Online Exhibits

How I See What I See - Student Photography | Wing Young Huie

A Naper Settlement Exhibit

Students from the Chicagoland area participated in a week-long summer workshop with the Naper Settlement team and noted photographer Wing Young Huie to explore the complex cultural realities around identity. The workshop was based on Huie's work, exhibited in museums throughout the world, and allowed students to learn and engage through lectures and hands-on activities such as "chalk talks," an interactive photographic process to explore individual identity.

They then turned their lenses outward to document their worlds-their communities, their families and their schools, resulting in a series of thought-provoking photographs around identity and place. The exhibit was co-curated by Huie, the students, and museum staff. The project artwork furthers the museum's current collecting initiative to gather the stories and material culture of Naperville today. Naper Settlement is now interpreting history more reflective of the contemporary community.

Unvarnished: Housing Discrimination in the Northern and Western United States

Unvarnished: Housing Discrimination in the Northern and Western United States

Unvarnished: Housing Discrimination in the Northern and Western United States is a free online exhibit examining the history of residential segregation in America by spotlighting six communities from California to Connecticut and placing their histories within a national context. Supported through an Institute of Museum and Library Services Museum Leadership Grant and the Healing Illinois Grant Program, a consortium of six history museums and cultural organizations from across the country collaborated from 2017 to 2022 to research and present their community’s history of exclusion. Online visitors will learn how housing discrimination often based on race, ethnicity, or religion was a large-scale system that resulted in segregation patterns across the Northern and Western United States that intensified over the twentieth century. Nearly two dozen interactive articles, accompanied by in-depth explainer videos, photos, interviews, and other primary sources, showcase how formal systems of segregation were developed through individual practices and expanded through federal policy, sustained over time, and continue to affect today’s communities. 

In addition to the national context, visitors will examine how system-wide discrimination shaped the six communities in the Northern and Western United States including Appleton, WI, Brea, CA, Columbus, OH, Naperville, IL,  Oak Park, IL, and West Hartford, CT. By examining communities in these regions, the project aims to educate visitors and encourage every community to look at their own histories. 

The project was developed and directed by Naper Settlement.

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