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The Call is Coming from Inside the Storage Room: Artifacts in the Collection that Could Kill You
Many peculiar artifacts lurk in the National Building Museum’s permanent collection, from unidentifiable tools to photographs of buildings on fire and drawings of imagined cities. While they all reveal how buildings and cities were historically constructed, some oddities prove particularly interesting. These are the dangerous ones, the ones…
Curating the Code: The Secrets Behind Accession Numbers
When most people think of curatorial work, they imagine someone installing public, visitor-facing exhibits and displays. But curating can also happen behind the scenes, in storage spaces and database systems…
New Acquisitions: 2025
As part of its mission to inspire curiosity about the world we design and build, the National Building Museum actively collects objects, photographs, and paper materials that document the building…
Everyday Preservation Activities in Collections Storage
The Collections Department at the National Building Museum preserves our artifacts so they can be researched, exhibited, and appreciated for generations to come. Most of our preservation work involves storing…
Adopt an Artifact: Daniel Feil Drafting Tools
If you’ve flown through Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport or attended an event at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, you’ve experienced the work of renowned architect…
Les Halles Reimagined: An Unbuilt Proposal
The Proposal for Les Halles The National Building Museum Collections team recently catalogued and digitized a 1970s collection of architectural sketches and drawings by architect John Blatteau for a proposed…
New Acquisitions: 2024, Part 2
As part of its mission to inspire curiosity about the world we design and build, the National Building Museum actively collects objects, photographs, and paper materials that document the building…
