Crossroads: Change in Rural America

Crossroads: Change in Rural America is a Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition drawing on the history and culture of rural America to provoke fresh thinking and spark conversations about the future and sustainability of rural communities.

Crossroads: Change in Rural America offers small towns a chance to look at their own paths over the past century and to highlight the changes that affected their fortunes. The exhibition will prompt discussions about what happened when America’s rural population became a minority of the country’s population and the ripple effects that continue today.

With support from Colorado Humanities and the Smithsonian, the Crossroads exhibition gives Colorado communities the chance to explore how their community has adapted to change. Host sites will develop a complementary exhibit and programming that tells their community’s unique Crossroads story and sparks important conversations about local issues.

Ten Colorado communities have been selected to host the Smithsonian exhibition for six weeks each, beginning in August of 2023.

Congratulations to our local hosts!  Please visit the exhibit as it tours Colorado.

View the local posters as they become available by clicking on the town name.

Coming Soon: Americans (2025-2026)

American Indian images, names, and stories infuse American history and contemporary life.

The images are everywhere, from the Land O’Lakes butter maiden to the Cleveland Indians’ mascot, and from classic Westerns and cartoons to episodes of Seinfeld and South Park. American Indian names are everywhere from state, city, and streets to items like the Tomahawk missile. Americans highlights the ways in which American Indians have been part of the nation’s identity since before the country began. Familiar historical events of Pocahontas’s life, the Trail of Tears, and the Battle of Little Bighorn continue to speak to the imagination of many.

How is it that Indians can be so present and so absent in American life? Pervasive, powerful, at times demeaning, the images, names, and stories reveal the deep connection between Americans and American Indians as well as how Indians have been embedded in unexpected ways in the history, pop culture, and identity of the United States.

The exhibition surrounds visitors with images and objects from popular culture, invites them to explore this complicated history, and provides a great opportunity for host organizations to explore how the history of American Indians in their areas are incorporated into local stories. Are American Indian stories revered in your community? Or are those connections misunderstood or misused? How much of your community’s celebrated places, street names, local businesses, cultural icons, and people have connections to American Indian stories? With support from state humanities councils and other state partners, Americans provides an interesting chance to generate relationships and conversations with local American Indian groups and organizations.

Smithsonian Collaborator

Museum on Main Street is working directly with lead curator Paul Chaat Smith (Comanche) from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) to adapt Americans for travel. Photographs, paintings, and archival collections from the Smithsonian along with tactile and digital experiences will be used to bring the exhibit to life.

Applications to become a host site will open soon. Check back for updates.