Museum Blog

To mark the Lunar New Year, CHM curator of religion and community history Rebekah Coffman highlights a Year of the Rabbit item from our Asian American Small Business Association collection of visual materials. Happy Lunar New Year! Sunday, January 22, 2023, marks the beginning of the Year of the Rabbit 4720/2023. Lunar New Year celebrations More

January 11 is marked on the calendar as National Milk Day, commemorating the day the first glass bottled milk deliveries began en masse in the US, starting with the state of New York in 1878. And while Chicago’s strongest bovine association has been to the Union Stock Yard, the dairy industry was also a lucrative More

Interested in learning something new in 2023? In our latest blog post, CHM director of research and access Ellen Keith reveals the top five most requested collection items at the Abakanowicz Research Center in 2022. What do people want to see in the Abakanowicz Research Center? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so we More

Chicago has had more than its fair share of big band and jazz dance halls across the city to accommodate nearly everyone’s musical taste. On December 6, 1922—100 years ago—at 62nd Street and Cottage Grove, in the Woodlawn neighborhood, the Trianon Ballroom opened its doors and counted itself among the city’s nightlife destinations. An undated More

This post is from Marissa Croft, CHM’s research and insights analyst and author of our Fashion and Costume Research Guide. As a PhD candidate at Northwestern University, she also researches the clothing of the French Revolution and women’s clothing reform movements of the 19th century. As December dawns, many Chicagoans may find themselves fondly reminiscing More