Skip to primary menu Skip to main content Skip to footer content

History Lessons:
Everyday Objects from Public Housing

Two wooden bookends, each with a copper baby shoe inscribed with the name “Daniel,” sit on a wooden table.

Daniel Anderson’s Baby Shoes

Exhibition

  • Joseph and Bessie Feinberg Gallery,
    1st Floor

  • Free

History Lessons: Everyday Objects from Public Housing in the Joseph and Bessie Feinberg Foundation Gallery

“What is an object that tells a story about your life and experiences in public housing?”

History Lessons: Everyday Objects from Public Housing is a national effort to collect objects from public housing residents in diverse communities across the USA, and work with residents in storytelling and writing workshops to write their own labels.

The selected objects from this project span over 90 years of public housing history and have much to tell about the significance of family, true love, longing, and desire, and the mysteries of life and death, grand hopes, and dreams deferred. 

This is an ongoing project and objects will regularly rotate as we continue to work with communities across the country to record their stories and collect objects.  Our first year focuses on the objects and stories of residents from Chicago, New York and Houston.  

History Lessons was developed with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities special initiative A More Perfect Union: America at 250.  The exhibition also received generous funding from the Joseph and Bessie Feinberg Foundation. 


More exhibitions

Black and white image of a 1940s Jane Addams Homes kitchen. A mother stands at the counter with her two sons.

Historic Apartments

Experience the texture and fabric of public housing throughout time by visiting three recreated historic apartments showcasing different families’ experiences at different moments in public housing history between 1938 and 1975. The intimate individual, family and community stories become the lens to understand large national public housing policies and their impact…

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…

Taylor Street Memories

As you walk down Taylor Street, meet one of our founders, Commissioner Deverra Beverly and learn about the changing neighborhood through the stories of past residents. These exhibits are accessible from the outside of the museum.


Exhibition Resources

Additional resources available at the front desk.