National Public Housing Museum

06/20/2026

Groundwaves Generations intergenerational day party is back this week, featuring:

🎤 live performance by the legendary godmother of West Coast hip-hop Medusa
📣 a RapTime workshop with Remi and Zeus
⌨️ poetry with Poems While You Wait
💭 activations in Floating Museum’s inflatable monument “for Mecca”
🎨 face painting and glitter art with Iiimagine
🕵️‍♀️ tours, games, prizes, and more

Hosted by MURS, Groundwaves Generations at the National Public Housing Museum is an event for the hip-hop community in Chicago to come together with their families for a day of FREE food, activities, games, and music.

Join us! https://nphm.org/event/groundwaves-generations-with-murs-2026-06-28/

Groundwaves Generations is supported by Good Chaos. Can’t make it this month? We’ve got you! Groundwaves Generations will continue on select Sundays throughout the year: June 28, August 2, and October 4, 2026.

06/19/2026

Juneteenth reminds us that nobody’s free until everybody’s free. 

The National Public Housing Museum commemorates the historic day in 1865 when news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas. On Friday, June 19, the staff have the day off and the museum will be closed. But we invite you to visit later this summer to experience stories of resilience and dreams deferred, reflect on the historical roots of inequality, and add your voice in fostering a more just future.

Detail of Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.’s installation “Housing for All, Art For All, Posters for the People,” at the National Public Housing Museum.

06/18/2026

Congratulations to the Obama Foundation and all our fellow museum colleagues on the grand opening of the Obama Presidential Center this weekend 🎉 We’re excited to see Chicago’s cultural community continue to grow with spaces that inspire civic participation through history, storytelling, play, and art.

06/17/2026

Over the last week in June, join us for a series of site-specific activations inside the inflatable monument “for Mecca.”

Created by artist collective Floating Museum, this ghostly structure pays homage to the Mecca Flats—the 1891 apartment building at the center of Bronzeville’s Black cultural life that was demolished in 1952. From June 24 to 28, the inflatable structure will be temporarily installed on a Chicago Housing Authority lot adjacent to the National Public Housing Museum that was formerly the site of the Jane Addams Homes, linking histories of demolition and exploring patterns of displacement in Chicago through photography, music, and memory.

Learn more: https://nphm.org/event/floating-museum-for-mecca/

The presentation features an exhibition of historic photographs of the Jane Addams Homes and its residents, sound activations from guest curators, and opportunities for community conversation held inside of the monument.

FREE, drop-in. Pair your visit with a tour of the Historic Apartments at the National Public Housing Museum to learn more about the history of the Jane Addams Homes and public housing in Chicago.

📸 Floating Museum, “for Mecca,” 2025, polyester blend fabric, dye sublimation, air blowers, hardware, 30’x41’x24’. Photo: Cory Dewald, Courtesy Floating Museum.

06/15/2026

We’re at capacity! Registration has closed for this week's “Project Cinema: Films for Cabrini-Green.” Thanks everyone for your interest in the screening...what movies connected to public housing should we show next?

06/11/2026

Drop by for a civic conversation about the history of the Robert Taylor Homes. Our summer series of reading room office hours continues this weekend with Dr. Brad Hunt.

A professor of history at Loyola University Chicago, Hunt is author of the essay “What Went Wrong With Public Housing in Chicago? A History of the Robert Taylor Homes” (Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 2001), and the book “Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing” (UChicago Press, 2009), which traces public housing’s history in Chicago from its New Deal roots through the Plan for Transformation.

Join us and learn more: https://nphm.org/event/reading-room-office-hours-the-robert-taylor-homes-with-brad-hunt/

This free, drop-in conversation series is presented in conjunction with the exhibition “Nathaniel Mary Quinn: A Love Letter to My Mother.” The Robert Taylor Home reading room is made possible by the Department of History at Loyola University Chicago in honor of Professor Brad Hunt.

06/06/2026

Project Cinema: Films for Cabrini-Green 🎥 Join us for a free screening of “We Grown Now,” director Minhal Baig’s 2023 film about two young friends growing up in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green Homes. The screening will be preceded by short documentaries that provide context into the history of Cabrini, and offer a unique opportunity to visit and venerate the now demolished high rises in the past, present, and future.

https://nphm.org/event/project-cinema-films-for-cabrini-green/

Also featuring “For Those That Lived There” (2024) and “Cabrini Dreams” (1977), plus a resident oral history excerpts from our podcast, Out of the Archives: ‘Candyman was a Candyman: People of Cabrini-Green.’

05/29/2026

Affordable housing for everyone! At a time where there is not a single US county where a full-time minimum wage worker can afford to rent a modest apartment, we’re excited to see that expanding access to housing is on agendas across the country, from the BUILD act here in Illinois to new housing proposals in New York and California aimed at building hundreds of thousands of homes. Come to the museum to learn more about the history of housing and the public policies that have helped to shape our communities, and add your voice in advocating for a future where housing is a human right.

Pictured is “Affordable Housing For Everyone” a risograph by William Estrada that was inspired by the WPA posters such as “Low Rent Homes for Low Income Families” (between 1936 and 1940) on view in the National Public Housing Museum’s ongoing exhibition “Housing for All, Art for All, Posters for the People,” about the legacy of the New Deal.

05/29/2026

“This blending of the past and present is where the museum is at its best.” A feature from Emma Janssen at The American Prospect explores how “at the National Public Housing Museum in Chicago, the past is alive and fighting.”

At the National Public Housing Museum in Chicago, the past is alive and fighting.