Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
Chicago, IL
CULTURE & HISTORY This complete, gut-overhaul of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum doubled the public exhibition space of the museum. Using the house itself as the museum’s most compelling “artifact”, a mixture of architectural interpretation and radical exhibition techniques reinvigorated a once-sleepy museum into a cutting-edge model of museum as social catalyst.
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“Amy Reichert has employed innovative display techniques here. Archival video of Halsted Street is projected onto large window overlooking the street, prompting visitors to imagine an earlier incarnation of the thoroughfare. Photographs (which have been made translucent) of neighborhood residents are adhered to windows in the back of the room, once again playfully using architectural elements of the house to showcase historical images. The effect is an ethereal depiction of bustling street life from the early twentieth century, effectively historicizing the neighborhood surrounding the house.”
—Lara Kelland, The Journal of American History
