Counter-History: How Objects, Family Stories, and Scholars Inspire a More Expansive American History

FAIN: MN-304057-25

Lower East Side Tenement Museum, Inc. (New York, NY 10002-3102)
Annie Polland (Project Director: June 2024 to present)

Production of a digital tabletop exhibition that explores common themes in American immigration history by connecting stories to objects.

This proposal requests $400,000 to produce and implement an interactive, multimedia counter in the Tenement Museum’s Visitor Center. Counter-History elevates the family history approach that undergirds all of the Tenement Museum’s work, makes its sources more visible, and thematically connects historic and contemporary migration stories. The function and content management system (CMS)-model for Counter-History builds on a past award-winning interactive counter used in one of our exhibits (Shop Life). In this updated and optimized version, the counter draws on content from YSOS, an online archive of user-generated object stories and our historic tenement family collection to create a wholly new experience available to over 200,000 annual onsite visitors.