ABSTRACT This exhibit review examines Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian's Legacy , presented at the Morgan Library & Museum from October 25, 2024, to May 4, 2025. Through a combination of personal reflection and critical analysis, the review explores how the exhibition reconstructs the life and professional influence of Belle da Costa Greene, the Morgan's first librarian and later director. The article considers Greene's transformative role in shaping the Morgan's rare book and manuscript collections while also addressing the complexities of her self‐fashioned identity as a Black woman passing as White within elite cultural institutions of the early twentieth century. Particular attention is given to the exhibition's curatorial strategies, including the arrangement of rare materials, photographs, and interpretive texts that position Greene simultaneously as scholar, collector, cultural mediator, and public intellectual. By engaging both the emotional experience of viewing the exhibition and the institutional narratives embedded within it, the review evaluates how the exhibit frames Greene's legacy in relation to librarianship, race, gender, and cultural authority. Ultimately, the article argues that the exhibition not only commemorates Greene's bibliographic achievements but also invites contemporary audiences to reconsider the historical labor, personal negotiation, and intellectual vision behind the construction of major cultural collections.
In 2026, we, the people of the United States, will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the establishment of the nation. To mark this milestone, four prominent institutions in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania-Lafayette College, the Northampton County Historical and Genealogical Society (NCHGS), the Delaware and Lehigh National Heritage Corridor (DLNHC), and the Historic Bethlehem Museums and Sites (HBMS)-have collaborated to present an extensive exhibition titled Resilience, Resolve, and Revolutionaries: Lehigh Valley Contributions to the New Nation. Structured into seven distinct parts across 3 years and multiple sites, the exhibition foregrounds the frequently marginalized narratives of women, enslaved individuals, Indigenous peoples, and religious minorities whose contributions shaped the new nation. Drawing on Lawrence Grossberg's conjunctural framework from Cultural Studies, this paper argues that conjunctural curating provides both the theoretical scaffolding and the practical methodology for contextualizing American identity within the present moment of political polarization. Each exhibition component is analyzed through three conjunctures-labor, space, and thought-demonstrating how a complex, multi-site collaborative project can operate as a coherent intellectual-political intervention. At the level of practice, conjunctural curating means presenting contradictory historical evidence, including pacifist Moravian gunsmiths, immigrant industrial pioneers, and an enslaved double agent, to generate a non-linear, multi-vocal interpretation of the American founding that resists the closure of any single national narrative.
Over the past century, the museum-public relationship has been (re)imagined in China. From the 1860s to the early 21st century, the Chinese state has played an active role in shaping the role and function of museums. Utilized for social education and the enhancement of the "quality of citizens" (1860s-1940s), state propaganda and mass mobilization under Communism (1950s-1970s), and patriotic education and cultural nationalism (1980s-2008), the museum in China has acted as an important vehicle in maintaining and furthering periodic political directives. The Chinese state's role in imagining the museum and the museum-public relationship has remained prominent. With the recent museum development boom in China, the country has witnessed a shift in public attitude toward museums. We argue that a greater diversification of driving forces, including national cultural policies, the integration of the museum into the public cultural service sector, museum professionalization, and media intervention, have contributed to reshaping the museum-public relationship in contemporary China.
This paper examines the role of museums in Pakistan as cultural institutions that contribute to the construction of national identity by promoting cultural diversity, heritage preservation, and inclusive narratives. Using the Folk Heritage Museum, Lok Virsa, in Islamabad as the main case study, along with insights from the Army Museum, Lahore Museum, Peshawar Museum, and Chitral Museum, the research analyzes how museums balance regional histories, religious diversity, minority contributions, and national unity. Based on qualitative interviews, participant observation, and reflective analysis of Lok Virsa's annual Folk Festival 2024, the study identifies key challenges such as resource limitations, accessibility issues, sociopolitical pressures, curatorial constraints, and limited technological integration. While museums often promote national pride through the idea of unity in diversity, the findings show that minority communities remain underrepresented and that cultural diversity is sometimes absorbed into a broader national narrative rather than fully expressed. The study emphasizes the need for more inclusive displays, stronger community engagement, improved accessibility, and digital innovation to transform museums into dynamic cultural hubs. It argues that museums can foster inclusion, cultural understanding, and a shared sense of identity in Pakistan's culturally diverse society.
