Exhibits

What, when, and how we eat each day is shaped by the ways that people ate before us. But while their recipes and rituals have been passed down through family and community networks, no tradition is static. This exhibit offers a range of historical perspectives on the ways Americans eat, from the cultural influences on our cooking to the regional specificities of our meals to the ways we celebrate around the family table.

When things go wrong, it is only natural that we look to the actions of others to explain our misfortunes. Who gets the blame, though, is often a function of power, ideology, and the stories we are told about one another.

This exhibit meditates on the theme of blame in American history. It explores who has been blamed for what, considering episodes of environmental crisis, economic instability, illness and disease, as well as the powerful forces of nativism that have been present throughout.

Of all the human emotions, said H. P. Lovecraft, fear is “the oldest and strongest.” A walk through American history suggests that it is also one of the most destructive. This exhibit pulls together a wide range of stories from our archive that all deal, in one way or another, with the lengths to which Americans' fears have driven them. From xenophobia to vigilantism to political repression, fear has triggered some of the nation's ugliest episodes. Then again, it has also provided the raw material for some pretty great films.

For more than 150 years, professional baseball has captivated the heads and hearts of Americans. This exhibit celebrates that rich history, with stories about the achievements of players on the field, the culture of fans in the stands, and the ways in which the game has and hasn't changed over the decades.

Since the invention of light-sensitive film, photographs have been used to document and comment on society, to advocate for reform, to cultivate reputations, and to entertain and amuse. Throughout, photography has been an important medium for shaping politics and memory. Its history has been worth many thousands of words — read some of them in this exhibit about what photos have meant to their creators, subjects, and viewers.

Childhood has long been a site where American adults have contested their own core values. Sometimes those contestations have focused on education, but just as often they've concerned matters of labor, economy, gender, and even immigration. This exhibit looks at some of the ways American children have found themselves at the center of these debates. It also offers a selection of writing that raises intriguing questions about memory and the stories we tell about childhood.

Over the course of its long history, the Democratic Party has stood for many things, from the defense of slavery to the expansion of the social safety net to the codification of civil rights to the promotion of free trade. This exhibit offers a wide range of reading on the history of the world's oldest active political party.

The American Midwest, as a whole, was a relative latecomer to the official territory of the United States. And yet since then, the region has come to symbolize, especially in political life, so much that is quintessentially American. This exhibit examines the dynamics of this mythology, and traces the region’s shifting identities over the past quarter-millennium.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Thus begins the Bill of Rights. But if the framers thought that the primacy of this injunction would help the words stand on their own, the subsequent two centuries would prove them wrong. This exhibit traces the long and contested history of religious freedom in the United States.

We learn a lot of history from books, but this exhibit is about the history of books and Americans' many relationships to them. For some, books have provided escape, entertainment or inspiration. For others, they have been tools of communication, resistance, or social mobility. Still others have made their livings creating, promoting, or critiquing books. Read up on the many ways Americans have read, discussed, and fought over books.

The United States took shape in the age of European empires, and it didn’t take long for the new nation to embark on its own imperial projects. This exhibit traces 500 years of empire-building efforts, from the Age of Exploration to the North American Indian Wars to the extension of American military and economic power over island nations from the Caribbean to the Pacific. It also considers America’s role in the 20th-century clashes between global empires, and the extent to which 21st-century conflicts are still driven by the imperative to dominate far-flung peoples and lands.

As rapacious as Americans' relationship with their natural world has been over the past two centuries, there is also a strong tradition in the U.S. of advocating for the health and sustainability of the non-human world. This exhibit traces the many forms that American environmentalism has taken, from nature writing and conservationism in the 19th and early 20th centuries to the regulatory campaigns of the post-Silent Spring era to the climate justice movement of today.

At the mouth of the Mississippi, New Orleans occupies a liminal space geographically, bringing the Caribbean into contact with the vast interior of North America. This location made the Crescent City a cultural crossroads where Afro-Caribbean traditions blended with French and Spanish colonial legacies and westward-moving Anglo-American southern society.

This exhibit considers the ways this unique milieu has shaped New Orleanians' experiences of the nation's larger political and economic forces, and explores the roots of the city's distinctive food, music, and performance culture.

For well over a century, people have been flocking to the movies. This exhibit traces the history of Americans' relationships with the silver screen, from film's earliest days to the cinematic creations of our own times.

Almost a century ago, historian Carter G. Woodson declared the second week in February to be "Negro History Week." The focus on African American history eventually expanded to encompass the entire month, and little by little, to permeate curricula throughout the rest of the year as well. This exhibit explores the ways African American history has been learned and taught in schools, museums, and popular culture.

From the Gold rush to the tech boom, people have come to San Francisco from all directions in search of fortune. The resulting diversity has given rise to creativity and exploitation, resistance and innovation. The subcultures that formed, from Chinatown to the Castro district, from Haight-Ashbury to Angel Island and Alcatraz, themselves drew more people to San Francisco, making the city famous for its cultural innovation and political activism.

In the mid-20th century, Americans restructured their lives around automobiles. Cars assumed a central role in everything from the national economy to the routines of daily life. But the costs of car culture have been steep. Crashes and pollution have taken a toll on human bodies, highway construction and zoning changes have reshaped our landscape, and industry marketing has shifted individuals' perceptions of their fundamental needs, wants, and rights. The automobile in the U.S. is both a symbol of freedom and modernization, and the engine of a system that encourages dependency, threatens public health, and resists change.

Car culture is so pervasive that many people take it for granted as the natural order of American life. But by revealing the political, industry, and consumer decisions that have brought us to this point, history can serve as our “blind spot detection,” equipping us to envision new possibilities for the future.

The levels of carbon currently in the Earth's atmosphere are unprecedented in both the historical and geological records. Still, the climate crisis does have a history. Humans have created the situation in which we now find ourselves, and must continue to make choices about what to do about it. This exhibit explores the causes and impacts of climate change through a historical lens, and draws on the past to help frame the best courses of action for the future.

Roe v. Wade. The occupation of Wounded Knee. Hip-hop's emergence in the Bronx. These were a few of the big cultural and political events that took place in the U.S. in 1973. To mark that year's 50th anniversary, we compiled this exhibit looking back on what in retrospect appears to have been a very consequential year.

When we think about the battles waged by Americans both at home and abroad, we tend to remember the big picture questions. Why were Americans fighting? Who else was involved? What were the outcomes?

Less remembered are the civilian victims of the violence wrought by Americans in the course of their wars. In this exhibit, you'll find a range of writing about those victims, and about the extent to which Americans have acknowledged and accounted for the atrocities committed in their name.

American history is filled with stories of religiously minded people who have attempted to live their values in community with others. Some of these groups have been motivated to change the larger society, while others have focused their efforts on their own communities. This exhibit explores the contours and legacies of some of the nation's most prominent religious movements.

We are told that Americans' trust in their news media remains near record lows. But do public opinion polls obscure a longer history of debate about the media that stretches back to the founding era?

This exhibit explores some of the ways Americans have defined and wrestled with the appropriate role of journalists in a democracy.

Digital technology has facilitated new and more efficient methods for accessing the records of our past. This exhibit explores the challenges and rewards of archiving in the digital age, as well as the ways in which new technologies are shaping historical research and collective memory.

Family histories can inspire a deep sense of connection to the past. This exhibit traces the different paths people are taking to find their ancestors, through methods both new (like crowdsourced genealogy and DNA testing) and old (like archival research, community commemoration, and oral tradition and storytelling).

From the revolutionary era to the present, this exhibit traces 250 years of politics, resistance, law, and medicine in the City of Brotherly Love.

The economic collapse of the Great Depression, and the accompanying environmental crisis of the Dust Bowl, posed tough challenges to Americans in the 1930s. The crises prompted many innovative responses, from social movements and works of art to the New Deal's infrastructure and social safety net. This exhibit highlights how this turbulent decade ushered in a new era for labor, culture, and government.

What is the government's obligation to those in need? Who should be responsible for funding that assistance, and how do we define "needy" in the first place? As this exhibit demonstrates, these are questions that many generations of Americans have struggled to answer.

This exhibit chronicles the ebb and flow of voting rights in America, from the Founding Era to the current day.

A look back at what historians have had to say about this epic contest over the nation's future.

Throughout America's history, the nation's treatment of its returning troops has often left something to be desired. The following resources, grouped by era, meditate on themes of memory, sacrifice, and collective obligation to those who have put their lives on the line for their nation.

A collection of resources about the meanings of the 1776 document in its own time – and in ours.

As millions of Americans struggle to recover from this year's devastating hurricanes, we offer up this collection of stories about previous generations' ways of dealing with meteorological calamity.

A presidency often referred to as "unprecedented" has deep roots in American history.

While many Americans would prefer to think of their homeland as a "nation of immigrants," nativism has been a potent social and political force for most of the nation's history. This exhibit centers on a few of the high-water marks of anti-immigrant sentiment.