitors" plaza will feature a short film about the National Archives on eight plasma screens, a video orientation wall highlighting prime visitor destinations and touchscreen mapping stations to guide visitors. The latest expansion continues the more than decade-long run of renovations and tweaks to the building in Washington, D.C. to transform it from a musty repository into a modern model of interactive exhibitions and education. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are on permanent display in the rotunda of the 1934 neoclassical building. "I'm honored that this new gallery will help the National Archives showcase its incredible collection of records that tell the story of who we are as a people, where we've been, and where we are going," Mr. Rubenstein said in a statement. The National Archives have undergone major conservation and renovation since 2001. The first major renovation, which led to a temporary closure in July, 2001, cost a total of $136 million - $114 million from the government and the rest from private sources. A number of new exhibition areas were planned, the most important being the public vaults, which are meant to mimic the experience of walking through the stacks of the archives. There about 1.4 million visitors a year. An earlier version of this post included an incorrect date in a reference to the case of Wong Kim Ark. He was denied re-entry to the United States in 1895, not 1873.