Press Room
Latest Press Releases and Announcements
Older announcements saved at bottom of this page—jump to the press release archive
Recent News Highlights
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Bloomberg Inside the Space-Age Bid To Build Millions of Homes in Factories
“Operation Breakthrough, a 1970s federal moonshot to build 26 million homes using advanced manufacturing methods, has lessons for today’s abundance movement.” Zach Mortice on a little-known federal housing program featured in the exhibit “BREAKTHROUGH.”
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Newcity New Exhibition Reimagines Affordable Housing, Then and Now
“The National Public Housing Museum’s BREAKTHROUGH: Housing Futures aims to look to the past to find future solutions to the ever-present housing crisis.”
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Time Out This unexpected Near West Side institution was just voted one of the best new museums in the U.S.
“Less than a year after opening, the National Public Housing Museum has landed a No. 3 spot on USA Today’s ranking of the country’s best new museums.”
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Block Club Chicago National Public Housing Museum Voted 1 Of America’s Best New Museums
“A year after opening, the Near West Side museum is No. 3 on USA Today’s list of the country’s best new museums, and Associate Director Tiff Beatty and her team are taking a victory lap.”
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Chicago Tribune Chicagoans of the Year for Museums
“National Public Housing Museum staff keeps residents at heart.”
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Sixty Inches From Center Chicago Archives + Artists Project
How does one archive footwork? An interview with Dr. ShaDawn ‘Boobie’ Battle.
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Sixty Inches From Center Chicago Archives + Artists Project
An interview with Liú méi zhì huì & jellystone robinson frazier of the National Public Housing Museum.
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Museums Journal Home Truths
Museums Association publication “explores a museum that is using place, memory and culture to change a negative perception of social housing in America.”
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Chicago Reader Profiting off precarity
Katie Prout reports from a recent event with “There is No Place For Us” author Brian Goldstone. “We have to acknowledge the brutal realities on the ground, and have a North Star where all of these systems—education, housing, health care—all of it comes together, in a different way of being together.”
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Landmarks Illinois Landmarks Illinois Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Preservation Awards
National Public Housing Museum to receive award recognizing exceptional efforts in preserving, restoring and revitalizing historic places in Illinois.
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Chicago Tribune The future of public housing is on Chicago’s Taylor Street
“Public housing in Chicago began on the Near West Side’s Taylor Street — and the last few months have seen the opening of a new institution dedicated to telling the story of public housing and its residents and a new building that points toward its future.” Review by architecture columnist Edward Keegan.
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CBS Chicago Jumpstart: Chicago’s National Public Housing Museum now open in Little Italy
“Explore the history behind public housing at Chicago’s National Public Housing Museum with Jackie Kostek.”
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USA Today The National Museum of Public Housing puts visitors in the shoes of former tenants
“The uncelebrated life of everyday people is at the heart of the museum. For them, the museum stands as a witness to the stories of resilience and community that filled their days.” USA Today on how the new Museum seeks to broaden our understanding of the history of public housing.
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Newcity Home Sweet Home
“At once a cultural institution, a civic platform, and a living archive, the museum invites visitors to explore the history of public housing through the stories of those who lived it.” Vasia Rigou goes inside the nation’s first museum dedicated to public housing.
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South Side Weekly What It Looks Like to Fight Back
“In the last remaining building of the Jane Addams Homes, a small museum fights to preserve not just artifacts but dignity and justice.” NaBeela Washington reports from inside Chicago’s National Public Housing Museum.
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Bloomberg At the National Public Housing Museum, an Embattled Idea Finds a Home
“The items on display at the new National Public Housing Museum in Chicago are almost defiant in their ordinariness.” Zach Mortice writes about the new National Public Housing Museum and “activism steeped in the everyday.”
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Streetwise Grand Opening
Cover story in Streetwise magazine explores how the National Public Housing Museum “conveys these feelings of safety, community – and pride – in its dual roles as a house museum and as a place to discuss housing policy.”
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MAS Context A House Museum for the Future
“The museum’s opening is a triumph of a long game.” Elizabeth Blasius on the new National Public Housing Museum, “a worthwhile visit for anyone who understands the importance of home.”
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Washington Post How a dream of providing decent housing went wrong
“It is the small, everyday things that are most evocative: a rotary telephone, a Pyrex baking dish, an old hand mixer and furniture that looks well lived in.” The Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott reviews the new National Public Housing Museum, where everyday objects help fight “a heroic battle against misinformation, amnesia and bad history.”
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The Progressive Rewriting the Narrative on Public Housing
“The history of public housing has been sensationalized for decades—but The National Public Housing Museum tells a different story.”
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Fox 32 Chicago National Public Housing Museum opens up world of history in Chicago
“It’s a trip back in time that highlights the struggles and resilience of people who have lived in public housing.“
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Smithsonian Magazine New Museum Examines the History of American Public Housing—and the Stories of Its Residents
“Narratives of institutional neglect and personal tragedy dominate the annals of American public housing. But sometimes, hope and real transformation can still shine through.”
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UIC Today UIC lessons guide creation of first national public housing museum
In an interview and preview of the National Public Housing Museum, Lisa Yun Lee shares “her vision for the museum and how UIC is part of its DNA.”
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WTTW Chicago Tonight How Chicago’s New Public Housing Museum Took Direction From the Community
“A museum to commemorate the history and community of public housing has just opened in Chicago. But the National Public Housing Museum isn’t just a museum, there’s also a workforce program, recording studio, and actual affordable housing units, all on site.”
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Block Club Chicago ‘This Is A Destination’
“The visions of housing advocates and cultural leaders were realized Friday when former public housing neighbors, city and state officials joined dozens of supporters for the grand opening of the National Museum of Public Housing.”
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NBC 5 Chicago National Public Housing Museum opens in Chicago
“The National Public Housing Museum is now open on the near West Side in Little Italy, featuring stories of hope and personal achievement.” LeeAnn Trotter visits the new museum.
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NPR A National Public Housing Museum opens
“There are exhibitions, a recording studio, art installations, even a small room where visitors can spin records made by people who lived in public housing.” From Chicago, Alison Cuddy reports.
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dwell Why We Need the Nation’s First Public Housing Museum
“Opening this week in Chicago, the National Public Housing Museum wants to reinvigorate our interest in collective well-being by tackling dominant narratives—of crime, poverty, and eventual destruction—head on.”
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WBEZ The National Public Housing Museum opens this week in Chicago. Here’s a sneak peek.
“The museum tells a less familiar story about the history of public housing. ‘It was a decent, lovely place to live,’ a former resident says.”
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AP Unique Chicago museum showcases the history of public housing through its residents
“Set inside a once-dilapidated 1938 building on Chicago’s near West Side, a one-of-a-kind museum hopes to change the perception of public housing in America.“
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Chicago Tribune National Public Housing Museum opens in Chicago, the first of its kind, with residents’ stories at its heart
“On a gray Thursday on Chicago’s Near West Side, Rev. Marshall Hatch Sr. stepped through time.” In the Chicago Tribune, Hannah Edgar previews the National Public Housing Museum, “the only museum of its kind in the country.”
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The Art Newspaper Changing the narrative
“Housed in one of the historic Jane Addams Homes, the new museum aims to challenge perceptions about the sector.”
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Chicago Sun-times These Walls Can Talk
“National Public Housing Museum is a living history awash in former residents’ stories and memorabilia.”
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Block Club Chicago Long-Awaited National Public Housing Museum Opening Next Month
“The museum, in the works since the late ’90s, will open in the last remaining building from the Chicago Housing Authority’s Jane Addams Homes.”
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The TRIIBE Art Design Chicago amplifies Black and Indigenous histories with 2025 exhibitions
“We have the agency to tell our own stories. We are the future our ancestors hoped for and for which they endured the unimaginable.” Artist Monica Rickert-Bolter talks with the TRIIBE about “Still Here” and related Art Design Chicago projects
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Chicago Sun-Times Finally Back Home
“Restoring the sculptures and returning them to their historic spot in the former Addams homes Animal Court is a bit of a coup for the new museum, where they’ll likely be a popular attraction and provide fond memories for the now grown-up kids who played in and around the big stone animals.”
Announcement Archive
Press Releases 2025
Press Releases 2024
For press inquiries, please contact C.J. Lind, Director of Communications, at [email protected].
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