As public (state-dependent) institutions, history museums in Mexico are viewed as embodiments of official history , unable to present history as contested and constructed. This article offers a detailed explanation of how and to what extent official history operates in the construction of historical narratives and visitors’ experiences of two history museums in Mexico City. Results showed specific omission strategies, divergences, and inconsistencies in the historical discourse, as well as peoples’ autonomous and creative meaning-making of the past, both of which provide strong evidence to advocate for an understanding of official history not as one, but as several competing narratives produced at different times by institutions and professionals affiliated (either directly or indirectly) with the state.

This Report from the Field is a post-mortem reflection on a statewide memorialization project on slavery that ultimately failed. In this essay, I attribute the failure of the project in large part to conflicting historical approaches and claims to narrative authority over the representation of a specifically Rhode Island image of slavery. Although the organization studied here no longer exists, other nascent grassroots organizations dedicated to the memorialization of slavery and grappling with issues of emerging narratives and competing claims to local memory may derive benefit from my analysis and the proposed “scaffolded conversations” with which I conclude.

Inequality in Bronze is a two-year project (2018–20) reckoning with the history of slavery at Stenton, a plantation house museum in Philadelphia, by commissioning a new memorial to Dinah, a woman enslaved at the property in the mid-1700s. Drawing on data collected throughout the project, this article argues that historic house museums need to move from “community participation” to “community integration” in their efforts to forefront racial equity. This article asks how we can redress centuries of erasure and the absence of Black lives at historic sites. It offers points of consideration for other historic house museums contemplating similar projects as the collective work to address the legacies of American enslavement continues.