My Year of Museums

My Museum Resolution

Like many people, I have had an ambivalent relationship with new year’s resolutions. I’ve often vaguely tried to instill better habits or quit bad ones, usually without much commitment or success. A couple of years ago, though, I was inspired by a screenshot of a Tumblr post to try a new approach:

“i forgot you can make Fun Ones i want a fun one”

So, in 2024, I chose a “fun” resolution.

The parameters

For the resolution, I decided to visit 12 museums that:

1. I had never been to before
2. Are located inside the city of Chicago
3. Have the word “museum” in their name

The 2nd and 3rd requirements are admittedly pretty arbitrary but I wanted to explore the city specifically and I wanted to give myself a rule up front about what “counts” as a museum.

The 1st criterion ruled out (in no particular order): the Field Museum, the Museum of Science and Industry, the National Museum of Mexican Art, the Smart Museum, the Chicago History Museum, the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and possibly others. I believe that the Art Institute, Newberry Library, Cultural Center, Robie House, and the weird little gallery inside the Water Tower would technically be disqualified under #3 but were also moot because of #1.

The target number 12 was chosen to imply a monthly schedule, which seemed reasonable and achievable while still feeling like an accomplishment. (I think this resolution qualified as a SMART goal.)

Where I went

With the criteria established, I ended up visiting the following museums (in chronological order and included on map below):

1. Swedish American Museum
2. Museum of Contemporary Photography
3. Chinese American Museum of Chicago
4. Chicago Maritime Museum
5. Edgewater Historical Society Museum
6. International Museum of Surgical Science
7. Driehaus Museum
8. Chicago Fed Money Museum
9. Design Museum of Chicago
10. American Writers Museum
11. DuSable Black History Museum
12. Leather Archives and Museum

I went to some museums on my own and others with an assortment of friends and family – shout out to D (and D’s mom L), K, P, E, and J for joining various museum adventures.

2024 was a pretty calamitous year for me and my family, so the timing on the visits ended up being very uneven; rather than the planned monthly cadence, I ended up trying to speedrun ten museums in two weeks around Christmas. Oh well!

Though it wasn’t technically part of the resolution, I did get a picture of myself at each museum (included in the header image on this post), and I liveblogged the process in this Bluesky thread. My facial expressions in the photos do not necessarily reflect any sort of review of the given museum.

Map

Getting out and about in the city was part of the goal of the resolution. Because of the unintended time crunch, I ended up going to a lot of Far North Side and Downtown museums (basically, “places off the 22 bus and/or the Red Line”) and did not explore as many neighborhoods as I had hoped.

Missed opportunities

The National Public Housing Museum was a big inspiration for the resolution, since it was slated to open in 2024, but it ended up not actually opening that year so I was not able to include it. I also wanted to visit the McCormick Bridge House & Chicago River Museum but missed the opening season.

I also wish I had taken better notes or journaled as I went, and posted a writeup like this sooner.

I did not use any library museum passes for this resolution; the program has been changed substantially since 2024. If I were doing the resolution again, I would make sure to check the Chicago Public Library digital museum passes program to see if I could get free or reduced-price access to museums that charge for admission. (Several of the museums I visted have free admission by default regardless.)

Reflections

I really enjoyed this resolution and would highly recommend something similar to others. I found it valuable to go to museums that were so different from one another and covered a range of types, topics, and perspectives. Visiting them all in a relatively short period of time fostered a comparative and accretive experience that I don’t always associate with museums. For example, I learned about the photojournalist Jun Fujita at the Chicago Maritime Museum (in the context of his photos of the SS Eastland disaster) and then saw his photography of the 1919 race riot at the DuSable.

I didn’t emerge with an overall ranking of the museums; despite the premise here, “going to a museum” is not necessarily a totally generic or interchangeable activity and I think different people will get different things out of all these museums. I might recommend one to one person and another to another, based on each person’s interests.

That said, I will note two museums that I would recommend broadly – not over the others but to a particularly wide range of people:

• The DuSable Museum is striking and I wish that I had gone sooner. The artifacts there are particularly unique, informative, and effective at raising up histories that my formal education did not convey. They have exhibits regarding Harold Washington, the 1919 race riot, and the Black Panther Party that I would recommend to all Chicagoans.

• The Design Museum of Chicago is thought-provoking (though they don’t have any permanent exhibits, so the content has fully changed since my 2024 visit), contemporary, free, and right across the street from the Cultural Center. The Cultural Center is one of my big recommendations for visitors who want to do stuff downtown, so I would add the Design Museum to a day out at the Cultural Center and Millennium Park.

However, my biggest recommendation is just: go to more museums! There are dozens and dozens of museums in a city like Chicago and they reflect an immense amount of care and effort from people working to curate and communicate information about different communities and subject areas. Going to museums in person is a chance to engage with information in an embodied way distinct from the screen-mediated day-to-day. Something like a new year’s resolution can provide motivation and structure, but it’s certainly not necessary.

Map creation & embedding followed this tutorial with some updates to handle Carto API key requirements. Cover photos were previously shared in the above-linked Bluesky thread. I found the Tumblr screenshot & original citation in this Reddit post.