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REC Room

At night in a concert setting, a group of kids dance with a Black woman holding a microphone. The crowd of young people and adults are joyously dancing and enjoying music.

Roxanne Shanté at NPHM’s On the Lawn in 2023.

Exhibition

  • The REC Room,
    2nd floor

  • Free

REC Room

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.


More exhibitions

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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…


Exhibition Resources

Additional resources available at the front desk.