Day: April 27, 2025

When it comes to birthdays, there are all sorts of fun things you can do. From laid-back hangouts to high-intensity adventures, there’s something for everyone when it comes to celebrating another rotation around the sun. But if you’re struggling to think of creative ways to make this year’s celebration a little bit more unique, here are some ideas that will help you put your own stamp on the festivities.

Plan a group getaway. Birthdays are the perfect excuse to treat yourself and your closest friends to a well-deserved vacation. Whether you choose to travel abroad or simply head out of town, it’s the ideal way to escape the grind and get away from it all for a few days. Plus, traveling during off-peak seasons can often be much more affordable.

Host a cocktail party. Whether you’re into mixing your own drinks or preferring to sip on a glass of bubbly, a cocktail party is the perfect way to celebrate. Stock your bar with a selection of spirits, mixers, and garnishes so that guests can get creative and create their own signature creations. It’s a great way to try new cocktails that you may not have tried before and also a fun activity to do with friends.

Raise a glass to a friend or family member’s birthday with a toast at a local brewery or distillery. This is a fun and festive way to share a drink with loved ones, and you can even make it a themed event by focusing on certain cocktails that have been the celebrant’s favorites in the past.

Give a gift that will keep on giving. Plants are a thoughtful and practical present that can help clean the air, add a touch of greenery to your home, and bring a smile to your face. Whether you go for an easy-to-care-for houseplant like a snake plant or something more decorative like a pilea peperioides, it’s sure to make them feel loved and appreciated on their special day.

Wish them happy birthday with some heartfelt words of wisdom. Whether it’s a line from a movie they love, a famous quote, or a heartfelt message that highlights their best qualities, a personalized message will definitely make them feel loved and remembered.

Have a pajama party. It’s the perfect way to spend a birthday with friends or your significant other. Invite them over and hang out in your favorite pajamas all night long, eat a variety of snacks, and watch movies or TV shows you all enjoy. You could even add a twist by having everyone bring their own dish to the potluck so that you can have plenty of food and flavors to sample throughout the evening.

Make their birthday one to remember by helping them achieve a goal they’ve been dying to do! Whether it’s learning how to cook a new recipe, taking singing lessons, or learning a new language, this is a wonderful way to give them the gift of knowledge and experience.

As a three-dimensional physical and visual representation of historical research and interpretation, museum exhibitions offer an essential window into dense academic scholarship. Exhibitions also create drama and enable a history to be told in ways that are appealing to the eyes as well as the mind. They are the heart of what a museum does and the way it connects with its community.

Whether they are a cabinet of curiosities, an archaeological excavation or a full-blown retrospective, exhibitions are the embodiment of creative visual storytelling. They are metaphors, visual poetry and imagination that help us to place ourselves in the past. They are a form of cultural argument that is nonlinear in both its structure and content, and they often reveal the way in which people in the past were connected to each other and to larger historical concepts.

A museum’s mission is to communicate the history of humankind in a compelling way that expands the parameters of knowledge. Its exhibitions can highlight a particular period or event, commemorate common tragedies and injustices, or explore abstract ideas such as home, freedom, faith, democracy, and mobility. A well-crafted exhibition allows a museum to engage with its community of citizens who come from all walks of life and bring their own perspectives and experiences to the story being told.

Each year, hundreds of major history exhibits are curated and mounted throughout the country. Though these shows may not receive the same level of scholarly attention as monographs, they are crafted by scholars who work closely with museum educators and staff, designers, and production teams. The result is an exhibition that reflects the broad range of skills necessary to make museums an effective medium for interpreting the past: historical scholarship, management and interpersonal skills, knowledge of material culture, an aesthetic sense, and an understanding of how visual images can communicate historical information.

The articles in this section highlight significant exhibitions, particularly those examining the lives of ordinary people. These range from family ties to significant events, from the celebration of local anniversaries to the documentation of the forced incarceration of 33,000 second-generation Japanese Americans during World War II. The stories of these exhibitions illustrate the importance of connecting the past to a broad, diverse audience and the challenge that museums face in demonstrating that they deserve their tax-exempt status by performing a service to communities.

This column focuses on innovative work that stretches the boundaries of traditional exhibition scholarship and presentation. For example, the gallery that uses archival photographs to show a family’s journey from slavery to freedom, or a museum that uses art and personal objects to tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement. In addition, this column will examine exhibitions that demonstrate new ways to improve collaboration between the academy and museums.