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Our mission is to preserve, promote, and propel the right of all people to a place where they can live and prosper—a place to call home.

    Exhibitions

    Exhibitions at the National Public Housing Museum showcase public housing stories, art, and history.
    A map with a red line and silhouetted figures are projected on a wall

    Historic Apartments

    Three recreated apartments at the heart of the National Public Housing Museum showcase the stories of diverse families who lived in the Jane Addams Homes.

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    A yellow bookshelf in a gallery, with walls covered in historical photos and architectural drawings

    BREAKTHROUGH: Housing Futures

    This immersive exhibition blends historical documentation of HUD’s Operation Breakthrough from the 1970s with new prototypes for urban living from The Housing Futures Initiative.

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    Museum visitors look at a midcentury high school letterman sweater

    History Lessons

    History Lessons offers intimate glimpses of life in public housing through everyday objects and personal memories.

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    A person looks at an album cover while standing in front of shelves full of vinyl records

    REC Room

    Curated by DJ Spinderella, the REC Room celebrates the music that has emerged from public housing. Browse our collection of records, spin your favorites, and learn more about music history.

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    A screen-printed poster shows a black blob with squiggly lines that depict a virus or bacteria and a sun shining on towards it on a light-blue background. The text reads, “PLANNED HOUSING FIGHTS DISEASE.”

    Art for All, Posters for the People

    No government program has left a more visible legacy on the American landscape than the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration. Along with the construction of hundreds of federally funded buildings, including the Jane Addams Homes, the program employed thousands of artists.

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    A museum display case with paint chips and a fragment of a wall

    Care to Look

    All objects have stories to tell. Explore artifacts preserved from the Jane Addams Homes and consider what they have to say about the style, culture, and history of public housing.

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    A person tends a flower garden in front of a brick high-rise apartment building, an image from the exhibit Living in the Shade

    Living in the Shade

    Explore the role of open space—large lawns and tenant gardens, paved paths and play spaces, shady seating areas and public art—in creating more livable, healthy, and thriving communities.

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    On a sideways piece of lined notebook paper with old fashioned handwritten text, a pencil drawing of three indigenous women wrapped in blankets look directly at the viewer. At the top of the page is a sliver of a Chicago street map.

    Still Here

    Still Here uses art, archives, and public dialogue to explore and connect histories of displacement on the land where the National Public Housing Museum is located. As an institution that addresses displacement of public housing residents, we also want to understand the forcible removal of Indigenous peoples that came before and grapple with how those experiences are interwoven…

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