Roxanne Shanté at NPHM’s On the Lawn in 2023.
The REC Room,
2nd floor
From Brooklyn to Los Angeles, Houston to Chicago, Minneapolis to Memphis. From Klezmer to Hip-Hop, Country to Latin Rock, the music that has emerged from public housing projects represents a range of popular sounds that have expanded our idea of American culture and American identity.
Co-curated by DJ Spinderella, the REC Room celebrates both the music created by artists from public housing and the music that shaped residents’ experiences of public housing.
Browse our extensive collection of records, spin your favorites on our record player, and learn more about public housing music history.
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…
“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…
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…
Additional resources available at the front desk.
